Chinese opera x black metal + lots of new emo

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In this issue: some of China’s finest female electronic producers join forces for a new compilation, a whole load of new Chinese emo, Xinjiang black metal, Shenzhen fuzz-rock, details of Chinese Football’s upcoming North America tour and first trip to Mexico, and more.

These are bountiful times for Chinese rock fans. Just a fortnight after the three mice released one of the records of the year, we have not one but two excellent new EPs to enjoy (plus there’s a new album from Summertime Sadness; more on that a few scrolls down).

First up is Sun & Moon, a six-track slice of garagey, punk-tinged emo from Wuhan’s Sullenboy. It’s another fantastic record from Shenzhen label Small Animals Records, slotting in perfectly alongside the likes of the three mice and The Red-Haired Youth Murder Case.

It’s perhaps no coincidence that lines can be drawn between some of the bands involved in China’s emo revival, and their forebears. Sullenboy’s Ark and Cheng met in high-school where the latter introduced the former to pop-punk acts such as The Story So Far, which in turn led to Ark digging into the genre online and following others with similar tastes, including Kang Jun who would go on to form Red-Haired Youth. After struggling to find people to play in an emo band with them, Ark and Cheng recruited current guitarist Embrace at a Chinese Football gig after they spotted him wearing a Touming Magazine T-shirt. They later discovered they’d all been at the same Shanghai Qiutian show earlier that same day.

Sullenboy don’t shy away from nodding to these other bands and Sun & Moon doesn’t hide its influences — Title Fight, in particular, are a key one — but neither is it simply a tribute record. Ark, Cheng, Embrace and drummer 640 bring their own energy as they blast their way through guitar-heavy songs about growing up, producing a sound that pays homage to its predecessors but somehow still feels fresh.

The same applies to a brand new three-track EP from The Red-Haired Youth Murder Case themselves. As ever, their love for Number Girl is evident, but once again this is no straightforward copycatting.

Like Sullenboy, Red-Haired Youth put their first proper release out via Small Animals Records, last year’s brilliant Brutal Girl Delusion EP, but for this new one the Guangdong band have switched to Shengjian Records. Interestingly, they’ve also brought in Yang Haisong on production duties, for two of the three tracks at least.

Thankfully, neither change appears to have significantly altered Red-Haired Youth’s approach. Yang’s touch here feels fairly light; while it’s a little more noticeable on ‘INTHEDUSK’ (a reworking of a Brutal Girl Delusion track), he seems to astutely step back and let the band do their thing. This is still the full-throttle, heart-on-sleeve, unbridled-youth-with-guitars sound of the band’s debut.

The EP arrives on the eve of Red-Haired Youth’s mini-tour of Japan. Wonderfully, they’ll be joined at their first gig in the country by Shutoku Mukai, the Number Girl and Zazen Boys lynchpin. For those of us not able to make it to Tokyo for the show, the band have tantalisingly said that this EP is meant as a teaser for, and motivation to complete, a full-length album. Can’t wait.

Sun & Moon is out now and, as is Small Animals’ wont, it’s name-your-price on Bandcamp. 日常的景色 (Daily Scenery) is also out now; The Red-Haired Youth Murder Case’s tour of Japan begins on Friday at GRIT at Shibuya.

There’s a great electronic release just below, but while we’re talking Chinese emo, it’s well worth noting that beloved Wuhan band Chinese Football are returning to the US of A and Canada just two years after their first ever tour of the countries. They’re also adding a date in Mexico City this time around.

Chinese Football may be China’s best known emo band, but they weren’t the first. Tookoo, who formed in 2000, have a good claim to that title, and were instrumental in putting together the compilation 情绪中国 (Emo China) back in 2006. The singer on the opening track of that album was one Xu Bo, who would go on to form Chinese Football, so there’s a nice symmetry of sorts that Tookoo have released their comeback album on Wuhan’s Wild Records, a label that Xu has been involved with for years.

Mountain And Ocean (M.A.O.) is Tookoo’s first full-length release in 16 years; the band reformed in 2023 after a ten-year hiatus. Given the aforementioned resurgence of the genre, who can blame one of the country’s emo progenitors wanting to come back and claim a bit of the limelight?

Significantly newer on the scene meanwhile are zhejiang 250. A global timezone-straddling band featuring Luo Oumeng (of cassette player romance, The Beneficial Society, and Soulooper), they recently put out a set of short-but-sweet acoustic demos:

Related:

In the spring of 2025, Beijing-Hong Kong label NU-S3RVO threw a launch party for their first compilation that included an academic discussion about the Othering of ‘the East’. On their second compilation, the collective — founded by producers Kousei and Heiyuen — continues this theme, mixing high quality electronic music with serious interrogation of Orientalist constructs.

NU-S3RVO Vol 2 is an all-female affair, featuring producers based in “Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Guangzhou, and Chengdu, spanning genres from Ambient and Bass to IDM and Techno.” It’s a fantastic line-up, featuring the likes of internationally-acclaimed artist Cola Ren, long-running Chengdu scene lynchpin Kaishandao, and kooky Shanghai-based producer Cocoonics.

It also comes with its own thesis:

“The juxtaposition of "Eastern" and "Female" is not intended to annotate a specific identity, but rather to present an entirely autonomous field,” the label explains. “For too long, the "East" has been constructed as a feminine, mysterious, and sensory-indulgent mirror of the "Other." Such aesthetic norms act not only as gendered shackles but as extensions of colonial logic, forcing both women and the East to share a fate of being "spectacularized" for the gaze.”

Electronic music, the label posits, “derives its radical freedom precisely from its departure from this destiny of "spectacle"”, therefore functioning as “a liberatory technology, offering creators a sanctuary to dismantle traditional constraints and reconstruct the self.”

Most of the artists featured do this via lively, club-friendly productions, but there are deviations from this path as well. Shanghai producer Coil Sprite in particular seems intent on “dismantling traditional constraints” with her delightfully offbeat opener ‘our body is a power station’, while Beijing singer-songwriter Fishdoll’s ‘女皇’ (‘Empress’) makes for a beautiful closing number that begins as a mellow ambient track before swelling to a stirring climax.

NU-S3RVO Vol 2 is out now.

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Solo black metal and dark ambient artist Shiren is back with another powerful release, this time adding traditional Chinese opera elements and instrumentation to their sound. There were hints of the latter on 雾骸, Shiren’s first album of 2026, but 镇命 (roughly: Suppressing Life) goes further in this direction, expanding from flutes and guzheng to incorporate percussion that’s closely associated with traditional Chinese opera forms.

Shiren is careful not to overuse such elements — this isn’t the fully-fledged Peking opera-death metal hybrid of Guangdong act Acne, or even the dramatic traditional instrument-laden metal of Black Kirin. Instead they weave opera-like percussion and instruments such as the suona into the driving, atmospheric soundscapes this artist has become known for.

镇命 is out now and is currently pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp.

Released on Cult of Dead, a spin-off imprint from China’s premier metal label Pest Productions, Timtas is the eponymous debut album from an ambient black metal duo from Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. Their name is taken from the word for “silence” or “deep stillness” in the Uyghur language; it also features in the title of the Halide İsrail short story Timtas Şeher, which is often translated as Silent City. “Nihilism”, “icy soundscapes” and “despair” are among some of the terms deployed in the official introduction, but the text also notes that the record “searches for reasons to keep moving forward amid the darkness”.

Deeply influenced by Polish black metal act Mgla (but not “a lazy clone”, as Pest Productions put it), Guangzhou-based Obscure Gaze is a new one-person-band from a figure identified simply as ‘H’. Debut record Tame the Chaos is “driven by the onset of a collapsing generation” and “aims to enact a spiritual revolt through a ruthless yet melodic interpretation of Black Metal.” Certainly an act to keep an eye on.

Another act that are not a lazy clone, but come with an interesting influence is Glassbath, a solo project from Taizhou in Zhejiang province. Their sound owes a debt to Ghost Bath, although perhaps we can call it even given that the American black metal project once claimed to hail from Chongqing. Anyway: Glassbath, depressive black metal, worth a listen.

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The new album from Shenzhen fuzz-rock trio Summertime Sadness is their third record in just over a year, but to hear frontman Qiu Yang tell it, it’s the best introduction to their sound. “If we only get one opportunity to do an eponymous album (and don’t want to be shameless like Weezer using the same name forever), I want this record to be Summertime Sadness’ Summertime Sadness,” he says.

Maybe that doesn’t land quite as well in English as it does in Chinese — in part because the band’s translation of their name probably has you thinking of that Lana Del Rey song — but you get what Qiu means when you listen to the album. It might be their third proper release, but it serves as the perfect way in to what Summertime Sadness is all about. The eponymous LP pulls together some of their best tracks to date and absolutely fizzes with energy.

Recorded as-live within the confines of Shenzhen’s Liu Ying Studio, the album has an up-close intensity to it. After the snarling opener ‘One By One’, it kapows its way through the remaining eight tracks without any real let-up. The band, with Li Siuwai on bass and Zhang Ying on drums, play with an unstoppable momentum, bringing just enough variation to keep things from feeling overly repetitive. Qiu’s vocals spill out over the top, his lyrics largely obscured by the distortion on his mic, but the songs are so full of swagger it almost doesn’t matter.

It’s a heady cocktail, perfect for blasting on your speakers just as Summertime Sadness’ season takes hold in the northern hemisphere.

Summertime Sadness is out now.

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Rounding off with a bit of literal bedroom pop from Tankewang, Sovietaxi and Xihong, performing a 20ish minute set in a Brooklyn apartment. The set-up is charmingly lo-fi, but the talent on display is considerable, as they unfurl their emo-ambient sounds while the sun comes up. Another marker of its quality: the whole thing is presented by Aftersound, the label who gave us Guo Yinan and Yuan’s attention-grabbing experimental hip hop album The Vortex Reconstruction Experiment.