The Rise of Chinese Black Metal: A Metalhead’s Guide
Since we’ll all need to start working on our social credit score early and bowing to our new Chinese overlords, today we’re going to look into the rise Chinese black metal (and metal in general). So let’s dive right in.
Chinese metal has long been a shadowy undercurrent beneath its pop culture surface, but in the 21st century it’s exploded into a wild, prolific scene. While Tang Dynasty’s 1992 debut album, A Dream Return to Tang Dynasty is often cited as China’s first heavy metal milestone, the country’s most extreme genres, especially black metal, only took root later.
By the early 2000s a new wave of underground bands began forging their own sound. The 2003 album Sky Lake by Ritual Day (组美) is hailed as an early classic of Chinese black metal, blending old-school Emperor/Dissection-style riffs with subtle acoustic passages. Soon after, projects like Be Persecuted (迫害) and Evilthorn emerged on the Pest Productions label, helping establish a thriving “blackened” scene across mainland China.
These pioneers dug deep into Chinese folklore, history and philosophy, melding them with blast-beats and tremolo-picked riffs in ways unique to the Middle Kingdom.
Tang Dynasty
By the 2010s Chinese black metal had branched into a diverse, rich catalogue of substyles. Pest Productions (北京寒潮) alone released hundreds of extreme albums, and bands like Zuriaake, Bliss-Illusion, Skeletal Augury, Black Kirin, Frozen Moon, Acherozu and Vengeful Spectre began turning heads internationally.
These outfits pushed boundaries: some embraced atmospheric “post-black” or blackgaze vibes (e.g. Dopamine, Asthenia, Bliss-Illusion), others revived old-school ferocity with Chinese twists.
For instance, Bliss-Illusion’s Shinrabansho adds Buddhist chanting and folk guitars to dreamy blackgaze, earning it comparisons to China’s own Agalloch.
Many bands here don’t stick to convention, folding post-metal and shoegaze into the mix. Even raw “one-man” projects proliferated, as isolated musicians tapped into the scene’s underground support, often via labels like Pest that champion both veterans and newcomers.
Major Chinese Black Metal Bands
While the scene is vast, a few bands tower above the rest. One such being, Zuriaake (葬尸湖), which was formed in Jinan in 1998. It is widely regarded as China’s most famous black metal band. Sporting traditional Chinese long robes and fisherman hats onstage, they play a “pure” style of black metal enriched with samples of gong, xun, handbells and other local instruments.
Zuriaake (葬尸湖)
In their lyrics and sound they deliberately avoid Western Satanism, instead drawing on classical Chinese poetry, Confucian/Taoist imagery and heroic history.
For example, their songs “Desolated Mountain” and “Whispering Woods” depict haunted forests and ancient villains straight out of Warring-States folklore.
Zuriaake’s cult status grew so high that in recent years they became the first Chinese metal band to tour Northern Europe, playing Wacken, Roadburn and other major festivals.
Other veteran acts include Ritual Day, whose Sky Lake introduced doom-laden, melodic blackened thrash to Beijing in 2003; Be Persecuted, known for primitive, lo-fi depressive black metal since the mid-2000s; and Skeletal Augury, a white-faced shock-death/black outfit with some of the scene’s goriest aesthetics.
Many newer bands draw on folk elements. For example Black Kirin writes all lyrics in Classical Chinese and layers symphonic black metal with guzheng, erhu, pipa and even opera singing. Screaming Savior (尖叫基督) fuses brutal riffs with orchestra and traditional instruments, even singing in ancient Chinese languages.
Voodoo Kungfu (零壹) mixes death-thrash with Chinese folk vocals and themes of “non-mainstream religions” gathered from Tibetan pilgrimages. And blackened folk-metal bands like Song of Chu, Tengger Cavalry and Nine Treasures (呼啸) incorporate Mongolian overtone singing, traditional horse-head fiddles or Inner-Mongolian lore into ferocious music.
Now if you’re looking for some real contemporary recommendations, I recommend Black Reaper (a folk-black septet known for thematic albums on astronomy and mysticism), Dream Spirit (post-black exploring urban isolation), and Suld (harsh depressive metal).
Other Chinese Metal Genres
Black metal is explosive in China, but it coexists with other thriving subgenres. In fact, black metal and metalcore are among the most prominent scenes in China today. Homegrown metalcore outfits (The Falling, Nine Treasures) attract millennial fans with modern breakdowns and throat-shredded screams.
There is also a lively death metal and deathcore scene, Beijing’s Four Five (肆伍) blends technical deathcore and djent for Western-scale aggression, while veterans like Suffocated (窒息) have spun brutal riffs since the 1990s.
Thrash has a cult following too: Beijing’s Yaksa (夜叉) pioneered thrash/hardcore in the mid-‘90s and even played Wacken, while Explosicum stomps out old-school thrash worthy of the ’80s.
Industrial and avant-metal also have homegrown heroes: AK-47 outfits themselves in army fatigues to really capture that hardcore industrial look.
Perhaps uniquely Chinese is the surge of folk metal drawing on regional traditions. Artists tap into Mongolia, Tibet or local ethnic minority music.
Tengger Cavalry combined Mongolian overtone chanting with Mongol throat singing (biliqin) and heavy riffs until 2018. There is also Song of Chu who often reference ancient Warring-States literature and warlike folk melodies to create a “battle metal” vibe.
On the post-black side, Chinese bands are often more atmospheric: many cite influences like Alcest or Deafheaven, or regional peers like Japanese post-metal, to create a cloudy, meditative take on black metal. China’s new wave of black metal artists rarely stick to convention, instead favouring “foggier and moodier” textures that emphasise the beauty of the implicit in their lyrics.
Themes and Inspirations
Lyrically, Chinese black metal often draws deep from native soil rather than the Western satanic imagery of old. Bands freely mine Chinese history, mythology, literature and nature. Zuriaake’s members say they chose black metal to express themes of humanity, nature, polytheism and ancestor worship, topics they felt uniquely suited black metal’s intensity.
Black Kirin
A South China Morning Post profile of Zuriaake notes that their lyrics read like “ancient Chinese-style poetry” about wilderness and withdrawal from society.
They explicitly reject anti-Christian or satanic imagery (since communist China has no Christian past), focusing instead on Chinese “horror,” the eerie, veiled kind found in Daoist lore, and the virtues of reclusion and honour.
Other bands similarly tap into native legend and trauma. Black Kirin, named after the mythic Qilin creature, channels tragedy from Chinese history.
Its National Trauma album (哀郢) deals with wartime horror like the Nanking Massacre, sung in winding Classical Chinese. Then you’ve got bands like Song of Chu, who take their name from an ancient anthology and crafts music meant as a “warlike soundtrack” to great battles.
Even the one-man projects spin dark folklore: for instance, Ultante’s Demogorgon project draws on dungeon synth vibes and Chinese ruin legends.
Buddhist and Taoist spiritual themes appear too: Beijing’s Bliss-Illusion baptised their blackgaze in Buddhist chants and ancient chants on Shinrabansho, and Voodoo Kungfu even incorporates silk-operatic vocals and lyrics learned from Tibetan pilgrimages.
Chinese black metal bands tend to “play pure Western metal, but [feel] uniquely Chinese,” as frontman Bloodfire of Zuriaake put it. Their horror is more about the unknown, the ghostly forests, forlorn mountains and ruined tombs of the East, than gore or anti-religion.
This emphasis on local culture has won them a fervent fanbase at home; one report notes a “surge of popularity among mainland listeners seeking music that reflects their growing national pride”, despite authorities’ wariness of the “occult darkness” in their art.
Censorship and Reception in Xi’s China
Under President Xi Jinping, China’s underground music scene faces ever-greater scrutiny. Beijing has cracked down on anything that doesn’t “carry forward the banner of the Socialist core value system”. In practice this means there is a “watchful eye” on lyrics and imagery. As one MetalSucks feature on China’s metal noted bluntly: mentioning sensitive topics in songs can lead to “some scary consequences”. Venues that host extreme or experimental acts often have to fall in line; surprise raids and festival cancellations are not uncommon.
Freddy Lim rocks the crowds in Liberty Square, Taipei. Photograph: Handerson Yao/The Observer
The scene’s veterans take it for granted that shows or entire tours can be pulled by officials at a moment’s notice. As exiles in Shanghai band Round Eye grimly observed, “nobody is ever ‘safe’ in China…from any party official,” after having a tour banned over a risqué flyer.
That said, Chinese black metal tends to fly under the radar compared to overtly political genres. One metal scene member noted that early on black metal wasn’t suppressed as harshly as punk or outspoken rock.
Bands like Zuriaake have largely avoided direct conflict with censors by eschewing religious iconoclasm; as Bloodfire pointed out, “protesting Christianity made no sense in modern China”.
Nevertheless, authorities have blacklisted songs and artists deemed “vulgar or violent”, and underground promoters have watched cops shut clubs (like the Dawn Dusk rock bar) or interrogate performers. In Xi’s China, even a black metal band’s image can run afoul of official tastes. But Chinese metal fans, always starved for something darker than state pop, have rewarded many bands with rabid support.
As heavy metal has been long taboo on mainstream media, thriving “underground” communities share the music via blogs, forums and pirated CDs. Labels like Pest Productions and United Asia have sprung up to document the scene, giving bands an international platform even as they dodge the Great Firewall.
The Future of Chinese Metal
The Chinese black metal scene today is a wild, hybrid soundscape. It builds on metal’s global roots but pours in native blood, Celtic riffs meet Confucius, shrieking vocals recite Tang poetry.
Bands like Zuriaake and Black Kirin have become ambassadors for this sound, proving that the blackened Middle Kingdom can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with any national scene. And while Xi-era controls create risks, the creativity (and courage) of these musicians shows no sign of stopping.
Hails to CHINESE METAL!
