梦回唐朝

Ah, Tang Dynasty. The wine, the music, the poetry, the non-stop parties, the cosmopolitan culture, the full-figured women, the Silk Road, the inventions, the land reforms, the civil service… oh wait, we were talking about the band? Ah, no matter – their debut album starts off with a paean to China’s mediaeval Golden Age in similarly glowing terms. It seems no matter where one turns in metal, the impetus is always to cast glances backward to a distant and meaningful past – musically as well as lyrically, given how influenced traditional, progressive, symphonic and power metal are by classical musical progressions.

Along with Israel’s Orphaned Land and England’s Skyclad, Tang Dynasty was at the forefront of folk metal, experimenting with blends of heavy metal and the traditional musical styles of their region, so they deserve a level of respect for being, with this album, the founding fathers of both Chinese metal and Oriental metal. In their case, however, traditional Chinese musical forms almost demanded a laconic pacing, which made progressive metal in the style of Queensrÿche the logical place to start when attempting to complement the traditional percussion and styling, along with Ding Wu’s Beijing Opera-style lyrics on the title track, 《梦回唐朝》 (‘A Dream Return to Tang Dynasty’), on 《月梦》 (‘Moondream’) and on 《太阳》 (‘The Sun’). Tang Dynasty is not – I repeat, NOT – music you want to listen to if you’re looking for something easy to headbang to; though they have a couple of tracks which come damn close, like 《世纪末之梦》 (‘Dream of Doomsday’) with powerful, traditional bass riffs at the front end making it sound like a lighter incarnation of Accept (though the progressive elements, fear not, do creep in). For the most part, though, it makes excellent background listening music.

These guys put forward a much more consistent level of quality than the present-day torchbearers of oriental metal, Last Successor, but the downside is that the album tends to get old after awhile – that is, until the closing track, 《国际歌》 (‘L’Internationale’), which I’ll get to in a minute. Tracks like 《天堂》 (‘Paradise’), 《飞翔鸟》(‘Soaring Bird’) and 《太阳》 (‘The Sun’) are quite listenable, but they are much closer to progressive rock, psychedelic rock or soft rock than anything else; aside from the fact that they are using distorted guitars and bass and a progressive song structure, there’s really nothing to indicate that this music is ‘metal’ in any way.

Oddly enough, the laid-back, almost psychedelic pacing and the layering, particularly the prominence given to the drums on 《月梦》 (‘Moondream’) and 《传说》 (‘Legend’), call to mind really early heavy metal / hard rock acts like Budgie and Deep Purple, though they show a level of restraint which seems to have come hard to the English proto-metal bands. Ding Wu’s vocals are an acquired taste – he has to throw his voice into falsetto range for a lot of the Beijing Opera-style wails scattered throughout the album, but he employs them to great effect. It’s something I appreciate a lot more than Last Successor’s rather bland, poppy ‘clean’ vocals. The mixing is incredibly well-done considering that this is, after all, a progressive metal band. Production isn’t as great as I’d like, but it’s clear enough to do the job.

Also, red metalheads – forget Eshelon and put down your Kreator albums for a little bit. If you want to listen to some proficient, rousing red metal in a traditional style, see if you can find a copy of this album which has Tang Dynasty’s heavy metal rendition of 《国际歌》 (‘L’Internationale’), that great anthem of the downtrodden everywhere, on it. The instrumentation is suitably heavy with the ever-redoubtable drums of Zhao Nian and bass work of Zhang Ju (may he rest in peace) doing most of the lifting, though it does plod (though what can you expect of a march?). Ding Wu sings the first couple of verses, but he soon passes the baton to a Chinese chorus which sounds like it came out of a 1950’s CPC propaganda film. My only real problem with this song is that it’s slow, and sounds like it was made specifically for belting out in a cheap Beijing karaoke bar. Otherwise – dude, a proletarian revolution without metal is a proletarian revolution not worth having.

Final verdict? Props to these guys for being the founding fathers of heavy metal in China, and this album is certainly a classic and a keeper for aficionados of oriental metal. It’s also very good music, if something of an easy listen. But for the most part they occupy the same no-man’s-land as Deep Purple and Rush; there is enough metal on this album to justify its place on the Archives, but for the most part it’s rock to varying levels of hardness.

17 / 20