Deep Mountains – 深山 (Deep Mountains)

We live in a time where the human race has become ungrateful and lazy when it comes to finding new music, especially from other countries. Coming from a music fan but primarily a fan of heavy metal music and it’s extreme counterparts, I believe that if you dig deep and wide enough across this entire world, you can discover some of the most amazing work musically to ever exist. As a writer or someone that just types down mumbo-jumbo, I can’t be lazy in discovering the next diamond among the rough in the scene of metal. If I was just your average run of the mill person that only scratched the surface with music, certain bands would never be heard about or exposed. No, I’m not taking credit in discovering certain bands but to me, I feel a deep passion and love for the bands that dwell deep beneath the dirt of this world. Certain bands like Deep Mountains, a black metal project from Tai’an & Shandong, China that has been creeping through my skin since I first heard them a couple weeks ago.

Something that has always intrigued me about the Chinese is that the symbols they use for their writing and the Chinese language in general, might be one of the hardest to learn and/or understand. With that said, I was very pleased when I heard that Deep Mountains was sticking to their native tongue and doing everything in Chinese, from the song titles to the record name, even to the lyrics. “深山”, or in English, “Deep Mountains”, is the self-titled debut EP that was released last July from this abnormally large giant of a band. “深山(Deep Mountains)” is a record full of honor, pride, muscle and beautiful sceneries that capture the vast landscapes that China has to offer. If I had to use one word to describe it, I would have to go with prodigious. Prodigious, if some of you don’t know, the word means gigantic, enormous and huge. The reason I use that word is because from the first second this record starts up to the very last chord and whisper of the guitars, you get consumed and overshadowed by this mammoth of a record.

While I was bouncing around the vortex of confusion that I call genres, “山魂(Mountain Soul)“, the second track on the record, proved to me that Deep Mountains is a black metal band with a very open mind. With distorted guitar riffs, grunting, high pitch screams and merciless drumming sections, they somehow still deliver a vast amount of melodic atmosphere that wrap you up like a spider web would. Even though “深山(Deep Mountains)” does provide you with a hurricane of mixtures between genres, mainly folk and black metal, the band seems to feed you more black metal over the course of this record than anything else. In all honesty, I see the folk influence as a woman that won’t ever give you want you want, more like she enjoys teasing you with what you drool over. Maybe Deep Mountains enjoy making me drool over the more folk influenced sections. If that’s the case, mission accomplished guys but even though I can enjoy those folk sections, the black metal in large amounts really does provide a satisfaction and hunger for more.

As I said before, this EP is prodigious and so much in a way that I feel like if I put this record among the beast inside the Chinese jungles, it would still tower over everything in sight. Mountain lions would coward away like small kitty cats while the Chinese warriors would run for their lives and begin begging not to be eaten alive. “深山(Deep Mountains)” is the behemoth of China, it’s relentless and bears the sword to slaughter anything in it’s path. On the flip side, this record could also be the joyful sensation to sooth ones soul from any wars it might be fighting. One thing I can tell you and I’ve thought about this long and hard for the past several days, I would love to see what Deep Mountains could do with a full fledged black metal record and a front to back folk record. If it sounds this good mixed up together, I can’t even imagine what it would sound like separated.

Listen to “Ode To The Pines” below:

Official Myspace. Official Metal-Archives. Buy their shit here. Download the record here.