cool news and happening: Chinese Metal at Wacken, Lidong on the charts and Black Snakes Subs

there’s been quite a bit of things happening around the Chinese music scene as of late and some of them are particularly exciting for yours truly, especially in terms of developing the scene overseas:

Suffocated, Yaksa and The Falling will be featured in this year’s Wacken open air metal festival. How about that folks? 3 Chinese bands playing the biggest Metal festival in the world.. I’m stoked!
This is a huge feat with many parties involved to make it happen including MIDI, Painkiller Magazine’s Yu Yang and the Chinese Ministry of Culture. I hope this works out for all parties concerned.
A few years back, Voodoo Kungfu made it to Wacken but there never seemed to be any follow up. Here’s hoping this is different and the bands make the most of their opportunity.

For those going to Wacken ( lucky bastards), the show times are scheduled as follows ( h/t Rock in China)

The Falling on W:E:T Stage 02-08-2012 at 16:40
Yaksa on Headbangers Stage 03-08-2012 at 11:30
Suffocated on Party Stage 04-08-2012 at 11:00

Congrats to the bands going and good luck! I think Suffocated will do just fine. Yaksa really needs to have a good day to impress but The Falling will get swallowed live. A band like SAW, Tomahawk or Ordnance would have done a much better job in terms of appealing to a Metal audience that knows their shit.

On a lighter fokier note, looks like the lidong masterplan is picking up: Their song Xiao Mu Dian 立東乐队《小牡丹》 ( a ‘daze favorite) is charting in the national music charts as of yesterday!!
http://music.yule.sohu.com/newsound/index.shtml
This one is close to the heart folks with a good band of good friends… I’ll make sure to keep you updated about voting when it reopens.

I’ll finish this one with one hell of a cool thing: A Foreign band covering a tune from a Chinese band… how’s that? Here is a video of The Black Snakes from Norway covering the song Down by none other than SUBS at 2 Kolegas…

I saw the band do the cover again at Temple this past sunday with both Kang Mao and Wu Hao in attendance! They were gleaming of joy seeing someone doing a different take on their song… beautiful!
enjoy!!