VARIOUS ARTISTS

Sound Of The Raging Steppes

TENGGER X CAVALRY A five-band introduction to China’s metal underground

A splendid idea in theory and practice, Sound Of The Raging Steppes comprises two songs apiece from five metal bands, all hailing from northern China. We should be more than used to metal’s global presence by now, but there’s something undeniably fascinating about hearing heavy music that has evolved in a geographical context so alien to our own. Earnest anthropological intrigue aside, it also helps that all five bands have distinct identities and sounds that exhibit only a slender debt to Western blueprints. The thunderous folk-metal attack of Tengger Cavalry, the band behind this project, will be familiar to many, and both Liberation and Nan deliver intriguing, fresh metal hybrids, but it’s Sintas’s wonky, scattershot art-rock and Suld’s epic pomp that stand out most strongly. The perfect introduction to one of metal’s final frontiers.

FOR FANS OF: Orphaned Land, Finntroll, Alien Weaponry

DOM LAWSON