Run With The Torch

When you think of China, things come to mind as the Great Wall, temples, communism, etc…  Unlike the Scandinavian countries you won’t quickly jump to metal. Regular readers of RWTT might have seen a Youtube clip of this Chinese metal band, I was so impressed by it I quickly aquired the album.

Now as I had other albums to listen to at that time I’ve kinda forgotten I had it. Recently China and metal came up in a convo again and I illustrated the existence of Chinese metal with the band Ego Fall and Tang Dynasty. Listening again to Ego Fall’s debut album The Spirit Of Mongolia I fell in love with it once again.

I’ll get rid of my negative points right away, these are the mixing, the sound lacks some body. And the other beeing I can’t really understand a word of it.

It’s hard to put a genre-tag on this band, or album. It has a lot of variation ranging from a nearly powerballad to some real belters, and many influences and elements. Vocals range from grunts to screams, alternating with different clean songlines and … mongolian throat singing. Yes throat singing! At first, I thought this to be just a gimmick of the title track,  but listening to the whole album the vocal style reappears if far less dominantly.

As guitars go, it’s somewhere between metalcore and melodic death metal. If I do compare it to a band, I’d say its a chinese Sonic Syndicate, or Dead By April. Melodic and alternating palmuted riffs combine with a great range of synth effects that reminds sometimes of In Flames and the other times of Black Comedy. And here and there Chinese instruments and sounds that almost make it sound like a folk band.

All in all it’s a great album, for me it put China on the metal-map of the world. If it get’s remastered, it might even knock some of the refered bands down my top-whatever charts.

Ego Fall on Last.fm