China’s music scene is on fire. Within the country, there are hundreds of bands from across all genres making an impact —with most of them obviously being Chinese. However, thousands of expats choose to study or work in China, with some being creative spirits who don’t let being in a foreign country stop them from picking up a guitar or a pair of drumsticks and starting off on their own musical journey in the middle kingdom. These bands, usually assembled from players from differing countries, are found in different regions of China and all share one goal–to live the Chinese dream via rocking the house on a nightly basis. 
Residing in the nation’s capital, Beijing, Scare the Children are a Grimm Fairly Tale come to life. The mask-wearing nu/metalcore ensemble resembles Mushroomhead or Slipknot in appearance, but the hard-hitting sounds they have concocted can be as cheery as they are disturbing, with keyboard tingles aiding the metal, sounding as if they are from a greasy and perverted dark carnival. The horrific masks they wear are absurdly effective and crudely endearing—really putting a face to their songs about possessed dolls and haunted kids. 
Under the freaky masks are players from China, Kazakhstan and France, who conjured the willpower to create something mystical together. Each member of Scare the Children has a character and a story, and designs their costumes based on it. For the debut album Odyssey, the costumes were designed based on Betsy—a haunted doll that attaches itself to a young boy, as seen in their conceptual video for “The Seduction of Little Timmy.” The look is still evolving, with the next album’s image being tied to urban legends.
On the band’s image and concept, Scare the Children member Antoine weighs in, “I feel it was about delivering something fun and different, as the scene at the time was pretty rigid and stereotypical. Nowadays, you can see more and more bands wearing masks or costumes and some even say Scare the Children inspires them. I will say that we are not see on stage as a foreign or Chinese act but just an immersive experience.” 
Scare the Children’s Matt adds “With the time spent in China, seeing many shows, we started to grow tired of the cliché long hair/black t-shirt metal bands. We wanted to put a visual concept in accordance to the music to improve the stage performance. The masks, costumes, and stage props help the audience get into the universe the band is offering. Our ultimate goal would be to transform the show into a metal musical with stage props, actors and dancers changing between each song.”
From Beijing to the sprawling metropolis of Shanghai, we meet Round Eye, who have made a respected, though somewhat controversial name for themselves since their formation in 2012. The experimental punk outfit have recently released Culture Shock Treatment, an album which, true to their nature, examines life in Middle Kingdom and beyond with songs like “Red Crimes” and the title track.
The band are known for their sense of sardonic humor, which pokes fun at themselves and some of the clichés of culture within America and China in music videos like “Do the Drumpf,” “Suntan,” and “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” 
Round Eye’s bassist Livio says of the nature of the message of the band, “I must say that the few times that someone criticized our name, videos, music, lyrics for being insensitive or even racist; well, that was always a foreigner. Our Chinese friends love “Suntan” because they know that the stereotype is 100 percent true, exactly as every Chinese person understands or even shares the real-life situation portrayed in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.” To be clear, though, we never wanted to make fun of it, but just show a cliché in a funny way. Plus, both videos include Chinese actors and Chinese directors who had a blast filming them.”
For “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” the video is of a foreign man meeting his girlfriend’s Chinese family, where things go amusingly awry. “The lyrics and video were partly inspired by true events happened to our sax player Mac (starring in the video) who was left by his Chinese fiancée few weeks before their wedding. Although the reasons behind that decision might have been more complex, not being accepted by her family because he’s a foreigner certainly played a huge role in the split-up.”
Being in China has also given the band the opportunity to see what’s going on in the U.S. from an outside perspective. The video for “Do the Drumpf” features a familiar, orange-faced politician, which begs the question—if Round Eye lived in the U.S., would they still be the same band talking about the same things? “Yes, absolutely,” says Livio, “In the U.S., we would probably be even more critical of the American politics and social inequalities.” 
Round Eye are something of an anomaly in Shanghai, a city which is known more for EDM and hip hop than punk or metal. While punk is niche, the dense, sludgy, misanthropic genre of stoner metal is even more rare. Still, this didn’t stop a group of filthy stars to come out of the bowels of the city to align perfectly to create Alpaca.
“Like many “underground” cultural imports in China, things move quite slowly to gain traction without the high-levels of promotion that are often state-sponsored, so even in a country of 1.4 billion people, you might only get pockets here and there of fans of heavy music in general. So, to witness the birth, growth, and rise of a sub-genre that is already quite underground even within heavy music in a country that I don’t call home, is pretty special,” says Alpaca’s guitarist David, who is originally from Canada.
He and the rest of the band knew that their meeting was serendipitous, as foreigners come and go through China like it’s a revolving door, and few have interests to create a doom/sludge band that sounds like EyeHateGod. “The fact that we have been able to find each other and stick to it is really a testament to how much we care about the band and the genre,” he says. “Before Alpaca, I’m not sure if there were any bands in Shanghai that played stoner or doom metal. We would play a show and would stand out because we were the only band playing that genre.”
Along with Round Eye and Alpaca, newer foreign bands have also been sprouting up lately in Shanghai such as Trash Panda, Rat King and Chimera Cult, who recently put out their debut album Join the Cult in March.
From Shanghai, we take the fast train east to the coastal city of Qingdao—home of the Tsingtao brewery and a street with dozens of bars featuring different brews of the famous beer. In this city, since 2019, a monster has also been terrorizing the club scene, with an unquenchable thirst for beer—a dragon made up of Irish, American and British appendages who have come together like the Megazord in Power Rangers to form Megadragon.
Wearing dripping corpse paint and performing metal which is part black metal, part death metal, part storytelling metal, ala GWAR, the band follows Scare the Children’s lead for the theatrical. As the number of foreign bands in China is small, those who emerge become part of a small but supportive scene. Vocalist Nathan says the other expat bands have helped the band immensely in the difficult process of cutting their teeth in China.
“Being a band completely comprised of expats, the guidance and support from these other bands, regardless of where they are from is always treasured. So, in nutshell, we feel a sense of kinship, but it’s not limited to just the expat community. Generally, the bands have been very helpful in providing us with feedback on our performances, helping us find new communities and new venues to perform in.”
As for the local bands, they have also been incredibly helpful in assisting Megadragon, “They have assisted us in getting our music on the Chinese based services, such as Bili Bili and NetEase, helping us in getting our merch designed with quality, and helping us to find places to record and practice. I’d like to give a special shout out to Gore of Impure Injection, who has invited us to perform with him in Zibo many times and has consistently promoted our music.”
The topics presented in Megadragon‘s songs are intriguing—“Pulgasari” being about the 1985 North Korean kaiju film in which South Korean director Shin Sang-ok was kidnapped and forced to make it and several other films before fleeing to the US. ”At our shows in Qingdao, we even have a one of our friends dress up in a full body Pulgasari suit we made from left over packaging and old yoga mats.”
The band recently finished up a cross-China tour—something that U.S. bands may find hard, but imagine doing so in China. Due to rising COVID cases, their Nanjing show was canceled. Unfettered, the band soldiered on and performed two nights in Shanghai (with Round Eye) to finish up the tour, which the band considers a huge success in terms of gaining name power in the country. Nathan remarks on some of the unique difficulties an expat band may have in touring China,
“Organizing the entire thing can be a mountain of a task—finding the venues, contacting the other bands, making the flyers, finding the hotels that can accept foreigners, figuring out the trains, the list goes on and on. Praise Cthulhu, our drummer’s wife had joined us for our tour—having her on the team to help us figure out all the logistics was a game-changer! Thank you Yoki! Also, last summer was hotter that hell itself, so washing our stage clothes … well, that definitely didn’t happen as much as we would have hoped …”
If you are a foreigner in China, or are thinking about moving to China in the future and have dreams of being the next big time foreign band, Scare the Children’s Antoine has some words of wisdom: “Beyond playing honest music, I’d say having an interesting concept and building a strong identity is important. Then, make friends and socialize, or no one will ever invite you to play anywhere.
“As far as recording goes, you can do most of an album from home now with current audio tech, so it’s not so hard if you can learn the recording and mixing skills. If not, it’s still pretty easy to find engineers that will charge you to do it. Touring is a bit tricky—you need the connections to the venues, then you have all the red tape to deal with. Then it will probably cost you a pretty penny.”
