哀郢 (National Trauma)

Black Kirin have got to be one of the zanier things I've heard in my years of listening to metal. It's always an interesting and, in my estimation, worthwhile gamble when checking out Pest Productions releases, and this band definitely has the interesting part down something fierce, I tell you what. The band basically plays a cinematic, huge-budget sort of folk-infused melodeath with a blackened edge, bolstered not only by liberal use of folk elements but also ostentatious symphonics, Chinese opera elements and some flashy technicality in the musicianship that all work together to push this hard into the realm of the absurd.

First, the metal bits. I won't go around pretending to be an expert on this kind of stuff, but basically it sounds to me like a blending of huge-crowd Wacken melodeath mixed with Norwegian Grammy metal a la Ihsahn. The riffs do have some eastern flavor to them that comes across as something between maybe Melechesh and, dare I say, Wintersun, with a sharp thrashy propulsiveness to them. Lots of flashy guitar playing, with tapped riffs and wild, shreddy leads backed by loud, modern-sounding pounding drums. Vocals are varied and often layered, with higher modern sounding raspy shrieks layered over lower growls, a style I honestly hold in pretty high disdain as I think it almost universally sounds like shit and goes a long way in ruining my enjoyment of the riffs.

Plus the operatic Chinese wails. かおり, who you can probably guess is actually Japanese, plays the role of Hua Dan on this album, which is a traditional Chinese opera role that's a young, cute, innocent girl with a high, sort of histrionic voice that can be quite hard to get used to. I think it's something I could probably come to like if I listened to enough Chinese opera, but it simply does not fit well in about 95% of its parts here, apart from select parts where the melodies fit in pretty well with the instrumentation, like in "Death Contract" and the early parts of "Oh Soldier." In addition to this vocal style, there's also boatloads of traditional Chinese instrumentation, such as flutes and stringed, lute or mandolin-like instruments. While I absolutely adore far eastern folk and court instruments and think they can be incorporated quite well into a metal context, in Black Kirin's case it sounds "right" about half the time, the other half of the time it just seems completely over the top and silly. Again, Wintersun come to mind. I've called that band Kingdom Hearts boss battle soundtrack metal before. I recently read about some rich Chinese guy making some giant, expensive theme park near Shanghai to compete with the new Disney park there in order to establish a more homegrown, Chinese alternative to the overwhelmingly popular western influences something like Disney would bring to China's theme park goers. If there's some lame cell phone RPG that's a mashup of all the different animation franchises owned by that same Chinese alternative Disneyland park, Black Kirin are the soundtrack to that game's boss battles.

Comparing this band to Wintersun might not be the wisest course of action, since seemingly no one ever is lukewarm on that band. There are only rabid fanboys and those left wondering how Jari manages to type out such longwinded bitchy Facebook posts when his head is buried so deeply into his own asshole. Probably a much more accurate comparison would be Chthonic. The band seems to be aiming for a similar breakthrough in the global market, too, as this album has been re-released with the vocals (the harsh ones, anyway) entirely in English (the version being reviewed here being that English re-release). While the majority of material on National Trauma is pretty damn far from being my cup of tea, there are also a non-neglectable number of parts that are either somewhat enjoyable (typically the soulful guitar solo parts) or just outright great, the more minimalist black metal sounding parts where the vocals and folk instrumentation actually seem to work in harmony rather than just being a bunch of extraneous stacked-up layers.

It's those parts that actually make me look at the absolutely wonderful original cover art, which was sadly replaced for this English version with a much lamer cover, and think that somewhere inside of this bloated plastic monster is a band I would actually really like. When the band stops wanking around with Wacken riffs and shred guitar and multi-layered demon vocals and dorky symphonics, and really lets the simplicity of the traditional instrumentation drive the compositions, they do hit their stride, like in the lively, bouncing "Eagle." "Legend and Legacy" makes the contrast between the good and bad parts of National Trauma obvious, as it's mostly a folk piece in the first half, the awfulness of the modern metal elements immediately, shockingly apparent when all of that comes in at the same time in full force in the second half of the track and takes a giant, steaming greasy shit all over the carefully-crafted atmosphere the track had built up to that point.

I think I would have a seriously difficult time recommending this to people who come across it without managing to listen to it unless they're aware of the modern extreme metal trappings that utterly dominate this recording, and even for folks who like that sort of thing I would say be a bit wary just because the Hua Dan vocals might be a big hurdle for a lot of listeners. Despite all of my bitching, I would still be interested in following the musical output of musicians related to this project, as they've all got loads of talent and a strong interest in combining traditional Chinese musical performance with metal, so it could be that eventually some of these guys will do something that's a little more up my alley.

Written for the June 2016 Virgin Reviews Challenge "Secret Satan" review swap. Given to me for review by BastardHead.