Headbangers from Taiwan at Pulp Summer Slam

MANILA, Philippines — Three Taiwanese heavy metal bands formed part of this year’s line-up of foreign acts for Pulp Summer Slam. We were told by organizers of the longest-running metal festival in Southeast Asia that it was the bands’ decision to join the event held recently at Amoranto Stadium in Quezon City even without a charge just so they could share their music and play before Pinoy fans.

The hardcore metalheads would know that metal music is a big part of the music fiber of Taiwan. The article Headbanging in Taiwan tells the story of how the Taiwanese got “caught in the mosh,” or as       fans would term it. The authors Hsiang Chiu and Gabriele de Seta said that heavy metal music arrived in Taiwan in the early ‘80s through “the precarious mediation of daoban (pirated) tapes and foreign television channels, and in the course of three decades, it has moved from a niche and hardly accessible genre to an established ensemble of scenes, subgenres, bands, venues, record labels, booking agencies, distributors, rehearsal spaces and audiences.”

The STAR got further insight into the present-day metal music scene through an interview with the bands Flesh Juicer, Bloody Tyrant and Burning Island. These rockers talked about how heavy metal has expressed not just their creativity, but has also been used to reflect their folk traditions, culture and even political leanings. And, if we have actors becoming politicians, Taiwan made international news by electing a prominent heavy metal frontman and activist as legislator. Here are excerpts from the interview: 

How do you feel about being part of this year’s Pulp Summer Slam line-up?

Flesh Juicer: “This is our first appearance in the event and we are very curious as to what will happen in the show since we have added Taiwanese elements combine with modern metal in our sound.”

Bloody Tyrant: “We are very honored to be a part of the lineup, sharing the stage with some of our favorite bands is mesmerizing. Also, this would be the biggest crowd we have played to. We can’t help but turn into fanboys and looking forward to meeting some of our idols.”

Burning Island: “We’re so excited. We want everyone at the Slam to be shocked after they watch our show, with an excited face.” 

Bloody Tyrant includes folk instruments in their music

What’s the story of your band and your band name?

Flesh Juicer: “Once upon a time, we wanted to join a band competition, and we have no name at that time. So we started to imagine more scenes of our lives in the future, and the mosh pit scene came up! It looks like a juicer that screws all human flesh up! So this is why the name Flesh Juicer came up.”

Bloody Tyrant: “Bloody Tyrant started out as a black metal band, and Immortal is one of our favorite bands. They have a song called Tyrant, and we felt that would be an awesome name for a band name, especially after adding the ‘Bloody’ to it.”

Burning Island: “Taiwan is an island and we want to be a fire burning everything from this island to the whole world. Burning Island found inspiration in playing metal music from (we were) around 15 to 16 years old. At the time, all of us were interested in covering some famous bands’ tracks, including Chthonic, Cradle of Filth, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Slipknot, Lamb of God and more. However, as we grew older, we found more interest in writing and performing our own metal songs.

“At the age of 18 (around 2011), Hung-Chih Lu then decided to form Burning Island where he could focus on writing and performing original materials. Then, he asked Chieh-Kuan Lu and Pu-Hua Wang who shared the same interest and we were already playing in the same band as him to join this new band. He also invited Hsin-Wei Su and Shih-Ting Hung from another band to join this new band and complete the line-up. We tried to write metal songs in our native language Taiwanese instead of Mandarin at first because we thought it was cool, but as the band grew, we stuck to the idea because we felt that our native tongue would convey our thoughts better and would help us send more powerful messages.”

Can you describe to us the state of the metal rock scene in Taiwan? To have a metalhead for a Taiwanese leader (in the person of Freddy Lim of Chthonic), how did it enhance appreciation for your genre and music?

Flesh Juicer: “The scene — it’s more chaotic then anyone would think. If you want to know about Freddy, I think it’s more like Chthonic (has changed) the scene of Taiwanese metal.”

Bloody Tyrant: “In all honesty, not so good. You call tell less and less people are going to shows nowadays, especially the younger generation. A lot of the younger audiences have never heard of the band Pantera and yet they listen to metal. Taiwanese metal could be unique at times because Taiwan has cultural influences from China and Japan. To have Freddy as a legislator did get more people exposed to metal but unfortunately, that didn’t help that much as still not many people stuck to listening to metal after being exposed to it.”

Burning Island: “In fact, it’s hard to describe the metal scene in Taiwan (for us), because we seldom pay attention to it. One thing we can be sure is that there is still a lot of people who listen to heavy metal music in Taiwan. We don’t know how Freddy enhances our genre and music, it’s hard to explain. We only know that Freddy is a cool but childish guy, same as us.”

To Flesh Juicer, you won Best Rock Band a couple of years ago, do you consider yourself mainstream?

Flesh Juicer: “We never ever thought of ourselves as mainstream artists, never! We just create everything that is in our head into reality, and we are glad that our fans love it.”

Flesh Juicer performs with a pig mask for a reason

Why do you also wear a pig mask in your performances?

Flesh Juicer: “In our traditional festivals, pig head is always a sacred gift to the gods to make them happy so we wear it to make our fans happy as if they were our god.”

For Bloody Tyrant, can you share with us why your band is described as folk metal? 

Bloody Tyrant: “We started using a traditional instrument called pipa, starting from our EP and that was the beginning to it. Although we still have a bit of our black metal roots left, but our use of melodic lines is more folk-ish. Having those traditional instruments definitely adds to that flavor. We think we have found a ‘signature sound’ for our band so we would like to keep it like that. At the same time, we probably don’t want to add too many things as sometimes, less is really more.”

For Burning Island, your music is known for some political themes. Other people think that politics and music should not mix. Why should it be OK for rockers to talk about politics in their music?

Burning Island: “We thought that everything is political in human society, and the ‘political’ here doesn’t only mean some extreme words. Politics reflects how people live in their country, it will contain people’s love and hate, solidarity and struggling. That’s why we thought that people say some music are ‘political’ isn’t correct. Furthermore, our music contains our own ideology and protest to some inequality and injustice like low wages for young people, political violence, etc. Our lyrics include massive banks of metaphor and fictional elements to ridicule the politics in Taiwan. But in all seriousness, we are trying to convey our beliefs and important messages. Going against and defeating the oppressor as an oppressed is a constantly recurring theme that we are exploring in our lyrics.”