I’ve been reading stuff about the Taiwanese black metal band Chthonic for sometime, but only recently I was able to check out their music. This first contact coincided with the release of an note where the band claims to have “invented an unique metal genre”.
Well, that was quite funny because my impression pointed to the exactly opposite direction. What I’ve heard and saw about them sounded and looked pretty much like a slightly different version of the modern Norwegian black metal bands.
They claim their makeup is inspired by a local folklore concept, but visually the result is something really close to the old corpsepaint cliché, only slightly different.
Chthonic
Cradle of Filth (UK)
The Kovenant (Nor)
Their lyrics deal with local legends but are still presented in English. They use some exotic native instruments, but from what I have heard these instruments don’t seem to play any important role for the band’s sonority, they figure as an exotic element in songs that are in their essence totally derivative from what Norwegian bands were doing a decade ago.
“The band’s new record label, Spinefarm Records, noticed that CHTHONIC’s music contains not only the elements of mysterious, wrath, evil, but also a sorrowful emotion.”
Is it Chthonic’s new and unique style they’re talking about? I really can’t see what’s new about it, this description would fit prefectly hundreds of black metal bands that appeared since Burzum almost 20 years ago.
“It’s very different from typical black metal bands that describe themselves as ‘Anti-Christ’ or ‘Satan/demon worshippers’…etc.”
Again nothing new here. If you take the mainstream bands like Gorgoroth and Dark Funeral they are mostly anti-christianity and satanic, but come on, there are non-satanic black metal bands since the dawn of the genre. Enslaved played some sort of viking black metal, Immortal never dealt with satanic themes, Bathory went from satanic to viking themes… And what about all the pagan-oriented black metal bands popping up everywhere in Europe in the mid/late 90s?
The video below is quite funny as it was posted together with the article and contradicts everything it says about the band…
You can notice the vocalist is wearing a very typical black metal spiked bracelet and the guitarist has an inverted cross on his t-shirt (I thought they weren’t anti-christian?). The music sounds totally generic and unoriginal, except for the musicians’ racial features I have to confess I’m unable to point out a single element on the whole thing that indicates they are a Taiwanese band. The drums, the vocals, the guitars, the keyboard, it all sounds so generic, just like a thousand other bands out there.
A few oriental exotic elements here and there are not enough to create a new and “unique metal genre”. As I understand it, Chthonic is just copying a western music genre and selling it as something else.
The very name chosen by the band seems to confirm my impression, as Chthonic derives from a Greek word – Greece, the cradle of the western civilization!
Tags: black metal, Chthonic, Taiwan
