When Taiwan’s Chthonic started making inroads into North America in the early ‘10s, they had already had a decade-plus worth of domestic history and albums steeped in melodic black metal under its belt. Still, the band seemed like a mythical and curious beast in that they hailed from a nation with hardly any metal history, let alone black metal history. Also contributing to the novelty was their cultural and personal take on corpse paint, having bassist/burgeoning supermodel, Doris Yeh thrust into the spotlight and their infusion of Asian sounds and themes. All this attracted media attention which the band wasn’t afraid to embrace.
As time has gone on, the members of Chthonic have branched out beyond the band with their personal lives and interests. Guitarist Jesse Liu has been spotted doing the acoustic performances and working with ESP on custom model axes. Yeh is now a mom and is deeply involved in Taiwan’s women’s rights movement. Most publicly, vocalist Freddy Lim made the jump into politics and as leader of Taiwan’s New Power Party and has become an elected member of Taiwanese parliament. The band’s new album, Battlefields of Asura (their ninth) came out yesterday and because we’re sure you can elsewhere stream and/or buy it and read interviews and reviews with it as its focus we decided to get in touch with Lim to discuss politics in Taiwan, his making the move to a world most disparate from metal, how and why he did it and all that’s entailed.
So, is it that you’re the face of a political party or that you formed a new political party outright?
Yeah, that’s right, we formed a new party. Three years ago.
How does somebody just form a political party? What’s the process and what do you have to do?
[Laughs] I have always been quite active in social movements, so I just found some friends who are social activists who had worked together before and we decided to form a party together. We have been encouraged by a social movement from 2014 called the Sunflower Movement which was a bunch of young people occupying the Taiwanese parliament to stop a deeper trade agreement between Taiwan and China. That movement encouraged a lot of people; many of the activists and others decided to work together to form a new party after that movement.
Before your New Power Party came along, how many major political parties made up Taiwan’s political scene?
Basically, there were two main political parties. Of course, there have been hundreds of parties registered, but there are two main ones and two or three smaller parties. After our party formed and we ran for parliament in 2015 and 2016, we had five seats elected into a parliament of 113 seats total. Now, we are the third largest party in parliament.
Oh wow. That happened quickly!
Yeah, but I think that’s because the young people were quite supportive.
How would you describe your platform and what are the differences from the other parties?
One of the main parties is called the KMT Party and basically they were originally made up of people who had escaped from China after WWII. They had been kicked out by the Chinese communists and they ruled Taiwan for half a century with martial law. It’s an authoritarian party, but they have tried to evolve to become more democratic, but they are a very pro-China, extreme conservative party. The other main one is called the DPP Party, the Democratic Progressive Party and that’s a local party founded by Taiwanese. The founders of this party were the activists who fought against the KMT Party and they are more of a conservative, pro-Taiwan party. So, both of them are conservative parties, but the difference is that one is pro-China and the other is pro-Taiwan. My party is pro-Taiwan, but liberal. My hope is that our party will help Taiwan develop and become a healthier bi-party system. My hope is that our party and DPP would become the main parties and there would be no more questions about being pro-China versus pro-Taiwan. Then, we can discuss more domestic issues.
I saw online that you’re in favor of same-sex marriage and making marijuana legal. How well does that go over with the conservatives and do you get looked down upon by the old-school parties?
It has been quite a difficult debate these last few years with the conservative people, but I can strongly feel that the young people are supportive of our ideas. I think most other democratic countries in the world with bi-party systems are divided by liberal and conservative, so I do hope that Taiwan can get to this stage and create a healthier platform for discussion.
It sounds like there is a liberal movement in Taiwan, but all that was needed was someone to legitimize it by putting it into party politics.
Yes! I do believe so because the old discussions and traditional debates in politics are about pro-China or Taiwan and that’s not healthy for Taiwan. I think most people living in Taiwan should be pro-Taiwan. Then, we can debate about our issues from the conservative or liberal side. Most of the young people here are liberal or centre-left and they support progressive values.
(Lim, second from left, and other members of the New Power Party leadership. Pic by Liao Chen-huei)
For you, coming from the metal world, especially with roots in black metal with its history, does your profile as a musician come up as a negative factor and get thrown in your face?
First of all, most Taiwanese people don’t really understand metal. Many of our fans and supporters in Taiwan like our band and our music, but Chthonic is the only metal music they listen to. They listen to Chthonic just because we write about Taiwanese stories which can inspire them and make them feel those deeper nationalistic feelings inside them. They’ll listen to regular music and Chthonic [laughs]. But even when I decided to form the party and run for parliament, most people didn’t consider me serious. It happens everywhere where some artist or musician or someone decides to run for office in a non-serious way. They just want to make news. So, people lumped me in with that at first. But the more I put my strength and focus into politics and tried to communicate with society, I could feel the citizens, especially in my constituency, realizing that I was serious and then they tried to meet me with a seriousness about the issues. After being elected, most of the people in Taiwan consider me very serious now.
What’s the political tone in Taiwan like? Is it like in the US with attack ads, personal smear campaigns and the like?
Yes. It’s just like American politics. When I ran my campaign, my opponent had been in parliament for five terms, 20 years. He was a representative in the KMT Party and he started to make ads criticising my hair, my tattoos, my lyrics, criticising how I look on stage. He tried to look down on me and metal, but it went even further; he and his colleagues were saying stuff that because I had long hair I must be a “girlie guy.” He wasn’t just looking down on me and metal, but he was looking down on other parts of society. All the ruthless ads they made just ended up embarrassing them.
Chthonic’s new record talks about Taiwanese history and culture. Is there an application from the topics you’re singing to what you’re talking about in modern terms on the political trail?
Um, yeah. I think there are connections because each of the songs represents a Taiwanese god or goddess. On our previous albums, I was trying to write songs to connect to the stories I would come up with, but this time I couldn’t help connect all the stories to what I’m doing right now. Although I was planning to write about the stories of gods and goddesses for each song, I naturally couldn’t help write about my present day values and ideas and how they connect to the stories or the history behind them. The deeper I got into the lyrics and melodies, the more I connected them to the values that have inspired my political career. As a member of parliament, we always have to shake hands with people in temples or in different places in the community. So, I hear a lot of stories and even though we have written many songs about Taiwanese culture on past albums this time it felt different because I have visited so many different temples, read and heard so many different types of stories and been through difficulties in my political career. All these combined together and stirred up a lot of emotions in me and I think that drove me to write the new album.
With all the work involved being a member of parliament, how is that affecting the time available to do the band?
In the last few years we’ve barely played live and once this album is out we won’t be able to tour like before. We might be able to play some festivals, but not a long term tour like before. I barely go to band practice anymore [laughs]. After I was elected, we promised the fans that a new album was coming out, but within the band we hadn’t discussed anything about a new album for a few years. Suddenly, last year, the other members of the band got a bunch of material from me and they were shocked that I sent so much material so suddenly. I told them I couldn’t help it; there had been so many emotions inside me and if I didn’t write songs I’d explode, especially with everything that I had been through with politics. I just needed to write songs and express my feelings. The new album is not like something we promised to do, it’s more like something we needed to do.
Do you keep close tabs on politics in other parts of the world? Like the shit show going on in American politics or Brexit in the UK? How much of an impact does, or will, any of that have on Taiwan?
[Laughs] Of course I follow it a bit, but I don’t get too deep into other countries’ political scenes. For Taiwan now, there have been many new opportunities to strengthen the relations with the US, the UK and many European countries. Earlier this year, I visited the UK parliament to have meetings with members and all of them were trying to find new opportunities to strengthen their relations with Taiwan because the Brexit stuff has forced them to find new partners in the world. They can’t just lay all their opportunities with the EU anymore and they’re all trying to find new partnerships in Asia. There have been many positive discussions in the meetings with the UK. In the US, there have been similar things happening because during Obama’s second term he had a policy of returning to Asia. I don’t know how it is, but it seems the Trump administration is continuing on with that and there have been some new opportunities between Taiwan and the US that started towards the end of Obama’s second term. But really no one knows what Trump is going to do or say next. So you have to look on the bright side; it might mean there’s an open slate of opportunity that no one knows about yet.
Chthonic online: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter
New Power Party: Wikipedia, Facebook (it’s not in English, but give ‘er a looksee anyway)
