November 1, 2013 in National Styles

Heavy Metal in China: Part II – Going through difficult changes (1994 to 2003)

Overload

In 1991, the freshly formed Overload (“超载”) with singer Gao Qi of The Breathing (“呼吸) became one of the country’s next biggest metal bands. Inspired by the successes of American groups like Metallica and Slayer, their style was rather oriented towards thrash metal. This band helped diversify the Chinese metal scene, even though it took the band five years to pull off their first self-titled full length release in 1996.

China’s first death metal band saw the light of day in the beginning of 1992. The band’s name was Tomahawk (“战斧”), and they soon adapted a more modern metal style that could be described as groove or post-thrash. The band’s first album also saw a very difficult birth and finally came out in 2001 under the title Dead City, which united the band’s compositions from the nineties with a few new tracks. Also coming to light was the country’s first doom metal act, formed in 1993 and called Hades (“冥界”). This band also didn’t release its debut album until 2002.

These examples already indicate a certain decline and period of difficulty for Chinese metal music after a growing popularity in the late eighties and early nineties. On one hand, the Beijing Midi School of Music opened its doors, offering three month courses on the basics of Western blues and rock music, and several cities such as Wuhan developed a small underground culture. However, the Chinese government soon realized that Western rock and metal music would promote a more democratic movement and diffuse the regime’s message of globalization. It therefore began to ban rock music from television, and restrict artists in concert apart from a few public appearances during international events that the government tried to use as propaganda: to prove to the world the development of new expressions of art and culture in the country. The commercialization of the music industry advantaged pop artists from Hong Kong and Taiwan, while the metal scene sank back to the underground.

Narakam (Hades)

In contrast, the first punk scene emerged from 1994 on, led by the charismatic musician He Yong and his debut record Garbage Dump, which tried to discover new means of artistic expression. Bands such as Underbaby (“地下婴儿”) and The Catcher In The Rye (“麦田守望者”) soon joined the movement, and inherited the cultural, political, and social expression of the metal scene, which itself was going through a hard time, struggling to compete with the foreign pop, the local punk, and a more and more famous grunge scene. In addition to this, several tragic events occurred, such as the motorcycle death of Tang Dynasty’s (“唐朝”) bassist Zhang Ju in 1995, that stopped the activities of the country’s first big metal band for a while.

With a new underground spirit, the growing metal scene slowly developed new methods to gain popularity, began slowly to return to old strength in the late nineties. The Beijing Midi School Of Music moved to a bigger school yard and established the very recognized Midi Festival in 2000. Around this time, new rock festivals began emerging all around the country.

In the late nineties, brand new subgenres saw the light of day, and quickly emerged along with the extreme metal, nu-metal and post punk being the most popular among these. A second punk wave centered around Beijing-based bands such as Brain Failure (“脑浊”), Reflector (“反光镜”), or the all female shock band Hang On The Box (“挂在盒子上”) emerged, as well as the first serious hip hop scene around artists and bands such as CMBC from Beijing, Gongfu from Tianjin, and Yin Ts’ang (“隐藏”) from Beijing.

As for examples of the new metal subgenres, one could cite the Beijing rapcore formation Yaksa (“夜叉”), the Beijing metalcore formation AK 47 (which also used electro and punk elements in their sound), and the nu-metal band Overheal Tank (“检修坦克”) from Xi’an towards the end of the nineties. One of the most popular metalcore bands soon became Ego Fall (“颠覆M”) from Inner Mongolia, that mixed modern metal sounds with traditional folk influences and often spiritually driven lyrics. The first emo rock band of the country was formed in 1999 under the name of Tookoo, and extreme metal bands gained popularity in the first years of the new millennium. One should mention formations such as the Kunming death metal band Purgatory (“炼狱”) and the Beijing black metal formation Ritual Day (“施教日”) as well. In general, all these new subgenres became popular in the People’s Republic of China with a delay of about two to three years in comparison to the Western world.

Ritual Day

 

But the new wave of rock and metal music was not due only to numerous new bands or Western influences, but also thanks to a larger and especially well organized fan culture. The first independent Chinese music community organization entitled Noise (杂音) saw the light of day in 1997, as well as the country’s largest independent record label, called Modern Sky Records, that started to release popular compilation albums from Chinese bands. The underground punk magazine, called The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle, first appeared in 1997, and the So Rock! magazine was published for the first time in 1999. Local magazines such as We (“我们”) from Chengdu (founded 1999), Painkiller Magazine from Beijing (founded in 2000), or specialized compilation records such as Made In Shanghai in 2003 became more and more popular, and supported many local metal scenes. At the beginning of the new millennium, the diverse subgenres increased in popularity thanks to new mass media, and particularly by use of the internet. Thanks to this new diversity, several older groups gained some much-needed new energy, and released new records in the late nineties and in the beginning of the new millennium.

But another sad event would soon affect this flowering scene in the middle of the year 2003.

Important records (1994 – 2003):

The Face (“面孔”) – Instinct Of Fire (1995)

Overload (“超载”) – Overload (“超载”) (1996)

Tomahawk (“战斧”) – Dead City (“死城”) (2001)

Hades (“冥界”) – Hades (“冥界”) (2002)

Purgatory (“炼狱”) – Dream Of Moribund (“垂死者之梦”) (2002)

"Amsterdam" is a quite unusual but promising movie from Quebec. The film starts as a comedy flick. Three quite different childhood friends want to escape from their everyday lives. They tell their wives or girlfriends that they would go on a hunting trip in the forest but in fact, they take the plane to Amsterdam to have some fun together. They are drinking a lot and smoking a lot of weed as well. I'm not sure it's a good idea to show a car driver having a sip of vodka and adults and family fathers boozing around but it tells us a lot of contemporary French Canadian society. 

The most revealing scene comes when the three actors go to the red light district. One characters passionately sleeps with a prostitute and can't get enough, another one wants to have fun but doesn't manage to because he has to think about his wife and the last one only gives the prostitute some money to make his friends think he is cool enough to go with her but in fact he doesn't even think about betraying his wife. The three friends are spying each other and their final decisions reveal a lot of what will happen next.  

The only thing I might complain about is the stereotypical image of Amsterdam that gets underlined in this movie. I have been several times to Amsterdam and it's a beautiful and very cultivated city with a lot of great things to visit. The city is though only reduced to a place where people are boozing, taking drugs and sleeping with prostitutes. This view is quite naive and closed-minded; one could even say slightly racist. 

Anyway, from this moment on, the movie gets an unusual turn. It becomes a suspenseful drama with a quite dark atmosphere. One of the three friends learns that his girlfriend is pregnant but instead of being happy, he gets scared and decides not to come home with his friends. A big argument kicks off but the desperate man doesn't change his mind. He wants to stay in Amsterdam for a few more days and his two friends return to their families. 

Nobody has the guts to tell the truth. The two remaining friends are afraid they could lose everything they have and realize that they didn't really think of the consequences of their decisions before. They spin a web of lies and tell that their friend went out in the woods after an argument and didn't come back. Soon, the police and their families realize that the two men didn't tell the whole truth but due to a series of coincidences and stupid actions, nobody comes close to reveal the truth. 

Their friend doesn't come back after few days and even not after a few weeks when the autumn goes by and Christmas arrives. The tragic events have changed the lives of the two remaining friends and everybody in the small village for the worse. It takes quite some time before a certain kind of routine is established again. 

Then, their friend suddenly comes back home for Christmas. He secretly watches the people in the village and how his disappearance has changed a lot of things. He decides to not reveal that he is back until he decides to meet his girlfriend again. He reveals to her that he doesn't believe that he caused her pregnancy and is the father of her unborn child and both of them get into quite a big argument. 

The viewers don't get to know what happens next until the two remaining friends get a message from their friend to meet in a cabin in the woods. Soon, all three shout at each other and their friendship is about to break completely apart. I don't want to reveal you the movie's twist but you probably won't see it coming and the film ends on a quite dark and intriguing note that leaves the viewers with a lot of food for thought. 

The strongest point of the movie is its development from a comedy film over a thriller to an intense drama. Each part convinces due to a solid acting and captivating story line with a few surprises towards the end. This movie is almost to experimental to hit the cinemas but I'm glad it was released in the movie theatres of the province of Quebec. 

The weaker parts are the stereotypical image of Amsterdam, a few lengths in the middle part of the film and a few little plot holes or unexplained events concerning credit cards, lazy police investigation and the disappearance of another person towards the end. 

The positive aspects outnumber this movie's flaws and if the story is intriguing enough to you, there is no reason for you to not try your best to get your hands on a copy of this unusual and mostly intelligent movie. 

"Carrie" is based on a popular Steven King novel and has already been brought to the cinemas of this world in the seventies. This new version is a refreshing revamp and the topic is maybe more actual than ever before.

Students are more and more living in a world where their parents get divorced and only care about their careers. Young students get in contact with alcohol, drugs and sex at very young age and have nothing left to discover. Hypersexualisation is omnipresent in all medias where artificial American pop stars and models have replaced authentic and honourable idols. Young people struggle to accept authorities at home, at school and even in situations of their everyday lives. It's hard for them to face confusion and frustration and instead of being mature enough to criticize themselves and their families, they project their bad feelings on other relatives, teachers and class mates. The main targets are shy and somewhat different people at school which they only see as weird outcasts. I guess we all have seen or heard of students who refused to go to school because they were going through hell there or who even went as far to take their own precious lives. While Eastern societies have kept some respect for authorities, the so-called democratic and free Western world has led to a system where everybody is criticizing everything and having an opinion about anything. People often feel the need to become monsters themselves to face the monsters around them. This fast paced, individual, material world is no good place for those who try to be different. Carrie is a symbol for all those who are suffering at such a young age and her final revenge is a symbol for the growing fear, hatred and pain that those young people feel inside and can't catalyse. In every school in every town in the Western world, we have a few potential Carries walking around like time-bombs. School shootings and suicide rates among students show us where the worst places.  

This movie manages to stay close to the original novel. At the same time, the events are playing in the present and a few necessary details have been added. Carrie is not only bullied at school. She is also bullied in social media when the antagonists upload movies of her on Youtube. Social media are hard to control and have become an anonymous place where anybody feels free to spread news about other people. 

Apart of her struggles at school, she has to deal with an extremely religious and severe mother. In the opening moments, you see how the mother thinks about killing her newborn child with a knife. This scene really touched me. Religious fanaticism is another big problem in our societies. People think their religion is the only one that counts and they go very far to spread this message in sometimes very ignorant and violent ways. There is no problem at all with being religious but with hating and judging people who think differently.

Carrie's situation at home is not only connected to religious fanaticism but also to another problem in modern society. I'm talking about nuclear families with divorced parents, single parents, parents with new partners and so on. These days, people are having their first sexual experiences at a very young age and a lot of women get pregnant or even married before finishing their studies or having a stable job. These young parents always got everything and want to get everything no matter what. They want to have the perfect husband, they want to have many healthy children, they want to have a big house, a big television, a big car and the newest electronic devices, they want to have a job where there is not much to do but where they can get a lot of money, they want to go on vacation at least twice a year to escape from reality and so on. And while they are trying to get everything at the same time, their illusions are shattered and those who suffer are their own children who are growing up in a big mess. Carrie is growing up without a father and only hears bad things about him as she is completely controlled by her mother.

This movie tells us the progressive downfall of a young and beautiful girl who just tries to be normal and get new friends. She tries really hard to do so and is very mature and a few people really care for her in a good way like the gym teacher or another girl from the water ball team at school. But if you get so much hate from everybody around you day by day as Carrie gets, you start to meet everybody with anger, ignorance and suspicion. You won't let the few ones who try to help you get close to you because you don't want to get hurt again and everybody soon becomes a potential enemy.  

"Carrie" is a suspenseful drama and only becomes a horror movie once more than one hour has passed. What follows is a tale of emotional destruction of the world around Carrie and finally of herself. Most viewers empathize and sympathize with her but once people get out of the cinemas, they close their eyes and ignore the Carries in the real world. The final scene shows us that even a bloody massacre with hundreds of victims doesn't change a thing at all. Some people sprayed ugly graffiti on Carrie's grave telling her to go to hell. The bullying of that poor child even continues after her death.

If you care about thoughtful dramas and psychological suspense movies with strong character developments and good actors, this film is for you. Those who expect an atmospheric horror film or a splatter movie should look elsewhere. 

"Captain Philipps" is an American action-drama inspired by but not closely based on actual events. The real Captain Philipps acted a lot less heroic and more ignorant than in this movie adaption that simply tries to do what many recent Hollywood movies do. They portray the hard but honest everyday life of a seemingly normal American citizen who suddenly faces big challenges and becomes a national hero. In times of governmental shutdown, economical problems and a slowly progressing decline as the world's most important nation, people need a few new heroes to believe in American society again.

In this movie, you see how democratic institutions, dominant military forces and social cohesion defeat corruption, exploitation and selfishness in the worst among the developing countries. The film presents the United States of America and Somalia as complementary antitheses which feels a little bit like lazy propaganda.

While the main villain constantly expresses a positive opinion about the American dream and how he could have a better life in that country, I must though admit that the movie also shows us the dark sides of some typically American values as individualism and weapons happen to be completely useless to resolve this movie's issues. Diplomatic elements, earthiness and shrewdness are the key elements leading to a predictable happy ending instead of a loner's brute force.

Apart of its minimal propaganda tendencies and the predictable ending, I didn't like the character of Captain Philipps at all. I'm not sure if Tom Hanks wanted to portray an arrogant and unsympathetic old bourgeois but if this was the intention of the makers, his acting is simply perfect. If the intentions were to create a sympathetic main actor, he completely failed though. It's hard to tell but usually, this kind of movie tries to create an emotional connection between the main character and the viewers and this movie just doesn't manage to build this up. From the beginning on, I had no connection with the main character and didn't really care about his fate.

Another small but important element I didn't appreciate was the fact that the main villain's English was so good. It's more than just a surprise that a pirate living in a desperate country ridden by a bloody civil war for more than two decades is able to speak English so well. I'm not sure if a young man like this ever had the chance to go to school at all. That's why this little detail and the general profound interactions between Captain Philipps and Muse feel a little bit too fabulous to me.

The movie's strengths are elsewhere. First of all, this film is filled with incredible tension and especially the claustrophobic and uneasy last third feels very intense and real. The acting is only one part of the gripping formula. The great soundtrack, the efficient light effects and the out-thought camera positioning create this nervous feeling. 

The movie starts as a documentary in the first moments, slowly turns into an atmospheric thriller towards the middle, then it gets a refreshing action boost between the second and last third and it ends as an oppressive chamber piece. This mixture is very well balanced by the makers and the movie never gets boring in my opinion. Even though the content of the script is sometimes flawed, its general segment linearization is of the highest quality.

The film also has its dramatic and philosophic elements as the villains aren't just brutal criminals but four very young and sometimes naive men who have no choice but to go through this hell to stay alive and take care of their elders and own families. The acting of the four Somalian pirates is simply outstanding and especially the performance by Abdi Barkhad is absolutely authentic and intense. Sometimes, the movie doesn't feel acted at all as if the real persons were replaying the tragic events that really happened in a slightly transformed way. This is where the movie almost looks like a documentary of the most intense kind.

Despite its little flaws, this movie is truly intense and feels authentic. The first third has a few lengths but the last two thirds will keep you on the edge of your seat as almost no other movie this year. While the story itself and Tom Hank's acting aren't very good, the claustrophobic atmosphere and the incredible performances by the four young African actors are worth a few Academy Awards. I hope to see more from these four actors in the near future. 

October 31, 2013 in Reviews