With the arrival of Heart-Town, Hong Kong has its first heavy metal festival

Is Hong Kong ready for its own heavy metal fest? With the new Heart-Town Festival, taking place simultaneously in Hong Kong and Taiwan from August 8 to 10, promoter Jimmy Liu has been getting that question a lot lately. "People are asking me, are you trying to be Loud Park or something?" says Liu, referring to Japan's top music festival for metal, hardcore and every other genre that drives a mosh pit.

"At first, we just wanted to start a music festival. But we also wanted to be different. Not Chinese pop. Not mainstream indie. So we ended up with this really hardcore line-up, and now I'm thinking like maybe we are going the direction of Loud Park, Download Festival or Ozzfest."

For headliners, the Hong Kong event has invited some top hardcore bands from the US and Britain — Architects, Finch, While She Sleeps and Issues — alongside heavy local bands Chockma, King Zhi, Kolor, The Majestic G, Mensheng, Niu Liu, Rain in Time, Shepherds the Weak, Tie Shu Lan, Supper Moment, ToNick and Underklot.

They will play over three days at a 2,000-capacity stage at the Kitec venue in Kowloon Bay. The international bands have in the past decade all made solid names for themselves on the youth-oriented circuit of metal festivals. Two of the bands — Finch and Issues — will appear on this year's Vans Warped Tour.

In the past, they'd be said to fit a punk demographic. But now that market has developed its own mainstream and the bands, taking cues from precursors such as Slipknot, Limp Bizkit, Sepultura, and others, have taken to describing themselves as post-hardcore, metalcore, mathcore, metallic hardcore, and the like.

This generational stab at self-proclaimed newness is mostly intended to differentiate themselves from what came before, especially nu-metal (think Linkin Park). What they have in common is screaming vocals and intensely fast guitar riffs lifted from extreme metal (think Norway). There's also a general reverence for the roots of California punk and hardcore (think Black Flag) that shows through in the postures of disaffected, suburban youth.