Painkiller (magazine) - History

History

Painkiller 《重型音乐》杂志 (zhòng xíng yin yuè zá zhì) was originally formed by some metal fans in Beijing in 2000. After almost a year of preparation, the first issue came out on a huge release party concert at Volcano Disco (火山迪厅) with 22 rock and metal bands from Beijing. The first issue turned out to be a huge success and sold out very soon, even though due to the high print costs, the retail price was 30 RMB (back then not cheap at all).

Painkiller kept issuing the magazine in unregular publishing periods at first and within two years, it settled by 3 issues a year. The quantity also rose from 3000 copies of the first issue to later 20.000 at its peek time before SARS happened in 2003. With the increasing popularity of online and new media, print numbers of all periodicals in China dropped down dramatically, but Painkiller managed to stay stable with issuing quantity of currently about 12,000 to 15,000 copies.

Yang Yu, who had his own metal magazine "Evil Message Mag" and worked long years for AFM Records when he was in Germany, brought in his old contacts from Europe to help Painkiller build up his recognition outside China and improve its content. A small network of oversea corresponding editors and reporters slowly emerged with time with Sun Yue in the U.K. and now Denmark, famous photographer George Chin in the U.K., Micheal Sean in the U.S., Al Di in Canada (till his return in 2007), Yang Yu's former colleague Andreas Stappert (now editor at Rock Hard) in Germany, etc.

Since several years, long term relationships between famous international labels and record companies has been established, e.g. AFM Records, Nuclear Blast, Century Media, Wacken Records, etc. As one of the first and still til today almost the only music magazine in China, Painkiller remains in regular contact with the international scene and conduct CD reviews and interviews with international labels and management/promotion companies directly. To each issue, there will be an exclusive label report featuring interviews of bands and song contribution of the label on the cover CD.

Meanwhile, Painkiller's artistic supervisor and designer Zakk Wu started a project to print metal shirts for the readership, mostly with his own designs. Occasionally, bands shirt deals were also done for both international and local bands. Dragon Skin is the establishment for those shirts. Due to increasing activities in the live show production, less time could be spent on doing new designs, but whenever you go to a local metal show in Beijing, you will still see kids wearing one of the Dragon Skin-shirts.

Since the beginning, the Painkiller crew would also do local concerts with metal bands regularly. Mostly in the old Get Lucky Bar, where they provided a new home for metal bands, who previously didn't have a steady place to perfome. Later now, new clubs opened such as Nameless Highland and 13 Club. In 2004, an offer came in to do a concert for an Italian power metal band, Labyrinth. Painkiller as the first local institution took the opportunity and enacted a great show for all metal fans and like-minded peers in the scene. 2 years later, the first real challenge came in, to do a show with the famous Germany metal band Edguy, which turned out to be a success as well and boosted Painkiller's reputation within the domestic scene. A lot VIPs of the local music business and media attended the show and they were thrilled by the quality of the gig. Since then, Painkiller has mapped themselves as local promoter for foreign bands. German gothic giants Lacrimosa followed in October that year which broke the record for visitor numbers in Star Live. Before long, Painkiller started to do shows almost non stop.

With the success of its live shows, a lot other companies and organisations outside of the metal realm started to pay attention to Painkiller's quality and ability to organize concerts and live show. Soon, a lot of collaboration projects came in, where Painkiller Productions worked as production team. At first in collaboration with Midi Festival, later Pilot Records, InMusic Festival, Goethe Institute/Germany Embassy, Danish Rock Council ROSA, MuSex/Finnish Embassy, the British Embassy, etc., which also led Painkiller to get more and more involved onto the area of cultural exchange. And with the fast development of Chinese festivals, more and more festival organizers engage Painkiller to be their booking agent and/or production team, e.g. Westlake Festival, Kama Love Festival and Yixian Music Festival.

In 2008, a collaboration between Painkiller and Wacken Open Air was initiated for W.O.A.'s international band contest project Metal Battle. Painkiller therefore started to organize a series of band competition events under this banner and contributes the winning band of each year to participate on the international final battle on the annual W.O.A. festival in Germany.

The more shows Painkiller is doing the broader the spectrum of band choices and it goes beyond the limitation of the metal genre. In collaboration with different local partners, Painkiller is now also often invoved in live shows featuring a diversity of music styles including indie rock, jazz, electro/DJ, pop, etc.

After more than a decade since its establishment, Painkiller has become a solid institution in Chinese rock and live music market. Future focuses are to expand the live show sector, building up a better international network for culture exchange purposes and construct a new online platform to combine sources for better communication.