On The Scene: Mao Livehouse 21-10-2012

If Friday and Saturday weren’t enough for me, Sunday was the clinger – and what better why to close out the weekend than some freaking metal – how about Mongolian folk metal? That’ll do it – so here’s Mao Livehouse with The Lifeless, Nower, and Tengger Cavalry.

Upside down cymbals – gotta love it. My cracked out hungover self struggled throughout most of the concert – moshing most certainly not on my list of activites tonight but I gotta give to The Lifeless, they gave it their all out there.

I felt like Beavis with my air guitar at times –“da da da da, da da da, da da da daaaaa” all over Mao – hell, even on the bike ride home, I was singing my metal chords. So they got that going for them. With the minimal crowd at Mao tonight going nuts, I bet if you give these guys a full house you won’t be sorry.

While I sat down cross-legged most of Nower trying to regain composure from a jazzy cigeratte aka mistake number one of the night, I was surprised at how much I was digging Nower, though with a slight tint of guilt.

There’s definite cheese here, most particularly in the backing vocals, and the lead’s 80s metal voice. But cheese or not, I dig this old school nonsense that doesn’t try to hard to be cool or heavier than the rest. And yeah, that lead’s got a damn fine voice. Shoot me.

But damn, if I wasn’t wide-eyed before, Tengger Cavalry, you have my full attention.

If Hanggai was about bringing their Mongolian grasslands to hard rock, Tengger Cavalry is about bringing metal back to the grasslands. Hardcore indeed. The concept is really quite simple – take some throat singer, a two-stringer violin (erhu?), add some flags to your instruments – and voila –

you got fucking hard as nails metal. It’s amazing how a few elements can completely take something and transform it into something fresh and exciting.

I’m not saying these guys are the first (early Hanggai really paved the way) – but I’m shocked that we don’t have as much balls to the wall Mongolian pagan metal like this. Do yourself a favor, and catch Tengger Cavalry when you can.