Before I start this review I should declare that this was the first metal gig I'd been too since Marduk came to Perth at the end of 2007, so I was inevitably going to be pretty forgiving. I was suddenly seized by the urge to see some live metal, and after a surprisingly short search through sites I'd found before but not looked at too closely, I found this gig by Taiwan's biggest, most famous, and I would see best metal band, Chthonic, in the city only an hour from home the following weekend.
Taiwan is not set up for metal, especially outside of Taipei, so this gig wasn't a normal venue or pub like it might be elsewhere in the world, but a warehouse by the docks in Kaohsiung, Taiwan's second biggest city. It was in a cool arty area, but since it started while the sun was still up, it didn't feel too metal.
There was a big cavernous room, so you'd need a few thousand people to fill it. I'm not too good a judge of crowds, but I'd guess five hundred to a thousand were there. Not a lot for the biggest metal band in the country, but not bad for a place where every third song you hear as you walk down the street is Lady Gaga. Even the toilets showed you how small the metal scene is here: they were outside and there were no back stage ones, so when I went before things started I was standing between members of the band in full costume.
The crowd was also different to what you might expect. Elsewhere you'd probably find a mostly male crowd in various metal t-shirts. There were a few going for that look, and there was a bit more black than you typically find, but they were in the minority: there were also a lot of couples, and in general it would have been impossible to tell that they were going to the gig if they weren't queued up at the entrance. A more interesting feature was that lots of people brought bags of "ghost money". This comes in big yellow wads which you're meant to burn for your ancestors to use in the afterlife.
No support band, and not even a DJ or playlist while we waited - just a Marilyn Manson album, not even slightly grim and necro. All that aside, the entrance was good and atmospheric: banners hanging behind the stage, mournful erhu intro music, darkened stage, etc. When they came on they had good presence, not arrogant but with a decent amount of movement. Their current costumes a much more subdued than I'd heard, they didn't really have much "Ghost Paint" (like corpse paint but based on the guardians of Daoist hell) and had opted instead for just plain black. There was a bit of darkness around the eyes, some kind of clothe with writing on it completely covering CJ the keyboardist's face and a strange spiky mask on the drummer, but certainly not some horrible attempt to look like Immortal.
So on to the most important part: the music. It was awesome! I hadn't yet had a chance to listen to more than a couple of MP3s once or twice on their website, but I could still distinguish individual songs (unlike some bands whose songs end up blending together and sounding the same live). As a group they were very tight. Dani's drumming was damn good, Jesse played some awesome riffs and the occasional solo, but clearly knew his limits and didn't ruin things by over reaching himself. The keyboards were there, but not dominating, which in most bands that aren't Emperor is how I like them. Doris' bass was good I guess, I'm not that great a judge of bass, but I can't say her vocals were very strong - maybe it was the mix, I don't know. Freddy's vocals had a pretty good range and were convincingly grim but with their own sound. He also played their trademark erhu himself, and played it well (which is harder than it sounds - it takes a lot of training to get it to not sound like fingernails down a blackboard).
Unfortunately my Chinese is not good enough to understand speeches, as a number of times in pauses between songs he would address the crowd. I got the gist that some was about politics, some was about the recent huge typhoon (Morakot) and some was about it being nice to be back somewhere he could understand what people said after an Australian tour. It didn't seem too preachy though, having a bit of back and forth with the crowd, some jokes and laughter, it was a pretty cool atmosphere really.
The crowd was interesting to watch too - it seemed despite their unmetal attire (as mine is) they weren't there for the novelty, but genuinely liked the music. The sung along (Taiwan is a karaoke country after all), nodded along a bit, but mostly seemed fairly static in their enjoyment, apart from the enthusiastic throwing of ghost money in the air. Metal is metal though, so for a few songs at least some were unable to resist the urge to mosh, and after politely asking non-moshers to step back we had a frantic time smashing against each other on the carpet of yellow paper. I should have worn shoes though - it's hard and painful to mosh properly in sandals!
They didn't do an encore, but they did have an intermission in the middle and must have played for about two hours. I certainly wasn't disappointed, and recommend anyone to go and see them - just bring your bundles of ghost money.
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