Interview: Freddy Lim

For the past three decades, Freddy Lim has carved out a singular path through Taiwan’s cultural and political landscape. Initially known as the frontman of celebrated death metal band Chthonic, he later transitioned into political activism and eventually served two terms as a member of the Taiwanese legislature.

I interviewed Freddy last month while I was in Taiwan. Since I am not a huge metal connoisseur and he had chosen not to run for a third term—seeming relieved to be stepping back from politics for now—our talk focused on other topics: the history and development of Taiwan’s independent music scene; how attitudes about Taiwanese identity (including his own) had changed through the years; and, well… baseball.

The interview was edited and condensed for clarity.

Daniel Semo You were born in 1976. What was Taiwan like in your childhood? What do you remember about Taiwan in the late 70s and 80s? 

Freddy Lim Back in the old days, I can still remember that there were a lot of restrictions, and it felt normal to have all those restrictions, like how I couldn't speak in Taiwanese or the native languages in school. The only language allowed in the public area was Mandarin. So kids like me spoke Taiwanese at home, [but] we had been forced to stop speaking that language in the school. Those kinds of restrictions [were] everywhere.

And personally, it felt quite strange that sometimes my father would ask me to get some magazines or books that the bookstore owner would get from the back [of the] store. I thought that might be illegal stuff, but then I realised that those books were banned by the government. So it's all those political books about Taiwanese history, the different political points of view. 

DS Did you come from a political family? Was this stuff talked about in your house?

FL Not really. Every time I can remember my parents talking about politics, my grandmother would just rush out from the kitchen saying, “shut your mouth or you’re going to be arrested tomorrow. There are spies everywhere.” (laughs) Just to keep the family safe. “Don't talk politics!”

DS Well, tell me about music. How did music come into your life as a kid?

FL I think when I was 12 or 13, I went to Guang Hua Shopping Mall. That was a place with a lot of comic books and record shops in a shopping mall, and I [bought] some Western music there. I bought some tapes—pop music, like Michael Jackson or Madonna, that kind of thing. And then I think there was one staff [member who] came to me saying, “I think you want to listen to some heavier stuff!” Then he introduced me from Bon Jovi to Guns n’ Roses and to heavier stuff, like Metallica, Megadeth, and all those thrash, even death metal [bands].

DS  So this would have been after the end of martial law? You would have been quite young then. Did you notice those changes happening at the time?

FL Yeah, I think that martial law [was] lifted back in 1987. Yeah, so I was 11. I think the government didn't really know how to deal with all those things that [had been] illegal, so they kind of found a new way. I knew that there were some movements or protests still being shut down by the police and by the government, and I can remember that there were a lot of people, even my family, who still didn’t talk politics at all back in those days. They felt like even [after] martial law was lifted, that it's fake. The government might just pretend, and then will arrest somebody, because it [had] happened before actually. [They’d] pretend to be open and arrest you a few years later. So I can remember that my family, back in those days, were still quite cautious.

But of course, I realised [after] I read the history, that a lot of artists, musicians, even movie makers, started to try to touch sensitive topics. I had heard that because we had something called 新聞局 (Government Information Office)—so all the cassettes and movies had to get permission to be released in Taiwan. There were some record shops that imported those records in Taiwan to share with friends, even to copy and to sell [them]. I got the metal stuff from some weird smaller record shops. There were some record shops with very unique and rare records; mostly avant-garde and progressive death metal, extreme music that I don't think they got the permit for from the government at all.

DS So, at that time, how did people discover new music? Was it the radio? Was it TV? 

FL There [were] some underground TV stations back then that played loud music all day; not MTV, not Headbanger’s Ball, but a Taiwanese [show] introducing heavy metal, introducing loud music on an illegal TV station. So back then there were a lot of illegal TV stations and radio stations too. I remember that there were programs on the radio introducing metal and rock, in underground radio stations, just in the midnight session. And all the other programs [were] related to social movements and political issues.

DS  Did you have friends who were also into it? Or was it just something that you were discovering by yourself? 

FL  Yeah, back at that time my classmates and I would share that information with each other: “I found this radio station, I found this TV station, I found this cassette, and I will copy it for you”. Things like that. Actually, I just realised a couple of years ago that the current mayor of Kaohsiung, Chen Chi-Mai, was on the radio station talking politics and his roommate played metal music on the radio station. So yeah, I assume that there were a bunch of these kinds of people sharing the same kinds of values and promoting democracy and promoting the music they loved.

DS So how did playing music actually start for you? 

FL That was when I was about 15, in junior high school. I had been playing piano for years since I was 4. And when I was 15, I  bought my first guitar to play those tunes that I loved, like Bon Jovi, Guns n’ Roses. Then I formed my first band when I was in senior high school. It was a strange period of the Taiwanese rock music scene, because most of the bands only played cover songs. They covered Western bands, because back in the 70s, when the US still had their military base(s) in Taiwan, there were a lot of restaurants, bars, and pubs with Taiwanese and Filipino musicians playing cover songs for those American soldiers. And so that was kind of a trend: if you wanted to play music, that was the only way to get a job. 

But by the 80s and 90s, that didn't work anymore, because there weren’t so many Western people in Taiwan anymore. So I think it was in 1993 or 1994 that I started to think that we should play our own music here. It makes no sense to play music other people wrote. If you want to really do something, to become something, you need to write your own stuff. 

So I formed Chthonic in 1995. At that point, I was into extreme metal. So we started to write our own stuff and, as I recall, there were only like ten to twenty original bands. Most of the bands, dozens of bands, were cover bands. Then from 1995 to 1999 I think all these [original] bands kind of helped each other to organise some festivals—free festivals in parks—and we also played in some live clubs.

DS Do you remember any bands at that time that stood out, like Taiwanese bands that you looked up to, or that, like, made a mark on you at that time?

FL Back in the 90s, there was a band called Groupie. And also a band called Assassin. But that was when I realised that if you, if you sign with some kind of major or mainstream label, then your songs will be twisted—they’ll be replaced by the songs that labels ask you to do. I was a fan of Assassin, and then when they released their albums on the mainstream label, I had my heart broken. Because they were a metal band, but with only like three metal songs in their two albums. All the other songs were love songs.

DS  What were the venues like around at that time?

FL (There was) Scum and Vibe, and then I had my own live club in 2000 called Zeitgeist. Then we moved the place and changed the name to The Wall in 2003.

DS Do you have memories of those venues and some of those really early gigs?

FL Just that there were few [people] in the audience. So it was mostly bands supporting each other. And the owners of those live clubs, they all had bands too. It was a very difficult time. We couldn’t really foresee that there would be a rock music scene in the future.

DS What were your ambitions at that time? Since no one had really done that before, what were your visions of the future?

FL I started to think that we should go abroad, that Chthonic should play outside Taiwan. So we started to do so. In 1998 we recorded our first album in Denmark. And then we started to reach out to find a way. People always ask me how I got connected to those foreign studios. I just did [it in] a very normal way—I listened through all those CDs that I enjoyed, and I checked their studios [they recorded in], and I got their fax number. They didn't have email at all. So I faxed the studio and we contacted each other by fax machine. I’ve always done things step by step. Just trying to find the connections in the most basic way. 

So we started to talk to some Danish labels and Danish promoters. Then I started to read through most of the Japanese magazines, seeing which record shops might import our CDs. I started from those CDs and magazines and contacted a bunch of people, and then I got contacted by some really important people, and I really appreciated that they helped us in the first stage. 

DS  So why did you look abroad for production? Did you find that there weren't Taiwanese engineers or producers or studios available? 

FL We tried to record our first demo in Taiwan, and it was a waste of our time. We wasted it trying to communicate with the engineer about the metal sound, because they didn't really produce that kind of music at all. So we tried, and it was kind of a debate between us and the engineer. So yeah, I just felt like it was a waste of time and we should try some other studios whose sound we enjoyed.

DS And has that changed since then? Have you seen production in Taiwan change?

FL That was 1998 and I think from 2002, 2003, there were a lot of Taiwanese studios which could produce very good rock music. I think bands like Chthonic, LTK [Commune], Ladybug, and some early pioneer indie bands, we started to produce our own records in our own ways. Like maybe renting stuff and having a home studio ourselves, or just going abroad to produce and try to distribute our CDs by ourselves. We didn't want to depend on the labels anymore. So all these early bands, we started to build the distribution network and production network, and also we started to have our own live spaces, our own live clubs. 

So I think after 2000, a lot of musicians who wanted to play original music just found that it could work. I can remember Chthonic’s first album in 1998, and the second album in 2000, we were first place in the charts. So we beat all the other pop artists. We were on top. So I think most of the bands felt like, yeah, we shouldn't wait for the big labels. We shouldn't debate with local producers, we can try to make our own way in that industry. 

DS What do you think have been the unique challenges in being a Taiwanese band?

FL In recent years, I don't really think that it’s been challenging for the bands anymore, because there are so many shows, so many festivals and even the government promotes rock music. They have festivals in different counties and different cities. So I think that the most challenging thing in Taiwan is still the artists and the musicians trying to fight against all those “inside limitations”, those restrictions inside their minds. 

For example, I joined the democratic movements early in the 90s, but I realised that I always put all those Taiwanese inspirations away, because I looked down [on them]. Until 2010, till the album Takasago Army, when I started to embrace all those Taiwanese elements and music materials. 

I think that's because people like me had been taught at the school earlier, that all that local stuff [belongs to] lower classes, and if you want to fit into the international standards, you need to be like the Western bands. Or if you are making movies, the standards are like those of Hollywood, right? 

DS Do you think that has changed in the last 30 years?

FL I think it's on the way to changing. Even me, it took me more than 10 years to realise that there were so many treasured melodies that I'd put in trash cans but were actually something that only a Taiwanese [artist] could have—something that makes us unique. When I started to realise that, I tried to preach that to the younger bands [in Taiwan]. That you shouldn't be limited like me, and be trapped in the same kind of trap for years, but they didn't really get it. It took them years to be who they are. 

I think it’s because, as Taiwanese, we'd been colonised by Japan for 50 years, and then we were colonised by the KMT government for another 50 years. And so there had been a hundred years when we looked down on ourselves and tried to be somebody else. And although that systematic stuff has been lifted, things inside us [still] trapped us. The stuff inside us had not been lifted at all. We have to remove that piece by piece.

DS It's interesting that you think that about young people, who didn't live through Japanese colonisation, and who might not even remember any KMT government… do you think they have still internalised that?

FL Yes. Because when they watch television, or when they watch TikTok, there is this kind of social sense in those artworks. So when the movies have characters speaking in Taiwanese, they are always bad. People who speak Mandarin—they are the good guys. Things have changed in recent years, but still, people consider Taiwanese speakers as lower class in Taiwan. So, of course, we are fighting this kind of ideology, but I think we are on the way to finding the balance.

DS Is this something that is talked about openly, this class-based thinking, or do people feel uncomfortable talking about?

FL Most people don't sense that and they don't think that they have this kind of tendency to act like that. People like me who have been creating artworks for 20 years, when we digest the whole process and we think through [things], we understand that. But if you had asked me, like, 20 years ago, I would have said that “No, there’s no such thing inside me at all! Because I'm pro-democracy. I'm pro-freedom.” But I realised that by myself [later], and I think that there are still a lot of people who wouldn't admit that they have these kinds of things inside them.

DS You mentioned your grandmother before: what did she think about you and your music?

FL Although she passed away when I’d had the band for like, two or three years, I think she didn't attend any of [our] shows. She was very conservative about what her grandchild was doing. So she wasn't really into the idea that I'm into music. But I believe that if she realised that what I'm doing right now connects to her a lot—like how I use Taiwanese to write songs, how I decided to speak Taiwanese in her way, and how I decided to write those stories that she shared with me, all those ghost stories, legends, the mythology that she shared with me—I think she would be proud of me.

DS What about the rest of your family? How have they come around to you playing music for such a long time?

FL I think they kind of got used to that. My parents didn't really agree with me in the first place, but then when the band won the Golden Melody Awards, like the Taiwanese Grammy, then they agreed. That's the moment when they knew how to explain what their kid is doing to their relatives. (laughs)

DS If you think about everything that you've done in music, and even later on in politics, what’s the thing that you’re most proud of?

FL I think that would be participating in the whole process, the whole movement of Taiwan being a more democratic and progressive and diverse society. In every way. 

I have a daughter now, and she just experienced the first time that the Taiwanese baseball team has won the world competition (note: WBSC Premier12 tournament). And I didn't really imagine that [could happen]. It’s not just about if we win or lose. It's more about how we’ve changed the sports industry that we have. We have fought for a better society for so many years.

I can remember about 15 years ago, I promoted a show to support the baseball players who wanted to have a union, but was opposed by the team owners. So me and some other musicians, we thought that music is power—that we wanted to raise money for the union, for the baseball players. We just wanted the baseball players [to] have dignity to play baseball. Not just be slaves [to] those owners, and to feel that direct support from the people.

You know, the hero of the Taiwanese team this year, Chen Chieh-Hsien, is the chairman of the union (note: Taiwan Professional Baseball Players Association), the new chairman. Fifteen years ago, we didn't really realise that the union would be so strong in upcoming years and would make the whole thing more healthy, and that baseball players would play happily and feel support from the people. 

That's just an example, but it's the same in the music industry. It's also the same in so many different industries. And I feel so honoured that I've been in the whole process and contributed a little bit by myself. And sharing that with my daughter—that it's a better Taiwan and your father has done a bit.