Robert caught up with Doris from Chthonic to talk about their success so far, the change of the band logo and much more.

Hello and thank you for taking time out to do this interview.

First of all can you give us a brief history of the band and how you came up with the name Chthonic?
Doris (bass) We got together in 1996 the band likes the mythology of oriental countries and heroic battles so we put that into our music, so far we have released 5 albums and there all connected to the things were all interested, were categorised as a black metal band, but we don't have the anti Christian background, and were not anti Buddha, If you focus more on the lyrics rather than the music, it’s not really black metal.

Who would you say your main musical influences are?
A lot I think, mostly from Taiwanese folk music, and then some western bands, Metallica, Megadeath Slayer, Iron Maiden etc

You released your fifth studio album ‘Mirror Of Retribution’ back in 2009, how has it gone down with your fans and the press?
It’s the best selling album in our bands history, it’s a more mature sound and fans reaction has been good and we got some good reviews too!

I understand ‘Mirror Of Retribution’ was a concept album can you tell us more about this?
It’s about the philosophy of oriental hell, in oriental hell there are 18 layers of hell different sort of tortures on each level, we brought the real history of china occupying Taiwan 60 years, the massacre that happened. There's a medium/psychic, in a temple and that wanted to save his people, and he invaded hell and steal the book of life and death, when the ghost king, writes some ones name in the book they die and the psychic wanted to steal the book and write the Chinese armies leaders name in the book so he would die, but in the end he failed, that's a story we have combined mythology and history with.

You adopted a brand new logo for ‘Mirror Of Retribution’ and have also changed your appearance on stage whose idea was this? Y
The first logo connected us with the whole death metal thing, and was complicated to recognise our band name, after we signed with Spinefarm records, we made the logo simpler.

You signed to Spinefarm Records back in 2009, how do they compare to your previous record labels?
They have more resources with the backing of Universal, and they have a better chance of getting our music to a wider audience around the world.

You recorded and released a cover of Judas Priests ‘Painkiller’ which has gone down extremely well, who’s idea was it to do a cover song and what you choose ‘Painkiller’?
We did some cover songs in Taiwan, and did a cover of cream by Radiohead and made it a metal song. We made a list of bands we wanted to cover, we was gonna cover Zombie by Cranberrys, but spinefarm told us a lot of bands have covered it so we chose Painkiller instead

You are currently supporting Arch Enemy in the UK, how did the support slot come about?
We met Spinefarm and introduced us to the booking agent and we got on this tour!

What are you doing after this tour and where would you like to see yourself this time next year?
Were doing a big festival in Japan and then tour there after this tour is finished then next year record and release a new album, were going to do some festivals in Europe too so its going to be busy next year for us.

MySpace seems to be a big tool in the music industry these days with artists communicating with their fans over it and some even ditching their own website and having just a MySpace site, what are your opinions on MySpace as a tool in the music industry?
MySpace has fallen behind with the times, we use face book to talk to our fans now and that seems to be the way things are heading through facebook now.

One last random question that we ask every band, if you could be an animal out of a Zebra and a Giraffe which one would you be and why?
A Zebra, they’re cute and modest like my personality!

Thanks for your time; do you have a message for your fans reading this?
Were going to come back again and again and again!

Interview By Robert Lawrence