Introducing Taiwan

In case you didn't know, Taiwan is a small island in the South China Sea. Officially it is the Republic of China, not a separate country despite having a separate government from the mainland, but if you want to know more about the history and politics I suggest going to Wikipedia. Culturally it is Chinese with influences from the Aboriginal inhabitants, Japan and the West. It's a subtropical island, with living standards fairly comparable to the West - more relaxed and cheaper than say Japan, but not as poor as other South East Asian countries. If you want to visit it, I have another blog here.

Muscially, Taiwan is dominated by sugary Sinopop. If that's your thing, then you'll love it here, but otherwise even decent local indie can be hard to come by. So naturally, the metal scene here is tiny compared to what it is in other countries with a similar population such as Australia.

Still, there is one, but as I live in Tainan, down south, when most things that do happen, happen in the north (Taipei and Taichung) means my knowledge is rather limited. But here's a brief summary anyway. As in many countries, there are plenty of death metal acts and a handful of grindcore, thrash and hard rock. But best of all as far as I'm concerned is that, whilst the winter winds that blow down over mainland China from Siberia can be quite biting, as a subtropical island Taiwan is nothing like Norway, but the single biggest metal band in Taiwan is Chthonic - a black metal band.

In Taipei, there seem to be alot of gigs at a place called the WALL, with other smaller ones happening at Underworld. For records, there are a few online shops such as Rock Empire (in Chinese, but has some English in the menus etc. - Google Translate is your friend) - also a good source of info on tours etc.. And for information and forums, the place to go is Taipei Metal.

Finally, if you want to kill some time with a weird, black metal themed flash site, go here.