Filthy Party! *clap, clap, clap, clap, clap* Filthy Party! *clap, clap, clap, clap, clap*
Grindcore, goregrind, pornogrind – China may be one of the last countries that comes to mind when considering these genres, but thanks to a few bands with filthy intentions, a community was born in the bowels of the Chinese underground music scene. The events thrown were called Gore Feasts and Filthy Parties. The Gore Feast was the first concert I attended in China in 2013, and the bands I would see at this show would shape my perspective of what could take place in a club within the country.
Happening every six months or so, the Gore Feast was a get-together of brutal bands, often with a sexual edge, put together by the bands Cave Have Rod and Rectal Wench. The two bands would become underground icons, with Cave Have Rod playing the Obscene Extreme Festival, introducing those at the festival (and later, fans on YouTube) to Chinese pornogrind. The band took a lighthearted approach, with childish songs about buying vegetables mingling with blast beats. Rectal Wench were the darker side of the coin, wearing butcher aprons and ski-masks, with a focus on oppressive heaviness.
Both bands took a hiatus in the mid 2010s, and Gore Feasts were put to a stop, though it was with Rectal Wench’s return in 2019 that the Filthy Parties began…
What follows is two accounts –
First, the Gore Feast – this was written as a first impression of the show as I saw it upon arriving in China a mere two weeks prior.
The second was written as an account of the Filthy Parties soon after seeing one in Tianjin in 2021, with interview snippets from Rectal Wench and Impure Injection.
The Gore Feast
I had hoped my first Chinese concert experience would be one to remember. The Sam Dunn–directed documentary Global Metal featured a select few Chinese metal bands. I knew there would be a larger scene in the city, and was proven right with this particular show. The type of bands on such a show entitled Gore Feast would no doubt be brutal. Either death metal, grindcore, gore metal, or porno grind. The poster had a head being split in two; blood and viscera spilling out from the two sides. The logos on the poster were mostly Chinese, though one of the logos had a penis on it which certainly excited me. Another band’s logo I could read clearly – Rectal Wench. I was sold.
I found the club without much trouble. I simply looked for the number 13. At least I could count on numbers being in English. I walked into the bar and after paying the ticket price of 60 RMB, found a man with piercings and long dreadlocks serving drinks. He was the first person I had seen with a style which didn’t conform to the clean cut, BOY fashion of the majority of Chinese males.
There was a magazine rack with Time Out Beijing, but I also found Painkiller, a magazine devoted to metal. Another rack had CDs for sale. I noticed one by Primus among the Chinese titles.
I ordered a drink from the dreadlocked man and went to another room, the stage area. There were photos from gigs framed on the wall and a big 13 Club logo on a banner behind the stage. The stage itself was larger than I expected, as the bar didn’t look so big on the outside.
There were about 20-30 people inside the venue. One or two were long haired males. Some looked like students. A few had Western metal t-shirts – Cannibal Corpse, Napalm Death. There were two other foreigners, a male and female. I saw no shirts for sale from the bands playing that night.
Bloody maxi pads were pinned to the microphone stands. The background music by Pantera faded and I waited with bated breath for the first band to emerge on stage.
It was obviously the penis logo band, who I later learned were named Cave Have Rod. The vocalist pranced on stage in a floral dress and inflatable inner tube. If he hadn’t been wearing this clothing, I could imagine him working behind the desk at a Bank of China. He yelped a high-pitched sing-song style of vocal to a crushing array of grind from the other musicians. The guitarist wore one of the bloody pads on his face like a cleansing mask, breathing in faux period blood. Their abrasive nature was appealing; obviously mocking sexuality (or sexual repression) with irreverent children’s song style lyrics and absurd costuming. As the set went on, the singer’s clothes came off and eventually he was in his underwear. I had no idea if China had fetish shows, but this could be as close as it came.
The Dark Prison Massacre were up next. This Tianjin–located slamming, brutal death grind act had two every-man looking vocalists exchanging primordial grunts while a bald, Chinese Kerry King-like guitarist shredded riffs chunkier than a can of Campbell’s clam chowder. Their name intrigued and unsettled me. I had read up on stories of re-education camps and hoped I wouldn’t experience a dark Chinese prison myself.
The next band had a name I would connect with depressive, suicidal black metal – Ready to Die. They weren’t. Fronted by a nondescript looking, tiny framed female, the band played a gut ripping style of death metal which had the small crowd of short hairs wind milling. The one foreign male had taken off his shirt and was trying to motion her over to him for a photo. She was unaffected, completely absorbed in the dissonant noise her backing band created. I found myself transfixed with her opposition to flashiness and completely serious nature.
The final band was none other than Rectal Wench. Named after a song by Lividity, Leatherface doing a home invasion was this band’s costume style as the members were donned in bloody butcher aprons and black ski masks. Pre-programmed blast beats aided their grind onslaught as circle pits erupted on the dance floor of the club. I thought of a quote from Global Metal, “They long to let out their dark emotions.”
“Niu bi!” a long-haired fan shouted.
More chimed in, “Niu bi! Niu bi!”
The phrase meant “cow cunt” but was said when something was basically fucking awesome.
When the show was over and the people started filing out, I had a chat with some of the staff members. They had a laptop set up and I showed a young, glasses wearing bartender some local Canadian bands. I knew they would never go to China and he would never go there, so it was the least I could do. The dreadlocked man turned out to be the owner of 13 Club. He said he was a member of the band Ordnance. He said that students from the music University sometimes played at the club on off days in order to hone their skills by practicing on a large stage. He gave me a CD of his band. I picked up a Painkiller magazine with Trivium on the cover and purchased it.
The members of Cave Have Rod made their way into the bar area. I asked what they did for their day jobs. The most surprising answer I received was from their vocalist, “accountant.”
Since no merch from the bands was for sale, as a keepsake, I took one of the bloody maxi pads back home with me.
The Filthy Party
In 2021, Chinese goregrind legends Rectal Wench got the blow up dolls, dildos, blow up aliens, toilet and lucha masks out of the tickle trunk for a round of Filthy Parties to be held around China.
Influenced by the often absurd, nonsensical atmosphere of the Obscene Extreme Festival live shows, where truly anything goes, the band enlisted on a Filthy Party tour, stopping in different cities around China every month or so, performing in bars like DAFA in Tianjin and DMC in Qingdao. This new era of filth brought old friends and new, including artists like Gore Geng, whose Impure Injection performed at an early Gore Feast, and newer bands like Want A.S.S. and Globularcyst.
The atmosphere at the Filthy Parties mirrored Obscene Extreme, with a toilet on stage, blow-up dolls being thrown around and at least one instance of streaking. There was a feeling of liberation in the air – a freedom even greater than that felt at regular punk or metal shows. A perverse, somewhat abstract sensation akin to listening to brutal metal while watching fetish porn and pro-wrestling in the comfort of your own home, but now on-stage, in China, and among a community of others who shared the same interest.
The parties brought out disciples of gore and smut who had been biding their time and waiting for events such as these since the band’s hiatus. They brought out the best in people, with crowd participation at a high point – one fan streaking, another waving around a big dildo, another is sitting on the toilet on stage, another is dancing with the blow-up alien while another is violently slam dancing with the sex doll before it finally deflates.
It’s all part of the story, though. The plot of their album Judgment of Whore Labia From the Sewer Throne was that of humanity being held hostage in a rectum sewer by inflatable dolls. It was up to the band, and the fans, to save the human race through beating up the dolls at the live shows.
While the Filthy Party shows were popular in the Chinese underground, the band were fully aware that goregrind is not a popular music genre in their country, as opposed to Germany, the Czech Republic, Mexico, Italy or Colombia.
“We have to go abroad to see our favorite bands, because none of them come to China,” says guitarist Laoshi Guo. “Even though they may not know we exist, we like the same things and are part of the same culture. Hopefully through these shows, they will begin to understand that China’s scene is just as strong as anywhere else.”
It seemed they did – as a result of the Filthy Parties, Rectal Wench were invited to perform as part of an online music festival out of South America, the Sick Dog Festival. This opportunity to showcase their brand of Chinese goregrind to people around the world raised their stock considerably, bringing to mind Cave Have Rod’s Obscene Extreme appearance.
With the lurid nature of the Filthy Parties, not every show went smoothly, with their concert in Beijing originally scheduled to take place at School Bar moving to another venue, the UFO Space at the last minute. The band stated that there was concern from authorities that their party would be a full-on pornographic event. Fortunately, fans were notified via their WeChat group and the party went underway at the new venue.
Aside from Rectal Wench, bands who appeared at the Filthy Parties included Want A.S.S., Globularcyst, and appearing at every concert, Zibo’s Impure Injection. Fronted by the Godfather of Grindcore in China, Gore Geng (who himself puts together brutal festivals), the band also took part in a Gore Feast event, with bands like Cave Have Rod leaving an impression on Geng. He was more than happy to then take part as direct support for the Filthy Parties. Geng, like any other grindcore musician, hopes to one day play huge festivals like Obscene Extreme, but feels that the types of shows bands like Rectal Wench or Cave Have Rod are throwing are acceptable substitutes.
Currently, Rectal Wench are still playing select shows in China with old school death metal band Mvltifission. Still, Guo hopes the band can throw their Filthy Parties on a global scale. “After China, we hope to tour the world and meet all of our filthy friends abroad.”
