NINE TREASURES is a Chinese folk metal band originated in Beijing, China and formed by their vocalist/guitarist Askhan Avagchuud in 2010. They currently have three acclaimed albums and millions of streams. They are known for their unique combination of heavy metal and Mongolian throat singing. Now, have I ever heard of this genre of music? Absolute not! Did I thoroughly listen to this album to try and get a good feel of the music? You bet I did!

Starting with "Until Now" I was not sure how I was going to feel. Immediately the first thing I noticed is it was just a few seconds shy of 5 minutes long. I will not lie, I can have a short attention span, so knowing that first song was that long already had me feeling a bit iffy. It started off decent enough, pretty slow and then adding in the guitars. While yes it did sound amazing, it also was a little dragged out. Once the singing started it had me second guessing if I was listening to a metal band or a country band. It seemed as if the band was on a roller coaster of sound as again it got quieter before getting loud again. "Indecision", again almost 5 minutes long, started almost the exact same way; quieter leading into louder. It again seemed dragged out and eventually went quiet and loud again. This song was almost a bit rockabilly to me. It had me wondering what was happening! Going into "Yellow-Black Storm" the first thing I noticed was the timing was considerable less, coming in at 1 minute and 53 seconds. I was absolutely exstatic that this might be the one that i would love. Unfortunately, there were no vocals in this at all. Quite honestly it was not my style and not something I would choose to listen to again. As I continued into the album and started "Steel Falcon" I again saw that the song was 5 minutes long. I am quickly realizing that as much as I would absolutely love to love this album, with the songs being this long its likely not going to happen. While the songs all used different instruments, they all pretty well sounded the same. Every song starts off slow and builds into a crescendo before going back low and slow and back up again to end the song.

While this album was not for me personally, there very obviously is a fan base. I definitely hear the folk music in it but personally I would like one genre and to stick with it. The album would in my opinion is just ok, I wouldn't say there were any special or memorable moments for me sadly. Now, I will say this is not a band I will just write off and never listen to again. For me, they are more of a background noise type of band. Not something I would actively listen to, but just to have some music so I am not sitting in silence.