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[miko2]

Today's Song: Quasi Putrefaction by Chthonic

I'm probably going to keep posting songs by extreme metal bands for the next few days at the very least, so you've been warned. ^_^

Chthonic is a Taiwanese symphonic death metal band. They're the only Chinese death metal band I own. In fact, they're the only Chinese death metal band I know of. ^_^ You can find them on iTunes and eMusic and Amazon; for a far East metal band they're quite easy for someone in the West to get their hands on.

The All Music Guide reviewer whose review is also listed on the eMusic page for this band says that they sound like your "standard/pro-sounding symphonic metal" and that "the only thing that's different about Chthonic is that the vocals alternate between being sung in English and Taiwanese" and notes that since the vocals are growled, you can't tell the differenence anyway.

I thought, humm, maybe he has a point. Maybe, you know, the band could distinguish itself from all of those Scandinavian death metal bands by playing a progressive form of highly symphonic power metal. They could draw on Taiwanese history and mythology for their lyrics and write about indigenous Taiwanese tribes such as the Seediq people. They could be very politically active and champion Taiwanese independence from mainland China (with their own seat in the United Nations). They could, I don't know, tie their use of ghoulish black and white corpse paint to Taiwanese mythology. They could add a second, female vocalist with an operatic voice. They could introduce some Taiwanese folk influences, such as the erhu (called hena in Taiwanese), a Chinese bowed instrument that sounds something like a violin.

And then I thought, Oh yeah -- the band already does all of that!

So yeah, the AMG reviewer is an idiot. I mean, okay, I'm not that familiar with death metal, and I guess these guys sound quite a bit like Cradle of Filth, Dimmu Borgir, and possibly a half dozen other death metal bands that I don't actually listen to. Corpse paind is popular among Scandinavian death metal bands. But come on, a lot of the things I've listed above are unique to this one band. How much more distinctive do they need to be? There aren't a lot of death metal bands on their side of the globe.

This song starts out quite powerful and harsh, but by the end of the song the female vocals are carrying a beautiful, haunting melody over music that is clearly more power metal and symphonic metal than you'd find from any self-respecting death metal band from Norway. That said, this is still a death metal band at heart (as if the song title didn't give that away). There's a lot of incoherent high-pitched screaming.

Quasi Putrefaction by Chthonic

Chthonic - Indigenous Lacerations