Last month, we covered the story of Chthonic frontman Freddy Lim and his bid for a seat in the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's national legislative body. The results from the January 16th general elections are in, and Lim's campaign was successful: in February, he will take office as a representative of the Wanhua and Zhongzheng districts of Taipei, Taiwan's capital city.

The band made a celebratory post on their official Facebook page on Saturday, as did Lim and bassist Doris Yeh on their personal pages. This action has been a long time in the making; ever since their formation in 1995, Taiwan's premiere metal ambassadors have made their strong sense of national identity and sociopolitical consciousness a central part of their image, employing traditional Taiwanese instrumentation and incorporating tales of Taiwanese history and myth into their lyrics. Lim's concern with social and political issues eventually branched out from Chthonic into direct public action; from 2010 to 2014 he served as the chairman of Amnesty International's Taiwan branch (a total of two terms), he is a board member of the Memorial Foundation of 228, and he has been involved in numerous protest and reform movements, including 2014's Sunflower Movement (which resulted, coincidentally, in the occupation of the Yuan by student protesters). Chthonic even converted their 20th anniversary celebration concert last month into a rally for Lim's supporters.

Last January, Lim co-founded and assumed leadership of the New Power Party (NPP), which gained enough momentum in the last 12 months to win five seats of 113 in the Yuan on Saturday; this makes the NPP Taiwan's third-largest political party. The party, which has become popular among Taiwan's younger voters, has constructed a platform based in human rights reform, government transparency, environmental protection, and education reform, among other issues. Most notably, the NPP supports the rewriting of the constitution of Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), to relinquish its claims to the Chinese mainland and assert the independence of Taiwan itself; the national status of Taiwan has been a highly controversial international issue since the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party under Chiang Kai-shek fled there from the mainland in 1949, after losing the Chinese Civil War to China's Communist Party.

Due to Lim's decidedly unusual background, his campaign has attracted a great deal of attention from Western media, including The Guardian, the BBC, CNN, and other news outlets. Certainly, not many metal vocalists can claim to have a constituency. While music-based journalists such as ourselves probably have as much right to discuss politics as CNN has to describe death metal, it is still quite fascinating to see a prominent metal musician branching out so successfully into uncharted territory. Obviously this means that Chthonic won't be as active for the foreseeable future, but hopefully Lim will be working for the good of his nation and making us proud to be associated with him, even tangentially.

Source:	facebook.com
Band profile:	Chthonic