The name Stallone carries two slang uses, both verbs. The more common use stems from the Rocky actor's infamous mid-1980's habit of getting coked up and having girls suck his testicles while simultaneously jacking him off in the living room of crowded house parties. The second definition means to strike powerfully with brute force, a la Cobra or First Blood. Horse the Band absolutely Stalloned Shanghai last night, with the indulgence of the first meaning and the ferocity of the latter.

Two bands opened before Horse's death-by-Nintendo-in-the-bathtub metal assault began, The first had fun playing immediately forgettable pop-punk songs while a Windows 98 "outer space" screen saver played on the projector behind them. I don't know their name, but they didn't hail from Shanghai, as the singer spoke with some serious errrrrr-hua in between songs. I love it when people drop the rrrrrrr in their Mandarin, because it pisses off the kind of Shanghainese I loathe (4/10, four points for the 儿-hua).

Band number two, Chaos Mind, fronted by an Asian dread lion, dropped some old-school Korn basslines with straight death metal singing. I'm not sure what happened halfway through their set but the singer just walked off stage and didn't return (8/10, because they felt a little like an Asian metalcore version of Ice-T's band...the one that sang Cop Killer).

Then! Horse the Band teleported into Yuyintang and straight up blitzkrieged their way through one of the most intense sets I've ever seen - Shanghai or anywhere else. The band's Wikipedia page lists them as "experimental metalcore," and while I've never dug too deep in those crates, this is not Atreyu/Bled mallcore. Horse the Band plays Converge-like, blood-on-the-fucking-dancefloor songs about murder and sex raptors with good use of synthesizers. Side note: if I ever realize my dream of producing the adult film "English Corner," in Shanghai, I'm naming the lead male "Sex Raptor." The feverish drummer from The Number Twelve Looks Like You guested, double bass-drumming through the video game boss-level songs. The lead singer, who looks like a janitor named "Ron," dropped some prime commentary such as "this songs about dinosaurs eating people...which is really just a metaphor for fucking. Because sometimes when you fuck someone, you feel like a dinosaur." (10/10)

So here I am, 8:05 a.m., leg propped up, frozen bag of LongFong pork rice balls hugging my balls trying to soothe the pulled groin I acquired in the mosh pit. Though I'll spend this week's ASCS basketball game in bed, this is but a small sum to pay for the Stallone-ness that Shanghai generally lacks.

Copyright 2008, Paranoid Heat Wolves