Australia’s Heavy TV recently conducted an interview with frontman Freddy Lim of Taiwanese metallers CHTHONIC, who also is a part of Taiwan’s parliament. You can watch the entire chat below. A few excerpts follow (transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET).
On CHTHONIC‘s origins:
Freddy: “In the beginning, the band CHTHONIC was formed in 1996. Back at that time, I was in my second term at a university. I was very into death metal and black metal. Black metal was quite new in 1996, so I got quite a lot of influences from the Scandinavian bands. I started to think. I had played in many bands when I was in high school, but I didn’t really make my decision on what kind of genre I wanted to play. I played in some bands doing covers of GUNS N’ ROSES and some bands covered some thrash metal bands. When I started to listen to all these extreme metal bands from Europe, from Scandinavian countries, then I started to think, ‘Wow, I really like that kind of music. I like all those symphonic black metal bands.’ Then, I feel I have this kind of emotion with me as well in Taiwan. I want to express my anger or sadness in Taiwan. There is a rich history and mythology in Taiwan, Taiwanese aboriginal tribes as well. I have the same kind of inspirations and feelings. That’s when I made the decision to play this kind of music. Over ten years, we improved our styles and more into Taiwanese styles to mix with Taiwanese things, but at the same time, there has been so many different movements happening in Taiwan as well. Along with the progress of the bands, improving the music, but on the other hand, we have been participating with different movements, which means that there are two things happening at the same time. One is how should I write my own metal? The other thing is what is a better society? How can I get involved in the society to make things better? Things going on at the same time, so, I think the band was…
