CHTHONIC Bassist: We Aren't A Political Band

Raymond Westland of Ghost Cult magazine recently conducted an interview with bassist Doris Yeh of Taiwanese metallers CHTHONIC. A couple of excerpts from the chat follow below.

Ghost Cult: A lot of the lyrics and albums in the band's discography are steeped in Tawainese political and historical themes. Why is this so important for you?

Doris: Ironically, my grandparents from my mother's side were a nurse and a soldier in the army of Chang Kai-Shek who escaped from mainland China when Chang was driven out by the communist armies under Mao. My grandfather on my father's side was almost a victim of the 228 massacre. So when my parents got married, it was nothing short of a revolution in the family. Before I went to university, I knew nothing about the Tawainese history, because talking about that was taboo. Almost all the history of Tawain is related to China. In university, I got classes in English grammar by a professor who also taught about traditional Tawainese folk music. A lot of students skipped classes because of that. He taught us about real Tawainese history and he urged us to read books and do research on the parts which weren't a part of the official curruculum. A lot of people say that music is pure entertaiment and it shouldn't be related to politics. The thing is that politics is almost everywhere in your life. Take Korea, for instance; after the Second World War, there were two different regimes installed in Korea, which divided the country in two and affected the lives of ordinary people in an incredible fashion. The influences of politics on your life may not be noticeable on a day-to-day basis, but it becomes painfully apparent after a longer period of time. It's very important for society to stay on top of political developments. So when people say that music and politics are two seperate things, I feel that it's total bollocks. It's just a poor excuse for people to run away from reality. History is basically the product of political events in the past. I do want to emphasize that CHTHONIC isn't a political band. We just sing about events that happened in the past.

Ghost Cult: Why are the visual aspects to important to you?

Doris: We want our costumes to be connected to our music. If our shows would only be about the music, our fans could just simply listen to our albums or MP3s. If we want to get people to our shows, we need to visualise our music and make people part of the whole experience. We spend a lot of time figuring out which outfits best represent our music. In the beginning, our costumes were just plain weird and silly. They were modelled after Japanese bands. We didn't know where else to buy our costumes than in Japan. Luckily, we work with our own designer nowadays and we can choose with type of costumes fits our our personality best. Dani [Wang; drums] has this facemask with Oriental influences for instance. CJ's [Kao; keyboards] mask is our own creation. We're all so proud of him for letting us go crazy on his mask. He's a trooper.

Ghost Cult: The band also released three high-end video clips in support of "Bú-Tik". Is it still worth to invest so much money in that format in this day and age?

Doris: Because of all the historic references in our music, it's important for us to explain them to our fans, so they get an idea what our music is all about. Those video clips are a great way to explain what our songs are all about. Of course, they were expensive to make and some members of the band had to take loans in order to raise enough funds. We are all convinced it's worth the effort, because those videos received an incredible amount of views from Europe, North America and Australia. It also gave us the chance to work with three different directors who came from totally different backgrounds. The video clip for "Supreme Pain For The Tyrant" is filmed by a movie director, for instance. The one for "Defenders Of Bú-Tik Palace" is directed by someone who normally makes commercials. A famous Tawainese photographer directed the video clip for "Next Republic". It was really inspiring to see how these people took our ideas and taking it to a whole new level. Being involved in the creational process of a video clip is more exciting for me than making an album. For "Defenders Of Bú-Tik Palace" we underwent two months of brutal martial arts training. The choreographer asked us to do a lot of jumping and kicking moves, which brought us lots of cuts and bruises. It took us 25 hours to shoot all the martial art parts. When we're touring in North America, we get a lot of questions in interviews whether we know kung fu, because we're from Asia. At first we didn't know anything about it, but now we do.

Read the entire interview at Ghost Cult magazine.

"Supreme Pain For The Tyrant" video:

"Defenders Of Bú-Tik Palace" video: