In April 2019, after 3 months of skull crushing paperwork, I traveled to Shanghai to teach special fx makeup. I arrived in the early evening, and as we landed, the plane was enshrouded in what I thought was a dreamy haze of subtropical fog, but was actually just dense smog hovering over the city like a spectre, choking out the sun.

I was greeted at the airport by a guy called Jimmy who was wearing brightly coloured Bob Marley shorts, and he had a big sticker on the back of his phone that read “Rich Boy”. He led me out of the airport into a cozy cab with beat up vinyl seats, and we drove through rush hour traffic for an hour and a half. We ended up talking about religion, retro horror movies, and music; and he asked me if I liked “Satanic” as he pulled up a picture of the band Ghost on his phone. I suggested that he check out Perturbator, and the film Allucarda; and he told me about some good Buddhist temples to check out.

After a while we both went silent and I watched out the window as we passed by row after row after row of Soviet-style apartment buildings, many of them with air conditioners bulging out of the windows like apocalyptic cyborg eyes, and laundry hanging on long poles that extended out into the wind.

We eventually made it to a bleak white gated building that looked like a prison complex, and I was set up with fingerprint access, had my photo taken, and filled out another stack of paperwork. Jimmy brought me to my room and when I tried to access my apps almost nothing would work on my phone. I had an antiquated piece of technology from happier times when Google and Huawei were integrated, and since the phone’s inception huge restrictions had been placed on accessing any Google apps, including maps, email and browsers. I was trapped behind the ‘Great Firewall' of China.

I had installed a VPN before I left but then I had a flush of paranoia at the airport after seeing some stern warning signs so I ended up deleting it, which was a huge freaking mistake! Because Jimmy had no idea what to do and left shortly afterwards.

About an hour later a woman arrived at my door and took my passport, saying she needed to bring it to a government office in the next couple of days, and then she was like “you probably want to spend the weekend relaxing” and quickly left.

I was eventually able to get onto WeChat (China’s answer to Facebook) and get a hold of someone from the school to let them know that I would not be spending the weekend “relaxing”, and would need my passport back as soon as possible, (because I was planning to attend China’s first black metal festival the following evening!!)

The woman from the school appeared at my door again shortly afterwards and returned my passport to me. Not long after that, I got a message from my colleague from Vancouver who I’d be taking over for at the school, and he invited me out to an underground nightclub with him and another teacher.

We ended up walking through the French Concession, where large London Plane trees with peeling trunks loomed over the streets, their giant limbs stretching out into the sky like tentacles. Shadows painted the contours of old colonial buildings, and high-end cars made their way through gated entrances. As we got closer to our destination we came upon worn-down buildings with vegetable stands, convenience stores, and small family restaurants that served fresh cut noodles and homemade dumplings. Tucked in to all of that were a row of venues.

We went through a narrow entranceway and made our way up 4 flights of stairs to a “dive” bar that was packed full of people, many with dyed hair and tattoos. Everyone was sitting in intimate clusters at wooden tables, each one a social microcosm with shared alcohol (being dispensed in large canisters with taps attached) and a set of dice games. Soft yellow lights hung from the graffiti covered ceiling on thick twisted black cords, and an intricate wooden lattice separated two halves of the bar. Nearly everyone was smoking and heavy electronic music blared. We were the only foreigners there, and I felt like I had just walked into a forbidden world.

I left early as I was pretty whacked out from the flight, and when I went outside to catch a cab a lanky person with a buzz cut riding a small motorcycle with an umbrella over their head and a covered passenger box in the back pulled up and motioned to me. I haggled with them and we agreed on a price, and as soon as I hopped in the back they sped ahead like a laser honking and tearing through the streets, ignoring all street lights. They were blasting gangster rap, then after a while switched to Chinese pop music. It was such an awesome experience to kick off my trip with and I white knuckled my cell phone taking video footage as the city passed me by.

I got back to my place just after midnight and when I looked up at the sky I saw a nearly full moon fighting it’s way through layers of atmospheric skuzz. I remembered that it was in Scorpio, the sign of spiritual death, the shadow soul, and transformation.

Once I got into my apartment I buried my face in my pillow and howled out some blackness from the pits of my soul, and then I fell into a deep sleep.

The next morning I went out to grab some groceries and soak up the vibes of day to day life in suburban Shanghai: a young unhelmeted girl wearing a pink tutu looking totally relaxed riding on the foot pads of a scooter hanging on by one hand as her father sped around a corner, dudes on beat up old bicycles carting around 7' x 5' cargo boxes, live fish being sold in big styrofoam containers on the street, and a lot of strange looking stray cats, including a pale orange tabby who had one green eye and one blue eye. At a small food market, a young boy of about 5 said hi to me and held up his hand to give me a high five.

After I got back to my apartment I made a tasty stir-fry with fresh tofu and vegetables and then collapsed on my bed for a death nap. I woke up groggy and the festival had already started but it wasn't too far from my place, and I figured out how to get there most of the way on the bus by manually translating directions on Baidu (China's no English answer to Google Maps), and then hailed a cab on the street for the rest of the way.

The venue was inside of a convention centre and was an open room with a small bar in the back and a huge area outside with some cityscape views where people were scattered around smoking cigarettes. The scene was very small, but everyone seemed very dedicated, and there were some cool alternative fashions abound: classic black metal styles with motorcycle boots, studded belts and leather jackets; mohawk bedecked punks; and over the top goths with platform boots, wallet chains, thick black eyeliner, double pony tails and studded chokers. Though most people were dressed fairly casual and wearing all black; and it was an all ages show, which brought out teenage girls wearing mini skirts and iconic old-school black metal t-shirts like Bathory, Dark Throne and Judas Iscariot. And there was a guy running around chasing his 2 year-old daughter.

The first group I saw were Sigh, a very unique band from Japan who started making music in the late 80's and had their first album Scorn Defeat released on Euronymous’s Deathlike Silence Records. It’s an incredible piece of weird and creative audio art that drew inspiration from the realms of Hindu and Japanese spirituality, and the main composer, Mirai Kawashima, has a background in classical piano, so there's lots of intricate, moody keyboard sounds - which came to be an integral part of Sigh's evolving style.

Sigh went on to make 10 (now 11) more albums with increasing levels of artistic and experimental brilliance, and in 2007 they were joined by Dr. Mikannibal, who has a doctorate degree in physics; and she would bring saxophone, additional vocals and intense stage theatrics into the mix.

Sigh's modern incarnation blends together so many different styles that watching them play is like being fed by a musical smorgasbord: psychedelic experimental progressive rock with technical thrashy classic metal guitar sounds, sometimes doomy sometimes operatic vocals, and blastbeat drums, interlaced with traditional Japanese flute, saxophone, and spacey electronic atmospheres; and a fusion of retro 60’s and satanic black metal visual aesthetics.

Their performance of 'A Victory of Dakini' really stood out, and sounded as gritty, haunting and mesmerizing as it does on the first album - and it brought images of dakini's swooping down into a small village, eating everyone's organs and turning them into undead slaves of the dark lord Shiva. Kawashima and Dr. Mikkanibal, who was wearing giant translucent butterfly wings, banged their heads in unison and thrashed around the stage, taking turns emitting growling infernal vocals.

Guitar player You Oshima remained stoic throughout the show while procuring some most excellent and complex riffs, and I recommend checking out his solo project, Kadenzza, another very unique orchestral metal project that's been going since the early 90's.

Sigh's show was a dark theatrical masterpiece of high-art and was unlike anything I'd ever seen or heard before.

At the intermission, I went and got a cheese sandwich and drank some soda water at a nearby deli. On my way back in to the venue I saw the members of Sigh hanging out by the door and realized that it had been Yasuyuki Suzuki from Abigail playing session bass with them.

The next band up was 重金属 (corpse lake), or Zuriaake, whose name was inspired by a 3rd century BCE nature worshiping poet called Qu Yuan who exiled himself from mainstream society and ended up taking his own life by throwing himself into a lake. They had a very beautiful stage set up with desaturated images of nature and traditional Chinese characters being projected in the background; and they played atmospheric black metal infused with traditional Chinese music, drawing inspiration from Chinese folklore and ancient Chinese history. They came in carrying lanterns and a long band of white cloth, which is a symbol of death and an important part of Buddhist funeral rites; and tree branches were coiled around their mic stands. All of the members were wearing long robes and old-school Chinese farmer hats, and they kept their faces shrouded in cloth.

A moody ambience started to build as they slowly added layers of guitar lines over an evocative electronic intro. The songs they played ranged from the sombre title track from the Gu Yuan album, to 'God of Scotch Mist' from the Afterimage of Autumn album, which was a lot more upbeat and thrashy, and you could hear the classic Nordic-black metal influences.

The soundscapes created and visuals projected left me feeling transported to other times and other dimensions, and the cadence was elemental like waves coming in smooth and then crashing.

Their original songs were all sung in an ancient Mandarin dialect, and for most of the show the band's singer, Bloodfire, was emitting scratchy doomy feline-esque sounds; then they ended their set with a sublime cover of Summoning’s 'Land of the Dead', where he filled the room with the most elven and entrancing vocals.

Like Sigh, Zuriaake's performance was an epic journey fit for a film soundtrack, and in hearing their music I felt like I was connecting to the soul of China - an ageless resonance that has endured all of the turmoil and upheaval.

On account of their somewhat nationalist themes, Zuriaake have attracted fans outside of the extreme metal world; and I wondered if they were tapping into a more expansive celebration of the Chinese collective consciousness than the current status quo, while still giving lip service to the strict guidelines of the CCP? Was their honouring of Gu Yuan an artful act of rebellion? Given the tight restrictions on freedom of expression and the members use of pseudonyms when speaking to the media, there's really no way of knowing; and their music is more about poetry and nature than it is about politics - yet the festival itself (which they organized) felt like it could be part of a sea change.

During the next intermission, I was feeling energized with some post-travel adrenaline and bravado so I walked over to some foreigners and started chatting them up, and one of them ended up being in the band Laster. He told me about how they met up with members of Zuriaake when they played the Netherlands and were invited to come to China and be part of the festival. Laster are another super unique and creative band, and they blend art school visual and auditory aesthetics with experimental dark metal.

My social anxiety started to kick in so I ran away to have a panic attack in the bathroom, which was probably for the better as I was able to fully focus on the final ritualistic offering.

Headliners, Cult of Fire, who come from the Czech and Slovak Republics, released their first EP (20:11) on the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown, which was an awesome 2-song offering of raw atmospheric black metal with gritty vocals in the Czech language. Since then their themes have evolved dramatically and their music and lyrics have become a deep exploration of the darker and more transformative aspects of Hindu spirituality (including the release of an album entirely in Sanskrit); yet all of their albums are threaded together with a similar style of insane blast beat drumming (from Tomáš Corn), agonizing death screams, beckoning guitar riffs and portals of electronic sounds.

Their sincere devotion to Hinduism has attracted fans in places like Nepal, Bangladesh and India, where they performed in 2018.

Cult of Fire's stage set-up was a stripped down version of what I'd seen in online videos of European shows, where they had extremely elaborate displays including large candles, lanterns, flames shooting into air, huge backdrops of Hindu deities, goat heads, swirls of incense smoke, prayer flags and massive cobra snake heads - so I was initially a bit thrown off; but the music and presence of the members was so instantly compelling that I quickly became immersed in the experience. The small space became saturated in black metal musical invocations threaded together with samples of chanting and traditional Indian instruments.

Petr Kudlacek's vocals and presence had the effect of simultaneously drawing one into the crust of the earth, to the deepest essence of the human spirit where every spiritual system tunnels into, yet also elevating one's perceptions out of the mundane and into the arcane; rooted in darkness and decay, like the lotus flower. And: singing black metal style vocals in Sanskrit with a thick Slavic accent sounds very fucking cool.

The song अस्तित्व की चिता पर (On the Funeral Pyre of Existence) was especially great live, with dirgy organ sounds, upbeat drums and symphonic sounding guitars.

The main force behind Cult of Fire is guitarist Vladimír Pavelka, and he deeply explores the themes of death and loss through both Cult of Fire and his other blackened death metal project, Death Karma. He worked at a hospice in Slovakia where he would care for people at the end of their lives, wash their bodies and transport them to the morgue. And the involvement of Czech horror novelist Jan Pavlas, who's extensively studied the darker streams of ancient religions and occultism, adds much depth to the lyrics of both of Pavelka's projects.

When I reflected further on the live experience of Cult of Fire, I was reminded of the initial allure of black metal when I was first exposed to the many Nordic and Slavic artists that were part of the second-wave of bands that captivated the underground metal world. A huge part of my attraction was that many of them were also tapping into these primal fears (death, destruction, isolation) and confronting the core of who we are as humans in a very visceral way.

Exploring these themes through artists like Zuriaake and Cult of Fire can be liberating, and mutate fears and misconceptions into understanding, acceptance and a more sincere appreciation of life and mortality.

I'd also like to bring attention to the skills of the lighting technician, as they so stunningly complimented each performance with lush visual auras: bright strobes flashed when Sigh were spazzing out, coloured lights from the top of the stage highlighted Zuriaake's conical hats, and white back-lights dramatized Cult of Fire's hooded cloaks and the vocalist's double scythes. The lights were pulsing in sync with the music without being distracting, and monochromatic floods of blue, green, red, purple and yellow drenched the stage, creating images that looked like something out of an old Mario Bava film.

I feel very honoured to have been able to attend this festival. All of these bands are rare treasures in the world of underground metal, and it truly was a magickal convergence of mystical musical forces.