Cadaver
(China)
To-the-point brutal
death metal is what Cadaver delivers! For those times when you want the music
to get you going, that’s when Cadaver sounds on.
In this interview, Jason (guitars) explains the origins of their
heavy sound, their interpretation of brutal death metal, and several other
happenings in their camp.
Obviously, they are doing more than a few things right. In addition, they
have some pretty cool plans coming up, as Jason reveals.
--
Hello, Jason!
How are you? I heard Cadaver’s demo and I wanted to find out more. What’s going
on at the present?
Hey, first of all,
thank you for approaching us for the interview! Currently, we are
tracking guitars, bass and vocals (drum parts have been completed) for our
self-produced EP which is scheduled to complete by around February or March
2013. Over the past few months we were featured on an online radio show
that focuses on the underground music scene of Hong Kong, played at a metal
festival locally, and featured on overseas web radio shows. And as for
band merchandise, we are collaborating with a local illustrator (Tam Kwok Lun
Illustrations) for band shirts, and the first design has been released and sold
out, so a new design should be on its way out soon.
What kind of
challenges and opportunities does Cadaver as a metal band confront in Hong
Kong?
Hong Kong is a small
city, and also one of the densest cities in the world. In my opinion,
this poses two contrasting issues. First is that, we are not able to play
as often as we would like to as Hong Kong is small enough for everyone who is
into metal to attend a metal show, it wouldn't make sense for someone
to turn up to see us, or any other band, say once a month. Unlike, say
US, or EU, where cities are spanned out further apart, it makes sense for the
bands to travel around for the audience, therefore more show
opportunities. On the contrary, because Hong Kong is such a dense city, a
band can promote themselves rather quickly. With social mediums like
Facebook and YouTube, news can spread very quickly.
Did Tak (bass)
and Wai (guitars) start Cadaver in 2003? But Jason (guitars) and Sham (vocals)
joined in 2009? Does Cadaver have demos from 2003-2005? Were Jason and Sham in
other death metal bands in 2003? And your drummer Wil joined the band in 2011?
Yes, Tak and Wai, are
the only founding members left in the band now. They started the band
back in 2003. I joined the band in late 2009, and at that time Tak’s
brother Ming, also a founding member, was on bass and vocals. The four of
us did a local metal festival in mid 2011 and Ming left the band shortly after
that. By the end of the year Sean Sham and Wil Ho joined the band. There weren't any
recorded demos between 2003-2005, but there is a DVD of the 2005 Cadaver
playing at another local metal festival.
Sham, Wil and myself were in various bands before Cadaver and I can say
that we are all putting in the most effort into this band compared to our
previous ones.
Do Wai and
Jason write the songs together? Does Sham play instruments or only vocals? What
type of collaboration is there in the band? Is Will present when the songs are
written?
Wai and myself write
the majority of the music. Wai tends to write together with Wil, whereas
I like to write the majority of a song and present it to the band. When
the music is more or less confirmed we sit down with Wil to work out drum
parts, fine-tune the song tempo and arrangement. We will then record a
very rough live version of the song and give it to Sham to write the lyrics,
and at the same time Tak will work on the bass parts. We try to have all
five members present at all writing sessions to throw in or out any
ideas. We respect each other's opinion, so if one person says that
something doesn't sound right to him, we throw that away.
Are your lyrics
and vocals in Cantonese? On Metal Archives, it seems like your demo has three
songs in Cantonese and two songs in English?
Out of the five
completed demos, two of them are in English, and the rest are in
Mandarin. “Manslaughter” and “Moment of Massacre” were being written
during the time Wil and Sham joined. At that time we hadn’t decided
Mandarin lyrics was the way to go for us so these two songs were done in English.
For the up-coming EP we will have “Moment of Massacre” recorded in Mandarin to
match the rest of the songs. So when we wrote as a group of five, we
decided to stick to Mandarin as it is easier for us to express ourselves in our
mother language. We also think that Mandarin sounds more brutal because
of the language’s tone and pronunciation, and that each syllable is one Chinese
character gives that uniqueness compared to a set of English lyrics.
The Mandarin songs are mainly about the existence and value of
life. We try to pick a topic of value and metaphorize it into an issue
that is commonly experienced in life. For example, we have a song titled “Poh
Yung” (roughly translates to Emerge from a Pupa), we used the image of an
ancient Chinese torture to metaphorize the renewal of a man that was once in
greater pain than the torture itself. Normally, we throw ideas around
within ourselves and when we decide on one particular theme, we will let Sham
write the lyrics on his own.
Some people
have described your music as New York-style brutal death metal, like
Suffocation, Incantation, Mortician, Immolation and Cannibal Corpse. What
attracted you to playing this type of music?
These are certainly
bands that we look up to. Personally, it is the technicality and the
sonic power of this style of music that really makes me obsessed. What
really fascinates me, as a guitar player, is that a guitar can be used to play
the most brutal riffs, or the tenderest melodies. This really made me
want to explore the vastness of guitar based music and the deeper I dug the
more extreme the bands I discovered. My taste of metal developed quite
gradually. We all had our days listening to Metallica, then you would
discover Pantera, Slayer, then came Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation. I
remember the first time I heard “Hammer Smashed Face” I was like, what the fuck
is this, but in a good way. Cannibal Corpse really made me dig deeper and
deeper into the roam of extreme and death metal.
We don’t limit ourselves to the genre of metal or music in general that
we listen to, what sounds good is good! Within the band, we spin all
types of music: Pop, electronic, core, metal, jazz, fusion, whatever you show
us, we will listen to it and enjoy it. There are some bands that inspire
and influence Cadaver’s music and to name a few, Pantera, Decapitated, Cannibal
Corpse, Gojira, Defeated Sanity, Spawn of Possession and Suffocation.
Do you think
that in the future it’s possible for Cadaver to be a successful band by touring
China, playing death metal?
We certainly hope to
get successful enough to tour! We have plans to do some shows in China to
accompany our EP release in 2013. We also aim to travel to Taiwan,
Malaysia, Singapore, and hopefully Korean and Japan. We have heard very
good feedbacks from the bands that have played in China, so it makes sense for
us to tour China as our first tour.
What do you
think about the idea of touring Europe, South America or the U.S.? Maybe that
is possible in the future?
Doesn’t every band
dream about touring Europe and America? We will definitely grab that
opportunity if it comes up. But first things first, we feel it is
important at this point to produce an EP or album as a medium to present
ourselves and show our dedication in what we do.
What is the
best way to contact you?
The quickest and
easiest way is to connect with us via our Facebook. We also have
a YouTube channel where we upload footage of any writing or
recording progress. And you can download all of our demo recordings for
free on our Soundcloud. Once again, thank you for your approach and it
has been a pleasure doing this interview!
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Jason THE END.
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