Taipei Metal

Interview: Chthonic - Part 1

Thanks to a grueling touring regimen in 2007, many metal fans in North America and Europe were introduced to Taiwan's Chthonic for the first time. Those people might be forgiven for thinking that Chthonic is a new band; the latest breakout sensation. But they should know by now that there is no such thing as an overnight success. That band that just seems to “come out of nowhere” has probably been slogging it out in godforsaken live houses and rehearsal spaces for a long time before their music finds its way to your ears, and Chthonic is no exception. 2008 marks an even dozen years of existence for the Taiwanese six-piece, and in early 2009 they will release their fifth studio album. So for the uninitiated, here’s a brief history of a band that has become the pride of the Taiwanese metal scene, and an increasingly visible and ever-vigilant advocate of Taiwan’s fight for international recognition as an independent state.

In the first ten years of their existence, Chthonic rose from being a local oddity in Taiwan, the first original extreme metal band in the history of the country, to become one of the most celebrated metal bands in the Asian scene. Though it initially languished in the discount bins of local record stores,  Chthonic's first album, 1999's Where the Ancestor's Souls Gathered, led many young Taiwanese to experience extreme metal for the first time; a full twenty years or more after many in North America and Europe did the same. Following the release of their debut full-length, the band embarked on its first tour which would see them play to crowds of students, many of whom were likely witnessing their first metal show, at 15 colleges and universities around Taiwan. The following year Chthonic again entered the studio to record 9th Empyrean. With their unique brand of symphonic black metal that was steeped in Taiwanese history and folklore, Chthonic  took their music on the road once more, this time going beyond Taiwan's borders for the first time to Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Japan, winning many fans along the way. They even put in an appearance at the Milwaukee Metal Fest in 2002, giving many North American metal heads their first glimpse of an er-hu, the one-stringed Oriental violin which gives Chthonic’s music its distinct Asian sound and somber, hauntingly beautiful strain.

During any downtime Chthonic may have had during the early years of the band, front man Freddy Lim was busy promoting metal in Taiwan, attempting to forge a metal scene on the island even if he had to do so almost singlehandedly. He brought heavyweight bands such as Megadeth and Biohazard to  Taipei to play the annual  Formoz Festival, a festival which he took over and turned into a summer institution.  He also fell heavily into debt for his trouble. After Megadeth came and went  it would take four years for his bottom line to creep back into the black. But as a result of his efforts metal grew little by little in Taiwan, an island largely in the grip of karaoke culture and saccharine mando-pop.  Without a promoter such as Freddy who was willing to spend big and,  more often than not, lose big, many of today's Taiwanese metal heads would never have been exposed to metal.

In 2003 Freddy, who today is the lone original member of the band, and Chthonic’s toils were rewarded when the band won a Golden Melody Award, the Asian equivalent of a Grammy, for Best Band for their third album Relentless Recurrence. The award was bestowed upon them by none other than Chen Shui-bian, the current courtroom fixture who, at the time, answered to the title “Mr. President.”

Thanks to Chthonic, metal was becoming a relevant form of music in Taiwan, not just noise to be dismissed by parents who, according to the Chinese custom of filial piety, look forward to being taken care of by their offspring in their old age. Those same parents would likely have recoiled in horror at the thought of the fruit of their loins being turned rotten and, more importantly to many elder Taiwanese, impoverished by a life dedicated to metal prior to Chthonic's win at the Golden Melody Awards. But now Taiwanese metal fans had that vital bit of mainstream recognition they needed to justify their passion and show their parents and peers that this art form was for real. Chthonic played extreme metal, and there they were shaking hands with the president, the man with whom the fate of the precariously positioned de-facto independent nation lay. In  a society where so much emphasis is place on pleasing one's parents, on being an obedient son or daughter, this was a major coup for metal.

Seediq Bale, the bands most widely acclaimed album to date, came out in 2005, gaining the band a wider international following on the strength of strong reviews in the international metal press and the fact that the album was released in both English and Chinese versions, making Chthonic's music more accessible for their non-Chinese speaking fans. This was followed by the bands first greatest hits compilation, 2006's Anthology: A Decade on the Throne.  In its first decade of existence, Chthonic had  clawed its way first to  local acceptance and finally to domestic and Asian dominance. Then, in 2007, the year of the release of Pandemonium, the band's second compilation album, Chthonic entered the lexicon of metal heads from Boston to Brussels when they toured extensively through the U.S. and Europe for the first time. They also became the first Asian band  to join the Ozzfest tour in the history of what was then still a traveling festival. The theme of the tour was UNlimited Taiwan, as Freddy and his band mates sought to educate audiences about Taiwan's repeated rejection in its attempts to join international organizations such as the UN and the WHO due to pressure from Beijing.

The band members, who at this point are veterans of rigorous, worldwide touring, are now cooling their heels at home in Taiwan, playing the occasional show here and there, after recording their latest album with producer Rob Caggiano in Los Angeles. Caggiano, when not padding his credentials as one of metal’s most promising producers, still pulls six-string duty in the unstoppable thrash machine that is Anthrax. TaipeiMetal.com sat down with Chthonic’s vocalist and resident political activist Freddie Lim and guitar player Jesse Liu at The Wall Live House in Taipei, the metal Mecca in Taiwan which is owned in part by Freddy himself, to discuss the band’s upcoming album, the history of Chthonic, and the unique political situation Taiwan is perpetually mired in.