| Talking Rock and Politics With Taiwanese Metal Band Chthonic |
|
|
| Written by Stella Kim, courtesy Crusher Magazine | |
|
Page 1 of 2
 Chthonic rocks their North American crowd  Doris on the bass guitar edging the crowd on while singer Freddy Lim sings Chthonic, pronounced “thonic,” is a black metal band hailing from Taiwan, a small-island country that separated from China in 1911 after a bitter conflict that has yet to be resolved. China and Taiwan still remain foes after almost a century, which has created many difficulties for Taiwan as China’s influence in international politics has widened. Some of you may already be aware of the band's political passion if you have seen them at Ozzfest this summer, where they were undoubtedly one of most attention-grabbing bands on the second stage, or on their run with Nile this fall. If you have seen their performance, most likely you have also seen vocalist Freddy Lim's earnest speech about Taiwan’s independence and support for Taiwan’s entry to the United Nations—along with a dose of Chthonic’s unique brand of melodic black metal, featuring colorful lyrics incorporating Taiwanese mythology and an instrument called the erhu, a traditional instrument similar to a violin. On their recent headlining tour, Chthonic also hosted two press conferences, in Washington, D.C. and New York, commandeering international attention to Taiwan’s sticky political situation along with their music. I had an opportunity to sit down with Freddy Lim, the vocalist, and Jesse Liu, the guitarist of the band to speak more about their music, politics, passion, and more. Q: Who are you? Freddy Lim: I’m the vocalist, Freddy, from Chthonic. Jesse Liu: I’m the guitar player, Jesse. Q: What are you up to? Tell me about what album’s being released in the U.S, what you’ve been doing this summer. My understanding is Seediq Bale is the only album released in the U.S so far and you have a greatest hits coming up. FL: Yes, there’s Seediq Bale, which was released on SPV late last year. This year, SPV will also release two more titles from the back catalogue. Then next month, SPV will release another one, which is the greatest hits. So after September, there will be four titles in the U.S. Q: Great. So what have you been doing this summer? JL: Touring, touring, touring, touring. Play the show, sleep, eat. Q: How does it feel to be the first Asian band to play Ozzfest? One could say Chthonic is the first Asian band to have a significant presence in U.S metal scene in a while. JL: Great. Nice. FL: I think we’re very lucky to have this kind of experience. The crowd here is so much crazier than crowds in Asia. Also they appreciate our kind of music very much. Q: I’d love to hear about how you guys got together, what’s your vision, a general introduction and history of the band, if you will. FL: It’s a long story. Q: You can give me the long story. Well, the short version of the long story. FL: Well, I’ll give you the long story anyway. I’m the only original member. I’ve played for eleven years. Jesse and Doris, the bassist, they’ve been here for eight years. And the other three, they’ve been members for three. So now, we work very tightly together. The first three years, when I played with other members, there was no metal scene in Taiwan at all. So I had to find people who played punk or some other music to play extreme metal with me. But after a few years, they didn’t want to play metal anymore. So I started to recruit members. I found Jesse, who appreciated this kind of music very much, then Doris. Three of us worked together for a long time now. (Pointing at Dani, the drummer) And then, he’s the brother of our first drummer. His brother didn’t like this kind of music. After his brother played with us, he decided to play this kind of music. CJ, the keyboardist, he had his own band. He wanted to talk to me about how to manage a band. When I found out we had to find a new keyboardist, I wanted him. And the last one is the violinist, Su-Nung. Before him, I played the violin. But it didn’t work, so I had to find someone to play violin. He didn’t know much about metal, but he studied hard. Q: So what’s your common vision? What do you guys share? FL: We believe that we can create metal from Asia. We want everyone from the Western world to know that we have metal in Asia. Q: Tell me about your visual image, the dramatic names. What are you portraying through all these and how do you incorporate them into your live shows? FL: We have different names for every different album. JL: You can check our MySpace for our names. But… Q: What about your visual? FL: You mean the face paint? It comes from Taiwanese folklore. Priests wore makeup to scare the spirits away. We kind of try to do the same thing with our characters. We can become whatever we want and tell the kind of story we want. Q: So the makeup represents the transformation into your characters? FL: Yes. Q: And is the theme consistent with your lyrics? FL: Yes. The concept of our albums is about Taiwanese Gods, folklore, myths. |
