A long trip to the land of Ozz

In Ozzfest's 11-year history, several acts have put a foreign spin on Satan's favorite soundtrack. But this year the sold-out metal extravaganza, which rolls into the Tweeter Center tomorrow, has seriously gone international. Bands from Italy, Australia, and Germany have previously gotten their passports stamped to land in Mansfield, and, of course, there was the Great Swedish Invasion of '05.

By and large, though, the sweltering riff-and-stomp summer tour has been a British and American affair. But this year's model features acts from Taiwan, Poland, Finland, Puerto Rico, and Canada -- all proving that speedy guitar licks, double-bass drum bludgeoning, and the pinky-pointer salute are indeed part of a universal language.

As the first-ever Asian metal band to be invited to Ozzfest, the members of ChThonic (pronounced Thaw-nic) may be newcomers to the United States, but they are already huge stars in their native Taiwan. Yet they are able to walk the country's streets unrecognized for the most part, says lead singer Freddy Lim, thanks to the elaborate "corpse paint" that decorates, and obscures, their faces.

Although he admits to being a Kiss fan as a kid, Lim says his thrash-metal sextet's penchant for dressing up is rooted in Taiwanese "eight generals" folklore.

"Traditional Taiwanese priests use this makeup to communicate with gods and ghosts and to strengthen themselves, so that's quite the same what we need on the stage because all the music we write [is] about the gods, ghosts, and mythologies of Taiwan," explains Lim on a bus rolling through Wisconsin.

The group's hard-charging latest release, "Seediq Bale," is rooted in that mythology, and its current tour is dubbed "UNlimited" as a commentary on the band's dissatisfaction with the United Nations' limiting of Taiwan's participation in that international organization.

But new fans are forgiven if they can't quite decipher every word that Lim barks out in a voice somewhere between the customary Cookie Monster roar and a kind of Satanic quacking.

"Basically, the lyric is English but some important parts we will say in Mandarin or aboriginal Taiwanese," Lim says. "I think it's not too easy for you to understand. And also, it's a concept album."

This combination of Slayer-style speed and fury, symphonic synth parts, and ethnic personalization of epic stories is becoming common in a Far East metal scene that previously was content to ape its more famous forebears, says Lim.

"Asian metal bands at first just tried to do whatever the Western bands have done, like to write about vampires and the antichrist or Satan," he says. "But later on there were more and more metal bands in Asia that wanted to write something about ourselves because it's not normal for Asians to write something about vampires or Satan because it's not a part of our culture. So I think it's just a way of self-recognition."

SARAH RODMAN

Ankla means anchor in Spanish, and it makes perfect sense that this LA-based outfit would name itself after something both extremely heavy and rock solid, while nodding to its Latin roots. That's certainly what its new album, "Steep Trails," sounds and feels like.

Although listeners won't exactly hear a salsa on the band's new disc, founding guitarist and Puerto Rican native Ramon Ortiz spent more than a decade exploring a hyper-heavy hybrid of Latin-infused metal with his previous band, Puya (which performed at Ozzfest in 1999). Ankla -- which includes Brazilian singer Ikaro Stafford, Puerto Rican percussionist Oscar Santiago, Mexican drummer Pepe Clark, and LA bassist Tony Castaneda -- represents an unrelentingly ferocious and forceful expansion of Ortiz's approach. Call it melting-pot metal with muscle.

"My idea for Ankla was to keep the Caribbean percussion and swing but make the metal side of it heavier than anything I had done before," writes Ortiz in an e-mail from the road. "This fusion has been my lifelong mission. It's my voice."

That voice was effectively brought to the fore by Bob Marlette, who produced the album and has worked with Black Sabbath, Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford, and Evanescence, among others.

The band's brutal rhythmic shifts, industrial-strength guitar pyrotechnics, and Ortiz's spleen-venting, lung-shredding vocal attack all nod to classic metal's loud, proud history. But there's another kind of history informing the music, too -- not just at its edges but at its core, like a beating heart.

"We play true Latin metal," Ortiz writes. "The message is, believe in yourself and think for yourself -- no matter what everybody else thinks."

JONATHAN PERRY

Mr. Lordi feels at odds with today's heavy metal scene. The 34-year-old singer and founder of the Finnish classic-metal quintet Lordi, which debuts on Ozzfest's main stage this year, is a life- long metal fan, but he feels that modern metal is just too, well, heavy.

"For me, it's not about how fast you can go or how low you can growl," says the 34-year-old, whose real name is Tomi Putaansuu. "Melody is the most important thing to me. I've never understood vocals without melody. If it's just growling or screaming, I don't get it," he says gently but clearly perplexed by latter-day metal's gruffness. "It's the same thing with hip-hop. All you need is some sense of rhythm. I'm not saying I don't respect it, I just don't understand it."

Lordi's blend of anthemic metal and GWAR-style schlock -- Lordi members wear ghoulish latex costumes -- represented Finland in the 2006 Eurovision song contest. Contestants usually comprise girls in pretty flowered dresses -- "or old men singing ballads," chimes in Putaansuu -- not a monstrous, albeit melodic, metal band. But Lordi won.

Putaansuu's first musical love was Kiss: "It's stupid to deny that influence," he says, "it's so obvious when you hear Lordi." Then he followed the '80s metal boom spearheaded by Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, et al., an era that gave '70s heavy-metal pioneer Osbourne a new lease on life.

"The good thing is that the only band that we come close to musically on Ozzfest is Ozzy himself," says Putaansuu. "If people like Ozzy's music, they will probably dig us, too."

LINDA LABAN