Tengger Cavalry

Album Title: 
Ancient Call
Release Date: 
Friday, April 25, 2014
Label: 
Distribution: 
Review Type: 

Well well...looks like China has found yet another commodity to sell on the international market? This time however, without harking down on the people making that commodity, as we're talking music here, baby! Hot in the footsteps of the fellow Beijing based Hanggai, we are now presented with yet another act using elements of traditional Mongolian music.

Originally, Tengger Cavalry (hence shortened to TC) was founded as a one-man project by singer/ multi-instrumentalist Nature Tianran Zhang, (then still with Heavy Metal act Hell Savior, and formerly with the Extreme/ Folk Metal act of which the Chinese characters literally translate as 'Zero One', but is usually put down as Voodoo Kungfu) whom released a self-titled 4-track demo and his debut full-length Blood Sacrifice Shaman in March and September of 2010 respectively, both via Dying Art Productions. 2011's 2-CD album, Cavalry Folk  was again a solo outing, but somehow bassist Wang Wei was already contributing, being cited as a member of TC since 2010. 2012 then for sure found TC grow to an actual band with the addition of matouqin (another word for morin khuur, a sorts of two-stringed musical instrument played with a bow) player Wang Xin, and drummer Ding Kai (of Mongolian Folk Metal act Nine Treasures). Together, they recorded the February 2013 released (again via Dying Art Productions) full-length Black Seed, as well as the Metal Hell Records debut The Expedition, released in June of the same year. Since then, the line-up expanded with the addition of extra morin khuur player Hasi and dombra (a sorts of balalaika, or at least something similar-looking/-sounding with a rather long neck) player Mural.

Compared to the aforementioned Hanggai, who let the traditional elements get a fairly big part of the sound , to be enhanced with Rock, TC almost drown those elements in the Black Metal ferocity which is part of their music, resulting in a Blackened Folk sound which the band itself has dubbed “North Asian Nomadic Folk Metal”. To my regret also, a lot of the time the morin khuur (and I wonder whether the two players are actually active at the same time at any time on the record – I rather believe they alternate with each other) sounds more “western” (say “orchestral”, of even “symphonic”) than “occidental”, due to the fact that a lot of the time the typical Asian sound is missing n the bow-played melodies. Luckily, there's still the occasional bombra, which doés sound pretty Asian to me! In the calmer moments also, Nature sings in that dual-octave mode which  is so typical for Mongolian chants, and the whole of small still gives the whole somewhat of an Ethnic touch to their Folk Metal. Of course, there's also the vocals (done in Mongolian...or in Chinese?...I ain't certain, because I've not been able to have this band listened to by any of my Chinese friends!).

For your listening sessions, surf to the band's own (http://) tengger-cavalry.com, at the home page of which you are enabled (always on the premise that your browser is of an updated type) to go to a SoundCloud player for the album. At YouTube, you'll find videos for some acoustic versions of older songs, as well as a fake video (just pictures) for current album's track “Summon The Warrior”. Even better though, is to go to the “Music Videos” section at (www.) facebook.com/tengger0cavalry, where you can check out two 2013 shows of the band in it's entirety (one played as support for Folk/ Symphonic Metal act Turisas).

92/100