About Tengger Cavalry

Tengger Cavalry (长生天铁骑 or 铁骑) is a Chinese folk metal band, incorporating folk music from various North-Asian nomadic cultures; most notably Mongolian, but also Kazakh and Turkish folk music. The band was initially formed as a one-man project of Nature Zhang by the time of 2010 and released an EP called Tengger Cavalry in the March of 2010. After the release of the first album Blood Sacrifice Shaman in September 2010, the band gained some attention and had reviews with international media including German magazine Legacy. Then the bassist Wei Wang joined in the band. Tengger Cavalry did one performance in Beijing as Nature Zhang being the Horse Head Fiddle player. After one year's silence Tengger Cavalry released 2 albums at the same time in November of 2011 as a one-man project again. Sunesu Cavalry (Chinese version) combines North-Asian folk song with heavy metal much more smoothly compared to the first album, and the sound quality along with mixing production improved vastly. Mantra is an experimental folk album using sorely acoustic instruments to interpret diverse kinds of North Asian folk music. The release of the two album brought Tengger Cavalry with greater attention. In December of 2011, MTV published an article named Tengger Cavalry's Black Metal For Pagan Hordes and gave high comments on the new works. At the same time, Chinese official media China National Radio gave high recommendation to the new songs of the band too. The success of the two albums brought the members together. The original bassist Wei Wang joined in the band again in the beginning of 2012, after which the drummer Kai Ding and Horse Head Fiddle player Xin Wang joined in and the band performed in Mao Live House (Beijing) in June 2012 as the first show around the past 2 years. As the band continued to do rehearsal and performed frequently, more people gradually came to know Tengger Cavalry. In the December 2012, Tengger Cavalry signed with American metal label Metal Hell Records and released its first album Sunesu Cavalry in US & EU region with completely new artwork by Guannan Cao and Tianshu Liu and 3 new works composed by all the members, after which the UK metal magazine Terrorizer did reviews with the band. In February of 2013 Tengger Cavalry released its newest album Black Steed in Chinese Region. This album is a completely whole-band work instead of single work of Nature Zhang, although Nature Zhang is still the main composer of all the songs, providing main themes and motives. Since Black Steed will not be released in US & EU region, Metal Hell Records release the second album of Tengger Cavalry in US & EU region The Expedition that incorporates 5 songs of Black Steed along with 5 newest unreleased tracks. In March of 2013 Hasi joined in the band as new fiddle player and Mural joined in as Dombra(Kazak instrument) player. In April of 2013 Tengger Cavalry attended the Wacken Open Air Metal Battle Competition in China and won the Best Composer Awards. In May 22, Tengger Cavalry did opening show for CMR's Finnish folk metal act Turisas in Beijing, China.