Metal bands show their mettle in battle

Suzhou is ready to rock.

The city in Jiangsu province is hosting the 2018 Metal Battle, which kicked off on Jan 15 and will conclude during the Midi Music Festival at the Suzhou Taihu Midi Camp, about 80 kilometers from Shanghai, in April.

The competition in which Chinese metal bands show their mettle is co-organized by major Beijing-based performance company Midi Productions Co Ltd and Painkiller magazine, China's first heavy-metal magazine and one of the most important metal show promoters in China.

Winners of the Chinese competition will compete with more than 30 bands from around the world in the Wacken Open Air (W:O:A), an annual summertime open-air heavy metal music festival held in the German village of Wacken in Schleswig-Holstein in August. The W:O:A was launched in 1990 and is widely considered the world's largest metal festival.

The Midi Music Festival is one of China's first outdoor music festivals and has attracted more than 100,000 people over the past five years. It first came to Suzhou in 2014.

Metal Battle came to China in 2008. So far, the band Nine Treasures from the Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Hong Kong-based band Evocation have placed among the W:O:A's top five bands in 2013 and 2014 respectively, says Shan Wei, CEO of Midi Productions Co Ltd, a brainchild of Beijing Midi Music School, one of the first contemporary music schools of China.

Metal Battle competitions are held in over 30 countries, including Germany, France, the United States and Japan.