22 - Asian Metal Rising

Summary

Metal’s popularity in Asia is a social fact. Occasionally dismissed in the West as nostalgic ‘dad rock’ or marginal esoterica for self-selecting elitists, in Asia metal remains a vital expressive outlet, and its popularity appears to be growing. Composed of tens of millions of avid enthusiasts, the Asian heavy metal music scene is an increasingly interconnected territory that has forged ties to other world regions through its most successful groups, including Chthonic (Taiwan), Voice of Baceprot (Indonesia), Rudra (Singapore), The Hu Band (Mongolia), Bloodywood (India) and Babymetal (Japan). While it would not be inaccurate to state that online platforms enabled the global conquest of these bands, such an assertion would also be facile and incomplete. The emergence of thriving local music scenes and the culmination of a painstaking decades-long process of indigenisation of metal genre features were also necessary prerequisites; otherwise, Asian metal acts would have little chance of overcoming westerners’ obdurate resistance to Asian music, a dismissal rooted in long-enduring racist stereotypes. Among these is the offensive notion that Asians are weak and emasculated compared to white Europeans. Thus, the ability of Asian people to master a music genre that extols strength and power is hardly trivial within the larger history of cultural representation.