Hopefully you, like me, consider yourself an adventurer on some sort of level. No, not just as it pertains to, say, opting for pepper jack instead of your usual cheddar, but more in a way that makes it clear that you appreciate things outside of your immediate sphere / wheelhouse and often seek out many of life’s more delightful curve balls. I believe that will come in handy when approaching this, the first worldwide release from—and this is a delineation dropped by Metal Blade themselves in a promotional email—“progressive alt-metal band” Nine Treasures, a group based in China that happens to feature members who all originally hail from Inner Mongolia.
Firstly, let’s address the woolly mammoth in the room: What the hell even is alt-metal, why is it here at Last Rites, and does someone need to do a health & wellness check on me.
The answer to each of those questions is fairly straightforward: Beats the hell out of me.
In my youth, alt-metal was a designation mostly reserved for bands that existed on the edge of the genre that appealed to many metal fans: Faith No More, Soundgarden and Helmet, for example—all entities I still enjoy today.
As the years continued to shuffle forward, however, alt-metal began absorbing all manner of candidates that, at least for yours truly, rebuffed more than they managed to charm: System of a Down, Disturbed, CKY, Godsmack, and the eventual dawning of the nu metal era. Not here to throw shade, but not really my thing.
Today? Hell, I’m not even sure I could pinpoint a popular new(ish) alt-metal band if every single one of our lives depended on it. If I had to guess, the last album I paid attention to in this realm was probably… Sepultura’s Against back in 1998? Does that count? Again, beats the hell out of me.
Comparatively, Nine Treasures incorporates the traditional folk music of Mongolia—a much more dominant element compared to the taiko sprinkled into Against—and in lieu of a groove / nu component, they attach a form of heft that’s most conveniently compared to Tool, which is clearly deserving of the alt-metal moniker.
Okay, at this point it’s probably best to admit that I’m not really much of a Tool fan. (This is going really well.) I think maybe I was in the ‘90s, back when I first came across Undertow, but I quickly lost interest somewhere around the time when the band and their most ardent fans began dialing up the dildo factor. Unnecessary pejoratives aside, here’s what I appreciate the most about the Tool material I’m familiar with: the bass tone is wonderful and dominant across the songs, and the band manages to balance light and dark / soft and heavy in a way that occasionally awards them an additional post-rock/metal tag. That, in a tidy nutshell, is something Nine Treasures happens to nail quite handily throughout Seeking the Absolute as well.
Right, so Nine Treasures mostly sounds like a Mongolian folk band colliding with Tool. There’s your 10¢ review! It’s important to understand, however, that one probably needs to be more interested in the Mongolian folk side of the equation than anything else here. Luckily, I am, thanks in part to the adventurousness mentioned earlier, paired with a chance encounter about 20 years ago with the excellent documentary Genghis Blues, which chronicled the sadly since passed blues / psych-rock champion Paul Pena and his travels to Tuva in southern Siberia in order to investigate and learn Tuvan throat singing. (Seriously, please watch this documentary if you haven’t yet.) From there, I fell hook, line and sinker for Huun-Huur-Tu, one of Tuva’s most popular and prolific bands, and I’ve subsequently kept a keen eye on the budding Mongolian metal scene as a result of all of this. (It’s larger than you might expect!)
If you’re already familiar with Nine Treasures via any of their previous works (four full-lengths, one EP, and a single split with like-minded Mongolian gallopers Tengger Cavalry and Ego Fall), the first thing you’ll probably notice is that Seeking the Absolute feels more like a Mongolian folk band fully embracing metal, as opposed to a metal band fully embracing Mongolian folk. Where previous releases felt more indebted to things like shreddy guitar solos and a notably aggressive form of bounce that would make power metal pitch a tent for a week, Nine Treasures circa 2025 seems more interested in fusing a more progressive and atmospheric form of heavy with the traditional music of their homeland. It’s actually a fairly substantial shift. Here, take opener “Until Now” for a spin.
A little folk riff and morin khuur (horse-head fiddle) open “Until Now” with a bright punch of energy that quickly folds in the band’s metal face around 30 seconds in. NT’s knack for melding styles is absolutely top shelf, so that fiddle and riff wrap seamlessly around one another as vocalist / guitarist / chief architect Askhan jumps hither and thither between clean vocals and a raspy bark that’s a few shades lighter compared to the overtone singing that’s common in the ‘long song’ variant of traditional Mongolian music. Around 2:40, the song fades to a relatively brief mellow(er) interval, and then a heavier footprint rolls back in via a notably Tool-infused riff that dances perfectly alongside the morin khuur and vigorous rhythm laid down by drummer, Namra. Is this alt-metal? Folk metal? Progressive metal? Everyone’s invited in the pool when it’s an open swim.
Outside of the relatively brief fully folk interlude that is “Yellow-Black Storm,” every song on Seeking the Absolute follows the opener’s lead by folding in contrasting dark & light / heavy & mellow elements filtered through a progressive lens, resulting in eight notably compact tracks that manage to get a hell of a lot done in 5 minutes or less. So, it’s a very active and vivid 40 minutes, but there’s a lot of diverse textures woven into all that action. Sure, the bulk of the fare is springy / gingerly and oddly danceable (The Bangles could definitely walk like an Egyptian to “Just Like You”), but moodier angles are also represented (“The Ultimate Evolution”), and things never stray too far away from that unique dark and malleable form of heavy Tool skippered amidst their heyday.
Here’s the kicker: I’m not even sure I would’ve thought to attach the ‘alt-metal’ tag to Nine Treasures if Metal Blade hadn’t hit us with precisely that in an early Seeking the Absolute presser. Am I a ramrod for even allowing a red flag to rise upon seeing such a stamp in the first place? Oh, absolutely. But I really don’t mean to overemphasize a negative connotation from some sort of high horse—it’s just not something that normally gets coverage here at the “mostly populated by dinosaurs that regularly gorge on brutal death metal” refuge that is Last Rites, and I think there’s a risk of missing out on a really imaginative and adventurous album if you, like me, are capable of being thrown off a trail simply because some random genre tag you’re not terribly versed in suddenly rolls across your eyeballs.
So, again, if you pride yourself on being an adventurous music devourer with a particular predilection for all things PROGRESSIVE FOLK METAL, do yourself the considerable favor of checking out Nine Treasures and the very rewarding, notably spirited Seeking the Absolute.
Photo by Hattoo
