Super Stoked on New Sludge/Stoner/Doom Label – SloomWeep Productions [China]

We are ALWAYS excited when our social media is flooded with awesome bands from any specific genre. Like many of you, we may come from the world of hardcore and punk, but it is often bands from a totally different genre of music that gets our hearts pumping. One area that really gets us stoked is the stuff that we didn’t necessarily grow up listening to – sludge, doom, stoner. Like our friends in Singapore band Marijannah, there are a few bands up in China who’ve been doing this form of music justice. Bands like Never Before (pictured above) and Ramblin Roze. And guess what? Both these bands are signed to a particular label whose ENTIRE premise is to promote this genre of music throughout China – SloomWeep Productions.

The label was established back in 2016 by Duo Lio based on his deep passion for this form of music. “When I was in college, by chance, I bought Sleep’s ‘Holy Mountain’ and I was immediately attracted.”

“After that, I searched for similar bands and found acts like Kyuss, Acid King, Acrimony, Acid Bath, Buzzoven, Down, Eyehategod, Church of Misery, etc. Man, I’ve just been in love with all of this ever since then.”

Lucky for the rest of us, Duo has not been instrumental in getting Chinese bands a platform to release their music to the world. “The first band we officially signed was Ramblin’ Roze. They are easily one of the best heavy blues rock bands in all of China.”

As we’re quite familiar with China’s massive metal scene, enormous punk rock scene, smaller but equally noisy hardcore scene, we of course wanted to know how big of a market does the world of stoner, sludge, doom have up in China. “Although Stoner/Sludge is definitely niche music in China, we have spent several years promoting this form of music and we definitely have a group of diehard fans now and I’ve noticed that it just seems that there are more and more young people finding their way to this. Actually, we have released a huge variety of cassettes and many of them have been sold out.”

And the future?

“I think the environment for this form of music is ripe enough to hold our first Stoner Sludge Fest in Beijing later this year. But of course, we have to wait and see what the situation is with COVID. We are confident that the future for this is just brighter and brighter.”

Go support the label below!

Unfortunately, Bandcamp has now been blocked in China because the authorities up there are just that stupid. But hopefully, SloomWeep and all the other labels in China who have been using Bandcamp to help their bands connect with the outside world will find ways to continue to use this platform.

https://www.facebook.com/SloomWeep-Productions-110398670441440/