Was this post made for this thread or what?
Now here’s an act that sounds genuinely relevant.
Only God knows what to do with Voodoo Kungfu
* [00:50 December 15 2009]
By Robert Powers
Mixing elements of traditional Mongolian and Tibetan music with bone-crushingly loud and intensely grooving metal riffs, Voodoo Kungfu is a innovative, made-in-China musical act that has been a mainstay of Beijing’s metal scene for nearly a decade.
Front man Li Nan, the band’s sole remaining founding member, cuts a beastly figure for his height, and is known for growling, chanting and operatically singing his way through the band’s charged live sets.
This past Friday at Mao Live, Voodoo Kungfu performed alongside a traditional folk orchestra, pitting their drummer against a Chinese lion drum, their guitarist against a matouqin (“horse-head fiddle”) and Li Nan himself versus a throat singer.
Following a performance by local hardcore outfit Lose Control of Logic, stagehands went to work converting the club into a faux abattoir, hanging white bed sheets splattered with red paint on the walls.
With a banner reading, Only God Can Judge Me, the name of their latest album, draped across the back of the stage, the seven-member traditional-folk meets modern-metal ensemble’s tore into their first song of the night: a hauntingly atmospheric mini-epic, which contained a repeating vocal line in Chinese, “Carry forth, develop and advance.”
The band’s metal cover of Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” stood out as an evening highlight.
The next morning, the band departed by train for a follow-up gig at rock club Riff Live in Tianjin.
They had been told months in advance that the club would be providing the lion drum and gong required for their Saturday show. But upon arriving in Tianjin, they were told that neither was available, according to Nico Mazzei, Voodoo Kungfu’s bass player. And at the last minute, a band member had to return to Beijing to bring replacements on an express train.
This incident, coupled with the club’s apathy towards advertising the show (resulting in a less-than-promised turnout) and sound engineer problems, led band leader Li Nan to express himself in a way not commonly seen at live rock shows in China.
“Li Nan destroyed the stage,” said Mazzei.
Near the end of their closing song, Li Nan became a bull in a China shop.
He upturned the 80-kilogram lion drum (“That thing takes three people to carry,” said Mazzei), pushed Mazzei and the gong player over nearby amps and then dove, head first, into the drum set.
Accomplished matouqin player Jing Shan, hired for both Beijing and Tianjin shows, grabbed his classical instrument and fled the stage.
“Down on the floor, everyone thought the show was niubi,” said a Swedish concertgoer, who saw the shows in Beijing and Tianjin. “But I’ve never seen anything so insane. It was like a hurricane had gone through. People started backing off when he was wrecking the stage, but when he jumped into the audience, the bar staff shouted ‘everyone out!’”
“No one wanted to go back inside,” she added, “but I went back in and saw Li Nan kneeling in front of the stage like Jesus.”
“I’m not an angry guy,” said Li Nan, who infamously smashed a Buddha statue on stage during 2007’s Midi Festival. “I was just enjoying the music too much. It’s a rock show, Jimi Hendrix smashed a guitar, Nirvana did the same thing.”
The band’s performs again at Mao Live on December 26. Though God only knows what will be in store for that show.
