INTERVIEW: Freddy Lim & Doris Yeh – Chthonic
Since the release of 2013’s Bú-Tik the lives of Taiwanese metal maestro’s CHTHONIC have changed significantly in the pursuit of family life and political endeavours. Their long awaited follow up comes in the form of eighth studio album Battlefields Of Asura which was released yesterday. We caught up with frontman Freddy Lim and the iconic Doris Yeh to find out what we can expect from the new release and how they foresee the future continuance of CHTHONIC going forward.
Did you find that after the lengthy hiatus that CHTHONIC came back revitalised with fresh ideas when writing Battlefields Of Asura?
Freddy: Yes, we have all been through many different journeys in the past few years and they have provided us fruitful inspirations to write songs. On one hand, my political career requires me to improve my abilities in different areas and learn to face more difficult situations. On the other hand, the birth of my daughter gave me an incredible amount of joy and hope, but the sudden death of my father gave me incurable helplessness and feeling of being lost. I found out that what I’ve been through has given me a lot of emotions; joy, anger, sorrow and happiness. These accumulated emotions made writing songs smoother than ever before. These emotions are all reflected in the songs.
Was it reassuring to see the positive response when CHTHONIC announced their return after all this time?
Doris: Yes, sure! In the past few years fans have been always asking about when we will have new material. Now that the new album is being released and seeing so many fans satisfied, we feel very satisfied too.
Did you feel any pressure with this release to ensure that it was of the same high quality that your fans have come to expect from your releases?
Doris: We don’t tend to think this way. We have always tried to make each album better than the last one to meet our own requirements.
The press release stated that Battlefields Of Asura is a prologue to previous releases. Can you explain how this ties in with your back catalogue?
Doris: Every single song in the album represents a deity in Taiwanese folk belief and the spirit. The entire album itself is a conceptual story which is the prequel of a series of stories told in our albums started with Seediq Bale in 2005. One of the main characters Tsing-Guan is a psychic who has the power to travel through hell and change history. Our new album tells from which deities Tsing-Guan got his divine power and his birth.
Battlefields Of Asura feels like your most elaborate and experimental album to date. Was it a challenge including such a variety of instrumentation in your songs and ensuring it all gelled together?
Freddy: Yes, it’s a very elaborate album! But it’s not really a challenge to compose and produce it. The idea of combining a variety of instrumentation with the melodies and arrangements of Taiwanese characteristics started from the album Takasago Army and have been improved and developed in the album Bú-Tik. Then after the past five years of preparation I think the new album has become quite mature and natural.
Freddy, do you ever experience any overlap between your political career and your musical career with CHTHONIC or does you prefer to keep the two separate?
Freddy: Currently I maintain my life as an MP as my primary work and find time to participate in songwriting on the CHTHONIC side. Fortunately during my time in the Parliament there have been so many different feelings and emotions growing inside me and they all became materials and inspirations for me to write music. So writing music is not an obligation as a member of CHTHONIC, but something I can’t stop doing!
How did you find collaborating with Randy Blythe and Denise Ho? How did these opportunities come to be?
Doris: We’ve known Randy since we met and played at Ozzfest 2007, after that we’ve been good friends for many years. We invited Randy to come to Taiwan to be our guest at one of our concerts in 2011, and then when we made a plan to film a movie there’s a role that suits Randy very much and he agreed to act right away! The song Souls Of Revolution is the theme song of the movie and also one track of our new album where Randy featured on the track. As for Denise Ho she is a very famous singer in Hong Kong. We invited her to play a rock festival we promoted in 2015 in South of Taiwan, after that we kept in touch for years. When we were thinking whom to work with for the new album her name just came out and luckily she was happy to work with us too.
CHTHONIC have become renowned for their heavy touring schedules. Do you feel this will be possible to continue considering how your personal lives have progressed?
Doris: This has been a big issue for the band. It’ll be impossible to have heavy touring schedules like before, but we don’t refuse to do short-term tour within two weeks and festivals will be more possible for us to do, but of course it has been scheduled during the break of Freddy’s congress session.
Do you see CHTHONIC making their way to the UK for some dates in support of this release?
Doris: It’s under discussion right now, I hope we can make it in 2019. Please stay tuned!
With Freddy being heavily involved in politics and other members giving more focus to family life where do you see the future of CHTHONIC going forward?
Doris: Even though lives have changed so much for all the members we haven’t set a time limit for how far we can go or when should we stop. Like Freddy said politics is what he has to do now, but music is what he wants to do of all time. We will still find times to make music and do live shows. We just keep going and making music until the days we can’t go any further or don’t want to do it anymore.
Battlefields Of Asura is out now via self-release.
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