For the eight years of existence, Tengger Cavalry reached a lot: moved from Beijing to New York, turned to a full band from one man project, released six albums and played on some big stages. And now their new seventh album ‘Cian Bi’.
The secret of Tengger Cavalry‘s success is quite simple from the first sight: new approach to the Folk Metal. But this only from the first sight, because at the end of post-modern era (rather it’ll be better said “at the funeral of the era”) it’s hard to make something new, therefore it remains only to combine the already created. But masterpieces also could be created by combining. Tengger Cavalry excelled best in this, mixing metal with Asian motives, folk music instruments and Mongol throat singing.
But let’s get back to an album: ‘Cian Bi‘ contains 15 songs, where folk music instruments and Mongol throat singing sounds on the background of more or less heavy guitars or sometimes electronic samples (“Electric Shaman”, which was an experiment according to a band, sufficiently justifies its name). With this, music patterns and the whole sound in an album perceived quite easily even by an unprepared listener.
Many are inclined to criticize the band for some “mainstream” approach to the songwriting and arranging for the last two or three years. But is there something bad that the band want to make their music understandable for the large amount of people? Not every band want to be in underground, reveling their “true” status and playing for ten people. And, by the way, from lots of YouTube comments like “I really love the music but the vocals are terrible”, the band has a long way to go to reach the “mainstream”.
I do not see any point to describe the songs in details – it will come out either briefly and very dryly or unjustifiably stretched and not that interesting. Therefore I think it’s worth just to listen to an album and let everyone decide and hang his own label. But in return to the beginning of the review, it’s worth to remember that the main merit of Tengger Cavalry is that they were able to offer something completely new at the time when everything seems to have been already written and played.
‘Cian Bi’ was released on February, 23 via Napalm Records.
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