(BadWolf reviews the wonderful 2013 album by China’s Tengger Cavalry.)
Folk metal is hard. On the one hand, when the genre is executed to my liking, it’s one of the finest sub-genres of metal there is—full of character, interesting lyrics, groove, hooks, and interesting instrumentation. I’m talking about bands like Moonsorrow, Melechesh, and Primordial. On the other hand, most folk metal bands send me flying for the delete key: folk metal bands like Finntroll and Turisas get cheesy quickly, and the sheer earnestness behind that cheese just makes me pity them more—and want less of them in my ears.
File China’s Tengger Cavalry alongside Primordial on my list of folk bands that do it right. Invisible Oranges scribe Rhys Williams turned me on to this band of heathens with a few cuts from their previous album, Sunesu Cavalry. Tengger Cavalry hail from China, and play folk metal based on the myths and legends of nomadic Asiatic tribes such as the Mongols and Huns. What was once a one-man project, led by guitarist Nature Zhang, has since become a full six-piece band. Tengger Cavalry’s second album, and first as a live unit, The Expedition, dropped on Bandcamp early this summer, and it will trample you under hoof.
The tribes of Mongolia once raided as far west as the Roman Empire on horseback. With a name like Tengger Cavalry and song titles like “Black Steed,” horse sounds and imagery compose a big part of the band’s sound. The heavier tracks on The Expedition all use Iron Maiden-style gallops, as well as mid-paced triplets to great effect. The band even use a whinnying noise from one of their two (!) Horse Head fiddle players as accent marks in a manner reminiscent of Gojira’s pick-slide dive-bombs.
Those fiddles carry most of Tengger Cavalry’s melody—while Chthonic are content to let their erhu sit in the background, the folk melodies in Tengger Cavalry intertwine and trade off with guitar leads, as on “Expedition.” Other folk elements include a full-time Dombra player, and judicious use of throat singing melodies in the music. Of Tengger Cavalry’s six members, three play folk instruments—it’s surprising the sound is as metallic as it is, all things considered. Too often folk metal bands let the folk aspects of their music ride play second fiddle (pun intended) to the metal elements, in the end cheapening the folk elements until they’re just so much window dressing. In Tengger Cavalry, the Mongolian elements function in sync with the metal in a meaningful way. Hell, the last three songs on the album eschew metal entirely, in favor of more atmospheric folk tracks. The delicate picking that composes “White Pony” is downright beautiful.
Fortunately, Tengger Cavalry bring the metal, as well. The first four tracks on the album all deliver gallops, mid-paced stomps, pentatonic riffs, and breakdowns a-plenty. “Black Steed,” in particular brings the kind of swagger that modern European bands so often lack; it opens with, and returns to, a jangling acoustic guitar passage which down-shifts into full-bore guitar gallop—one of the record’s only curve balls. In fact, if there’s one weakness here, it’s that the more metallic songs stick to pretty tried-and-true song structures and pentatonic scales. Fortunately, some of the more mellow passages—like “Homeland Song”—use the electric guitar as a grinding background texture, which lends the rest of the music some much-needed weight.
The Expedition is a solid, fun, and rollicking ride for me. I cannot speak to its authenticity—I learned more about Mongolian culture from reading about this record than in all my previous years of life. I’m a novice, and it’s easy to look at something like folk metal and render its history as just window dressing, or a gimmick. While Tengger Cavalry don’t conjure the deep melancholy of Primordial or Mooonsorrow, it’s obvious that history and legacy play an important part of the band’s ethos. As is, The Expedition makes my first shake and my neck snap. It’s the best metal record I’ve ever heard from the PRC, and I hope the Chinese—and Nature Zhang—have more music like this in store for the future.
http://tenggercavalry.bandcamp.com/album/the-expedition#
https://www.facebook.com/tengger0cavalry
20 Responses to “TENGGER CAVALRY: “THE EXPEDITION””
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“Folk metal is hard. On the one hand, when the genre is executed to my liking, it’s one of the finest sub-genres of metal there is—full of character, interesting lyrics, groove, hooks, and interesting instrumentation. I’m talking about bands like Moonsorrow, Melechesh, and Primordial. On the other hand, most folk metal bands send me flying for the delete key: folk metal bands like Finntroll and Turisas get cheesy quickly, and the sheer earnestness behind that cheese just makes me pity them more—and want less of them in my ears.”
I think… we may have had a drunken conversation about this at the NCS Confab… I also have a few thoughts on the whole “Folk + Metal” issue, which I need to type down sometime.
I believe we did have a drunken conversation about this subject at the Confab. I will repeat what I said then: BadWolf is wrong about Finntroll. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
But he is right about Tengger Cavalry. Right, right, right!!!
I’m with BadWolf on this one I’m afraid.
There is a word for you, and it begins with W and ends with RONG!
I wholeheartedly agree. My best friend is irreparably infatuated with folk metal, most of which I rarely listen to and find extremely cheesy. Finntroll, on the other hand, bring an alluring black-metal-ish element to their folk blend, making the whole arrangement work beautifully even without the troll imagery and shtick.
And a great example of what you’re talking about is the song “Solsagan”, which I put on our list of 2011’s most infectious extreme metal songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkVwA__Fk9g
See… other bands do a similar sound… but better, without the dumb troll shtick or the terrible oompa-loompa keyboards.
Okay, NOW I get it. You’re just trying to be provocative and humorous, because no one could seriously hold these kinds of misguided opinions. HaHa! LOL! Nice one! Such a comedian!
What bands? I honestly can’t think of any bands that do black/folk metal in a style similar to Finntroll, but better.
How dare you blaspheme against the almgh Finnteoll!
Ok here it goes…
This shit really makes me want to play Dynasty Warriors, but it’s excessively one-sided. The folk instruments and throat-singing are awesome, but the riffs are extremely lacking. I just want more from the electric guitars, it seems like they are playing second fiddle (yep) to the traditional instruments. That’s one reason why I like Finntroll more than bands like this, they know how to mix up the riffing techniques and actually use different scales in different songs! It’s the really basic major/minor chord structures and lack of interesting guitar work that really hold back my enjoyment of most folk metal and power metal (just replace the trad. instrumentation with a vocalist or lead guitar that carries the melody, otherwise it’s basically the same stuff).
So… that’s my 2 cents here.
Yeah, I’m with you. Finntroll have a grasp on hooks and chord changes that set them apart from a lot of other folk and power metal bands.
YOU’RE the news!!!
Sorry, I had to (look it up if you don’t get the reference).
Anyway, you reminded me that I saw Ensiferum on the same tour with Finntroll (and Rotten Sound, who were way out of place but were my favorite band of the night). Ensiferum were energetic performance-wise, but the music just falls flat on its face after two songs. I’m totally fine with major chord progressions, but their riffs are just about non-existent. What was hilarious is that the kids who were all about Ensiferum seemed to love talking shit on anything “-core” because of “how basic it is”. Meanwhile, the band they so love utilizes the most obvious chord structures that have been used to death by every metal band ever, but they dress it up with folky embellishments and the “viking party” self-parody lyrical topics which so plague the underground… Ugh it’s just not my thing.
I saw that same show when it came to Louisville. Rotten Sound were amazing! I thought Ensiferum put on a decent show, but yeah, music is sadly pretty boring. Oh, and when I picked the name I had been thinking of the amazingly lulzy moment in the Megadeth video, but Brian Posehn and Bob Odenkirk parodying it is possibly even better.
This stuff is nice at first, but I consider it to wander off into monotony and repetition too easily. So this one’s just not for me, I suppose. Or I’ll have to give it some additional spins.
Also, (and I’m sure it’s just to keep us on our toes) on my earth, Mongolia lies to the East of the former Roman Empire. That is to say, those Mongolian tribes raided as far **West** as the Roman Empire — unless there’s some Mongolian world domination conspiracy that I haven’t been filled in on (in which case I look forward to the e-mail detailing the initiation rites).
Final thing: What’s that (c) 2011 doing in the bottom left of the page?
That’s it for the distraction from the music — back to metal we go!
Nice catch on the geography error, which I’ve now fixed. As for the (c) 2011, I just flat forgot to change the date for . . . uh . . . the last two years. Fixed that too.
I have to admit I’m a newby to folk metal, but I think mainly because my first impressions have been exactly as you describe BadWolf – quite often it comes across a bit cheesy. When done right, it’s just gold, and all I’ll say is: Finsterforst’s Rastlos.
How exciting it is that NCS covering a Chinese band! Then again I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since NCS has quite a wide taste…
TC is fun to listen to, production sucks as always. I agree that it seems they could put more thoughts into the metallic parts. Folk parts sound far and sorrowful, metallic parts sound a bit disjoint and less variable in this regard.
Honestly, we just dont hear about too many metal bands from China in the U.S…I dont think I could name more than a handful and even Metal Archives lists less than 200 on their site. That being said, HYPONIC is one of the best bands out there playing funeral doom
I’m not surprised. Metal music is an unpopular genre in China, it’s not even easy to buy a Euro or US metal record (I’m only talking about big names, like Mastodon) from a normal record store: they are either nowhere to find or dead expensive. My wayout was once piracy or internet shopping. But it seems things are slowly getting better.
Oh yes, Hyponic. There are some decent bands in Hongkong I guess.