CHTHONIC Bassist Comments On '49 Theurgy Chains' Video Shoot

Bassist Doris Yeh of Taiwanese metallers CHTHONIC has commented on the band's latest video — for the song "49 Theurgy Chains" — which can be viewed below. The song comes off the band's new album, "Mirror of Retribution", which will be released in the U.S. on September 15 via Spinefarm Records.

"The concept we wanted to portray is the philosophy of Oriental Hell," she said. "Hundreds of levels of different hell have different sentences. 'Mirror of Retribution' is the first thing you will meet when you fall into the Hell. Through the mirror, you see all the bad things you've done in your lifetime. Each spirit has to face the 'Mirror of Retribution' then the ghost king will send everyone to the specific level of hell that they deserved.

"But it's not good enough to only describe the Hell, so, we found the crossover between Taiwan and Hell, that's '228 Massacre' in our history. We created a main character in our story named 'Tsing-guan', who is the medium (psychic) in the temple. The year was 1947, and the biggest massacre launched by the Chinese Army in Taiwan’s history had occurred. The main character tried to use his ability to go to Hell, stealing the Book of Life and Death, and killing the tyrant of the Chinese Army.

"CHTHONIC decided to use '49 Theurgy Chains' to be our video because the song can describe the struggle when the main character faced suicide himself, like the fate that he can’t refuse. He knows that he may fail, but he still needs to do try. Just like the fate that was met by all of the Taiwanese in 1947.

"We chose a famous sea side of Taiwan to shoot this video. The landscape is both beach and rocky coast in the same place. We shot the video all day from 8:00 am to 9:00 pm. The wind was so strong, so the shooting effect was very good, but the wind also blew away our tents, everybody was getting sunburned and covered in bruises for over 12 hours staying under such strong sunlight and powerful winds.

"When it was near dusk, the director began shooting the scene under the lanterns. The scene was set to be that all members should be still playing under the flaming lanterns. This was a dangerous but interesting experience, because when the lanterns start to catch on fire and fall down one by one, the members didn’t notice that and continued to play, until the oil was leaking from the lantern and one of flaming lanterns fell and hit CJ's keyboard. The director screamed for everybody to retreat!"

"Mirror of Retribution" track listing:

01. Autoscopy
02. Blooming Blades
03. Hearts Condemned
04. Venom in my Veins
05. The Aroused
06. Sing Linng Temple
07. 1947
08. Forty Nine Theurgy Chains
09. Rise of the Shadows
10. Bloody Waves of Sorrow
11. Spell of Setting Sun
12. Unlimited Taiwan

CHTHONIC (pronounced "Thonic") is:

Freddy Lim - vocals
Doris Yeh - bass
Jesse Liu - guitar
Dani Wang - drums
CJ - piano/synthesizer