Seeping up through the bustling concrete streets of the Vietnamese capital is Dạ Xoa, a new manifestation of dark, musical metallic magic. This debut demo offering, which is entitled ‘Ác Ma Đông Kinh’, casts a bewitching curse upon all listeners with its three tracks of frosty and raw genre jubilation.
At a mere sixteen minutes’ runtime, the demo flies by like a gliding polar wyvern. The tracks offer straight-up no-frills, second-wave joy. The performances across the board on this tape are quite blood-pumping and I love the passion that is prevalent in lone musician Xích Lang’s vocal delivery. The opening track ‘Oán Tự’, offers a progression that is reminiscent of ‘Transylvanian Hunger’ era Darkthone, with a notable added layer of catchy melodicism. ‘Huyết Tang’ resumes the experience with more conventional fervour, the guitars and drums syncopating nicely on a central riff whilst Lang’s chilly vocals bark towards a freezing landscape. Much of the almost danceable fun on display here reminds me of the second-wave genre worship of Montreal’s mighty outfit Spectral Wound. The tape closes with ‘Cố Vũ’, an instrumental track that features some pretty rain storm sounds and a medley of clean guitar strumming. It’s a rather nice change of pace, and I consider it to be a well-executed instrumental.
Overall, ‘Ác Ma Đông Kinh’ is a very fun and high-quality release of stereotypical Black Metal fare executed at an impressive quality level. This little tape leaves me very excited to see what comes next from this artist, and I highly recommend that all lovers of bands like Satyricon, Darkthrone, Burzum, and Immortal take some time to give Dạ Xoa some much needed appreciation.
