Mullae Metal City – Declarations
Each year the festival director writes a declaration recording the questions the festival asks itself.
2023 MMC 10th Anniversary Declaration: 10th Anniversary of MMC – Heroes of the Decade
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At the tenth anniversary, MMC honors every musician, staff member and audience member who made the impossible possible as “Heroes of the Decade”, and invites all to sail on together. Dual stages were introduced for the first time.
This year is a meaningful one for Mullae Metal City (MMC). It is the tenth anniversary of its launch, and the year it completes a record as Korea’s longest-running metal festival: 250 bands over 40 days of stage in total.
A ten-year metal festival in Korea, a wasteland for metal! It is hard to imagine how much time has passed. In fact, before MMC was born, “metal festival” was close to a taboo word in the domestic scene. Attempts at flagship metal festivals vanished quietly without enough success to promise a next time, and even the Hongdae underground scene that remained kept downgrading, and the places where metal could be played steadily decreased. Many musicians who played metal had to switch to solo activities, and various attempts to shake off the reputation of a metal wasteland also stagnated. What broke through this harsh situation was MMC, a bolt from the blue born in the iron city of Mullae-dong.
It began as a light-hearted festival. But audiences and musicians looking for a proper metal stage began to cheer for and look forward to MMC, as if welcoming a newborn in an aging village. To live up to their expectations, MMC set out to rediscover the value of Korean metal and built stages that announced the work of new musicians. Without pause, even in an age of plague, we realized a festival solely for metal for ten years.
Without the audiences who proudly enjoy the music they love, and the many helpers with a passion for metal who joined voluntarily, there would have been no tenth anniversary for MMC, Korea’s flagship metal festival. This year, MMC decided to put these wonderful, proud metal heroes into the festival.
This year’s subtitle “Heroes of the Decade” is a title chosen to hold up all the musicians, all the staff and all the audience who took on the seemingly reckless challenge of a metal festival in Korea and made the impossible possible, and to sail on together to an even better future. In the hope that every moment spent together under the name of MMC over the past ten years becomes a glorious winning point for everyone.
[How the 2023 stages are run]
This year MMC is held for two days, July 15–16, at its home ground, Mullae Art Factory. Because metal takes unusually long to set up instruments, long waits between bands have often lowered the tension of a show. To make up for this, this year we are introducing, for the first time at MMC, dual stages on the 2nd and 1st floors of Mullae Art Factory. Accordingly, we revise the old policy of six bands per day and expand to ten bands per day (7 Official + 3 solo stages).
Please understand this is a painful measure to sharpen your metal cells, dulled through the long COVID period. Surely a brutal schedule of 20 bands over two days is the least we need to digest to find the will to mark the tenth anniversary together? We announce in advance that tension will be kept up throughout the festival without a moment’s rest, so from today please train your slackened hearing cells, and do not neglect to oil your precious innards and get plenty of protein.
In addition, the festival headquarters is developing a rapid cooling system (iced drinks and ice treats) to cool the overload, so forget any worry of heatstroke and enjoy the festival to the fullest.
[A retrospective of ten years]
MMC has always been a project with no promise of a next time. One year was too short to resolve material deprivation, and since everything had to be written anew each time, we could only devote ourselves to completing what was in front of us.
Yet each year we built sandcastles that renewed themselves, imagining a wonderful metal stage that would remain the best memory. Just as a sturdy mold is needed to cast a complete steel casting, we worked in the spirit of making the best metal stage we had never had, even if it might collapse at any time. Into it the audience poured hot molten metal with burning passion, and the performers completed a perfect stage with their best performances. As a result, and with great gratitude, MMC became, without a single failure, the most metal foundry showing the whole picture of Korean metal.
Even if MMC is a mere two-day stage built on barren sand, I hope you will remember that dozens of metal cities, firmly cooled and hardened, support it from below. That is MMC’s strength and the power of metal that will never disappear. This year we will show the whole of that strength. Come at us all! MMC is coming out!
2023 Mullae Metal City : 10th Anniversary · Heroes of the Decade →
2022 MMC: To a Bright Tomorrow for Heavy Metal! – Declaration
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A festival to revere the Korean metalheads who proudly kept the scene alive through the darkness of COVID, bringing out the “bright tomorrow for heavy metal” that no one could speak of until now.
A festival to revere the metalheads of Korea! Mullae Metal City 2022.
Through the deep, dark COVID period, when everyone was watching everyone else, proud Korean metalheads did not give in; they confidently went to shows, watched and enjoyed, and protected our scene. Those actions gathered like a mosaic and became the roots that hold up heavy metal today. Thanks to them, even as every culture and arts scene was flattened, metal at least — though scraped and stripped — was never smashed or brought down. Remember! We have today because we enjoyed ourselves confidently, and we could always be the protagonists.
For MMC, too, the past two years were a fierce struggle for tomorrow at the crossroads of extinction. The spoils we won are MMC 2022! (Each time we fight as if there will be no tomorrow and then face another year; we accept that as MMC’s fate.)
It may sound like a crazy joke... but the production team that makes MMC every year lives believing that heavy metal is the most commercially attractive genre and the most promising music of the future. Because everyone is allowed a bright tomorrow of their own!
So in 2022, MMC reveres everyone who enjoyed and protected metal together through the past two years of darkness, and holds a festival that brings out what no one could say until now: “a bright tomorrow for heavy metal”.
In the silence, with fierce voices, let us greet our tomorrow together at MMC 2022! To a bright tomorrow for heavy metal!
2022 MMC Production Team
2022 Mullae Metal City : To a Bright Tomorrow for Heavy Metal →
2021 MMC: Metalopolise – Declaration
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“Metalopolise” is a pledge to be a solid foothold that promotes the expansion of and interaction within Korean heavy metal over the three years to the tenth anniversary, gathering its ecosystem even through hard times.
At last! We are opening Mullae Metal City again this year.
2021 Mullae Metal City (MMC), titled “Metalopolise”, will run for four days in total: MMC Official (invited stage, 12 bands over 2 days) and Ironman Special (open stage, 10 bands over 2 days). Unfortunately, the 2021 MMC, with 22 bands over four days across two weeks (Oct 2–17), is set to be the largest in-person music festival in Korea this year. We will make it an anchor festival that held its ground in 2021, driven in deeper with a heavy heart.
This year’s title “Metalopolise” is a declaration that, for the three years remaining until Mullae Metal City’s tenth anniversary, we will be a solid foothold that promotes the dynamic expansion of, and chain interaction within, Korean heavy metal. We are still lacking in many ways, but we will not stop trying to gather the Korean heavy metal ecosystem through hard times and make it grow. And around 2023, when MMC marks its tenth anniversary, we truly want to begin the work of reconstructing a “Metalopolise” gathering Mullae and all the other metal cities.
Executive Director Lee Seung-hyuk
Note. Excerpt from the closing remarks on October 16
Artists, show organizers and audience alike gather out of love for metal and make flowers bloom in one space. Living in an age when that was taken for granted, I think we did not know how precious it was. From Ironman Special to the Official shows, about a month passed like a dream.
An age of tragedy. In every age, it has been the artists’ role to comfort the deprivation and pain of the times. We hope our MMC shows gave you a powerful energy to transcend this gloomy present. And with that energy, please keep supporting Mullae Metal City and Korean heavy metal.
At MMC 2022 we plan to be joined by Heavy Gauge, who sadly could not take part this year because of a band member’s health problems. Until then, please join us in cheering for Heavy Gauge’s vocalist Jang-gun to recover soon.
2021 MMC Director Kim Kyung-sun
2021 Mullae Metal City : Metalopolise · Official (Invited Stage) →
2020 Mullae Metal City “Korea Metal Weeks” – Declaration
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Rather than shrink back in a withering live scene, MMC went boldly ahead with “Korea Metal Weeks”: holding an in-person festival safely, to break through hard times with metal sound.
This year, MMC decided to become a moth to the flame of the shrinking Korean performance scene, and made a bold decision from the planning stage: “Korea Metal Weeks”. As the title suggests, rather than shrink back in the current situation, we decided to run this year’s MMC even more boldly. Over four days in total, we bring Ironman Special (16 bands) and Mullae Metal City Official (12 bands) together in one week.
This year’s MMC Official stage, titled “Metal Pandemic”, prepares its lineup with the aim of breaking through hard times and making a dramatic reversal through powerful metal sound. As the saying goes, “the owl of Minerva spreads its wings at dusk”; the prolonged slump in live performance seems, if anything, to be driving musicians to work on songs more actively. Some of the musicians on the main stage will release new songs before or after the show, so we hope you will come and take home a rich bundle of metal.
The preparation was by no means easy. More than simply making a good stage, it had to be one that protects the audience’s safety and sets a good example for other shows to come. Since it is a situation we all face for the first time, we monitor every show now going on and prepare with our nerves on edge and added tension.
To hold a live festival and run it safely, we also had to revise some policies. First, we canceled the side events we had ambitiously prepared, such as the Mullae Metal Awards and the networking party, to secure performance time. We also limited the daily audience to 40 for Ironman Special and 50 for MMC: Metal Pandemic. We will also ask all attendees to put up with some inconveniences for everyone’s safety: no food or drink provided or brought in, compliance with quarantine rules, masks, and distancing between audience members (2 m). Even so, if you come, enjoy, and cheer for the musicians, we will be able to plan what comes next for the bright future of Korean heavy metal.
I hope we can all overcome this difficult time wisely together. We will repay you with the best show again this year. See you at the venue. Fighting, everyone! To a bright tomorrow for the Korean heavy metal scene!
2020 MMC Executive Director Lee Seung-hyuk
2019 Mullae Metal City “All the Metals Lead to Mullae” – Concept
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A plan to make the iron city of Mullae-dong known as the first gateway Asian metal must pass through and a hub of exchange between countries. Bands representing Korea, China, Japan and Russia were invited.
I set this year’s title, a little cheekily, as “All the Metals Lead to Mullae”. Korean metal is starting a new flow, and we are the people standing in a place in that flow. Mullae Metal City (2014), No Mercy Fest (2015), which brings many overseas scenes in, Vermin Majesty (2015) and Downfall Fest (2016) began around the same time, each in its own style, and are the people who have built and now sustain the Korean metal scene. The revival of Hellride in 2018 was also encouraging news.
Keeping a close eye on the varied activities unfolding in the scene, MMC is also fiercely planning and preparing its program with its own color and character.
This year MMC wants to make the iron city of Mullae-dong known as the first gateway Asian metal music must pass through and a hub of lively exchange between countries. We have invited bands representing Korea, China, Japan and Russia: Horror of Pestilence [China], who are upgrading Chinese-speaking metal; Illusion Force [Japan], a multinational Korea–US–Japan band made up of a Korean vocalist, a bassist from Berklee in the US and the Japanese Shiromaru brothers; and Inner Missing [Russia], who will introduce the Russian metal scene anew through the doom/gothic metal rarely heard in Korea. It will be a special chance to enjoy the flow of Asian heavy metal in one place. Please see the results with your own eyes.
Note.
Mullae-dong has many workshops without proper signs. Last year, while taking part in a local artists’ project, I made the signboard for the Segye Precision factory in the basement of our building. I was not qualified to make signs, but out of gratitude to the owner who trusted me with it, I made the signboard with a world map as its background. On the day the new sign went up, he said, “You conquer the world with Mullae Metal City, and I’ll do it with my technology!” and we were both as excited as if a new shop had opened. This year’s title may well have been decided in that moment. I dedicate this show to the owner of Segye Precision, who recently passed away in an accident, and I wish for the hopeful work of all the master craftsmen of Mullae’s ironworks. Because Mullae is Metal City!
2018 MMC: The Summit of Asian Metal Trade Union – Declaration
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To become a symbol that protects Mullae-dong amid gentrification, MMC gave up the stubbornness of a small local festival and stepped into a wider world, presenting heavy metal from Korea, China, Taiwan and Japan.
Every year as I put on the festival, I ask myself: “Why must we hold MMC again this year?” Thinking back on the first MMC, planned to revive the image of Mullae-dong’s steel shops and ironworks, my head spins at how to view Mullae-dong’s rapidly changing atmosphere and where MMC should go from here.
Five years ago, when MMC was first planned, Mullae-dong was like an incubator for young creators. It was a huge artistic laboratory where anything could be tried, and MMC was one of the projects that could come out of that free atmosphere.
But in the last few years, real-estate developers have swarmed in, followed by commercial facilities like a rising tide, and the iron factories and artists’ studios that symbolized Mullae-dong are gradually disappearing. At first I thought it was nothing, but as more neighbors left without a word, the village lost its vitality. MMC, too, feels the crisis. Clinging to a festival merely to build a local brand is likely to end up as a catalyst for the gentrification now under way. To get past this difficult situation, we decided to give up the stubbornness of staying a small festival within the neighborhood. Thinking of a Mullae-dong that will change even faster over the next five years, I imagine MMC growing into a fiercer, bigger festival and becoming a symbol that protects Mullae-dong, the iron city and home of artistic creation, so that it will be remembered as a true Metal City.
MMC 2018 is an attempt to go out into a wider world from this Mullae-dong environment. I declare that it will remain a heavy metal festival that moves forward actively.
Thus “2018 MMC: The Summit of Asia Metal Trade Union” focuses on East Asian heavy metal including Korea. Through the 2018 MMC Stage we introduce heavy metal from four East Asian countries — Korea, China, Taiwan and Japan — to Korean audiences. In particular, I express deep thanks to FROST TEARS [TAIWAN], ALLEGIANCE REIGN [JAPAN] and LEVIATHAN [CHINA], who came from neighboring countries to take part in this year’s Mullae Metal City. I was deeply moved that, despite the modest treatment of a small music festival, they gladly joined us to meet Korea’s heavy metal musicians and fans. I hope Korean metalheads will respond to their music.
2018 Mullae Metal City : The Summit of Asian Metal Trade Union Part 1 →
2017 MMC: 30th Anniversary of Korea Metal – Declaration
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Thirty years since heavy metal first appeared in Korea. Rather than re-creating the past, a place to see and enjoy Korean heavy metal as it lives and moves today.
Earlier this year, Metallica played in Korea. When I saw the photo James posted from his visit to Mullae-dong, I was overcome with mixed emotions. And I resolved to work hard on MMC so that, ten years from now, we can truly bring a big band like Metallica to Mullae-dong. What began as a modest show just for fun seems, as time passes, to have grown unexpected ambitions.
The first such ambition is to take stock, even in a small way, of Korean heavy metal. Many rock festivals are held successfully every year, and many are bigger and better than MMC, but sadly there has been none that commemorates a single genre in a broad perspective. Heavy metal, which can be seen as the starting point of Korean fan culture, has kept evolving over a long time, yet there has been no occasion to celebrate it. I could not help asking whether there should be a place where its protagonists gather once and pat each other on the shoulder.
This year marks 30 years since music was first presented in Korea under the name of heavy metal. Thirty years ago, at the most dynamic time in Korea, heavy metal was the most powerful popular culture, landing an iron punch on stubborn establishment culture and captivating young people at once. Today, although heavy metal has become a non-mainstream genre, it is also true that everyone from first-generation bands to newcomers is bearing musical fruit through new attempts. The title of MMC 2017 is “30th Anniversary of Korea Metal”. Rather than merely recreating thirty years ago, I hope this will be a place where we can all see and enjoy Korean heavy metal as it lives and thrives today.
We have prepared hard to repay those who have supported us, and the musicians and audiences who join us every year without fail. Please enjoy it to the fullest. See you at the festival!
2017 MMC Executive Director Lee Seung-hyuk
2016 MMC: Specialty Metals Corporation – Declaration
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A lineup representing every era, region and genre, where up-and-coming bands and legends share one stage and exchange. A pledge to remain the one festival that holds to the principle of metal.
Mullae Metal City (MMC) is a small heavy metal festival held in Mullae-dong. It began in 2014 as a planned show, with the aim of “beating the music of iron in the city of iron,” at a venue called Space Moon in the middle of Mullae-dong’s steel industrial complex. Since then, with 6 shows and 25 bands in 2014 and 7 shows and 30 bands in 2015, we have invited a total of 55 domestic and international heavy metal bands, and amid the interest of metal fans and musicians Mullae Metal City has grown into a locally based music brand. This year, befitting its subtitle “Specialty Metals Corporation”, MMC has put together a lineup representing each era, region and genre. It is significant in itself that up-and-coming bands who will lead the Korean metal scene share a stage with legendary bands, and that bands representing the metal scene of each hometown can gather in one place and exchange.
The image of an “iron city” played a large part in making MMC known to the outside world in Mullae-dong, once a barren land for heavy metal. Mullae-dong is a place that shows, more honestly than anywhere else, the rapid change and dynamism of Korea. The alleys of Mullae-dong still hold the traces of the industrialization of the 1970s and 80s, and the people who drove that heat are still keeping their places. Walk its streets and the clang of beaten iron, the sparks of welding and the smell of steel blend into a scene from a black-metal music video. From shops with “metal” in their names to PC cafés, it is a strange neighborhood where everything is metal.
We believe Mullae-dong, where the desire for free creation and expression can be released to the fullest, is the perfect backdrop to bring out the flavor of metal. Musical trends move faster these days, but the Korean heavy metal scene keeps developing steadily. As long as its history, there are musicians representing each period, and they are still very active. There are fans who respond every time news of new releases and activities arrives. The only regret is the reality that stages keep shrinking and venues that can host metal shows can be counted on one hand.
I hope MMC can be an attempt to broaden the base of metal music. It is now time to build a performance culture that pierces the audience’s ears and lets them enjoy themselves freely, rather than shows that must achieve “guaranteed success” by putting “something everyone will like” on stage with “adequate equipment”. MMC will remain a modest festival where metal fans can communicate and enjoy musical richness. But it will also be the one and only festival that sticks to the principle of metal.
Finally, I thank all the musicians who took part in this MMC, and Kim Kyung-sun of Downfall Fest, Thumbo of Vermin Majesty and Lee Hyo-sung of Nomad Music, who gladly joined in the production. May MMC, with the fellowship forged this time, become a stream of rain in a parched world. I hope we can keep building it relentlessly.
Lee Seung-hyuk (2016 MMC Executive Director, CEO of URBAN ART)