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Album Review

Chthonic - Seediq Bale

Taiwan's Chthonic formed in 1995 and they hold a legendary status in Taiwan and Eastern Asia and have even been labelled "the Black Sabbath of Asia". The band has released four albums but their latest album, 'Seediq Bale' is their first to be released in Europe.

'Seediq Bale' tells the story of the Seediq clansman with their 1000 year old culture of face tattooing, decapitation and their struggle against the colonial rule of Japan. From this, you can tell the bands lyrics are pretty dark and brutal. The bands sound is extreme black metal and also features a six piece female choir. There are heavy riffs all over the place and stunning keyboard work which slightly reminds me of Children Of Bodom and a mixture of male and female vocals. You can definitely tell Chthonic are influenced by Cradle of Filth, Emperor and Dimmu Borgir.

The album begins with 'Progeny Of Rmdax Tasing' which starts off with a few screamed spoken words, then jumps straight in with guitars blazing, speedy melodic keyboard sounds combined with the mixture of the beautiful sounding female vocals and Dani Filth sounding male vocals which works really well.

The highlight of the album for me is track 8, 'Bloody Gaya Fulfilled' which starts off with blistering drums and some mellow vocals from Doris Yeh, before the killer guitar riffs come in followed by Freddy Lin vocals, the duel male/female vocals work really well on this track. But saying that, the whole album is a highlight as every song is good in its own way.

'Seediq Bale' finishes with 'Quasi Putrefaction' which is a really fast keyboard driven track which is backed up with a mixture of raw and beautiful sounding vocals.

There’s a very strange thing about the album and that is the music starts on track 5 as the first 4 tracks are computer files as it features videos for 'Indigenous Laceration' and 'Quasi Putrefaction' and a live video for 'Gaya Fulfilled' all videos are really good quality and an added bonus to the album.

I’m personally not the biggest fan of black metal music but I have really taken a liking to Chtohonic for many reasons, first of all, the mixture of female and male vocals work really well, secondly the band have introduced some instruments I have never heard in Black metal before and finally the band have got such a good image and have a well written and slightly different black metal album. I personally can’t wait for the bands first tour of the UK in 2007.

Could this be the start of an invasion of Taiwan black metal bands? Lets hope so if they all bring something new and exciting to the genre like Chthonic have.

4/5

Review by Trigger

Band Members

Freddy (Vocals, Oriental 2-string violin)
Jesse (Guitar)
Doris (Bass, Backing Vocals)
CJ (Synthesizer, Piano)
Dani (Drums)
Su-Nung (Oriental Violin)

Track Listing

1. Video Data File
2. Music Video of Indigenous 3. Lacersation
4. Music Video of Quasi Putrefaction
5. Live Video of Bloody Gaya Fulfilled
6. Progeny of Rmdax Tasing
7. Indigenous Laceration
8. nthrone
9. Bloody Gaya Fulfilled
10. The Gods Weep
11. Where The Utux Ancestors Wait
12. Exultant Suicide
13. Banished Into Death
14.Quasi Putrefaction

Band Related Links

Chthonic Myspace

Review Score Code

- Top Cheese

- Brilliant

- Pretty damn good

- Ok I guess

- What Was That?