Now, in recent light of BABYMETAL basically not being a real metal band (then again, that was always obvious) – i feel the need to show that not all Oriental metal is over-hyped sugar-soaked nonsense. Now, a good deal of these bands are heavily guarded by relentless and sometimes nonsensical J-or-K fans – but if your willing to just ignore their relentless fascination with effeminate males you\’ll probably find something redeemable. Of course, I\’m not mentioning just immediately obvious bands – or at least not the inevitable eras where these bands succumbed to marketing pressure (a common issue overseas).

GALLHAMMER
Anyone who knows me knows I\’m a fan of some really Raw Metal and that I\’m a massive fan of almost anything Tom Warrior has ever done. Now he isn\’t directly involved with Gallhammer but this crust/blackened punk band was heavily inspired by the Hellhammer years and I\’d like to think that if Tom and gang were a bunch of insane Japanese women – this would be the end result.

OZ 
The obscurity of this band is no doubt due to its completely un-google-able/youtube-able name. Unless you know the song titles or somehow stumble upon them (as I did many years ago) – you aren\’t really going to find anything. Though, if you do, you\’ll find that there is a lot of strangeness going on with this band. Of course, their videos mainly are label-picked slow songs (with the exception of Zenith and Detox) but everything else contains a rather peculiar progressive edge to it. And, as you can guess – their initial releases far outweigh anything they\’ve done recently.