Interview | 慘慘豬 CharmCharmChu (Cantonese Thrash Metal - Hong Kong, China)


慘慘豬 CharmCharmChu (AKA poor piggy) is a Hong Kong Thrash Metal band. Blending internet memes, Chinese poem, and outrageous cowbell to create a unique Cantonese thrash metal experience. Cherish every moment in your life and leave no empty cowbell at any time.



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"I consider myself to participate in the Cantonese culture preserving movement."



Morgan : Eyh all band, you're a Hong Kongers Thrash/HxC Band, CharmCharmChu (慘慘豬). Could you present you and your band to our readers ?

A: CharmCharmChu, aka poor piggy is a thrash/crossover band. We started this band after our vocalist Bob's previous hardcore punk band stopped activity. Later on, we found our guitarist Thomas over youtube and Thomas invited Edwin on drums that shaped the current line up of CCC. By the way, we are not HxC band. We have to make it clear since we are a band that praising drinking. We respect the idea of straight edge but that's not our thing.

CharmCharmChu exists since 2009, but you released your first EP this year "Majestic Brewing Order" ? Why did you take so much time to release it ?

A: The main reason is that Bob studied abroad in the United States for the early days of the band. The band went into inactive status for 3 years. Grenade and Bob composed music over internet in their leisure time and it was an unpleasant experience since a lot of the riffs were not used. Most of the time we jammed with the drum machine and realized there were a lot of guitar riffs sounds unpleasant in full band. Because of that, there was a lot of frustrations and arguments in between us; it was a challenging task to keep the band together. Luckily, in 2015 we finally found our drummer Edwin to complete current lineup. We wrote and completed more songs. We played a few live gigs and we think it's a good time to release the first EP - the mighty to share the vision of drinking order to the world.

On the cover we can see a pig man threatening us with a Tsingtao ? (ndlr : Most popular beer in China). Is he the poor pig ? And why did you choose this beer ? 


A: It is a complicated CD artwork. There is one message we want to deliver. Long story short, the pig symbolizes state capitalism while the beer tank symbolizes the Dongjiang's water in China. The uncanny black comedy cover art presents the pig leader has full authority on ruling the country with the Majestic Brewing Order; all the citizens are forced to drink beer. Similarly, It reflects the real situation in Hong Kong: The money spent on Dongjiang's water are sufficient to build desalination plant to supply drinking water to Hong Kong citizens. However, because of political reasons and the benefits of transfer among the capitalists, there are a lot of oppositions arise. Eventually, Chinese Government enforced Hong Kong Government to buy the Dongjiang's water. We, the citizen, are enforced to pay for the Dongjiang's water. This issue is revealed under 2009 wiki leaks document (ref: wikileaks.org), and nowadays the situation continues and no one gives a shit. As a result, the depiction of Majestic Brewing Order could be a direct accusation of state capitalism in Dongjiang's water. This behind message is not easy to reveal especially if you are not live in Hong Kong.

Move on to the beer picks. Actually we want to present our cd cover with local beer. However, Hong Kong does not own its beer factory; there are a lot of beer imports. One of the most representable beer import is San Miguel as most of the grassroots workers pick this brand. However, it tastes very awful and so we ignore San Miguel. In recent year, there is a new trend of craft beer in Hong Kong. One of the most known craft beer is "Hong Kong Beer" and again it doesn't taste good. So eventually, we picked Tsingtao as it is our favorite beer among various Chinese beers and we put it on the cover to express our love for drinking.

Last but not least, we would like to introduce the awesome illustrator in Majestic Brewing Order. The overwhelming cover work is illustrated by Uncle 3 Artwork (三舅), a famous Chinese Metal illustrator resides in Beijing. It is a pleasant journey for the cooperation. We first knew Uncle 3 from Explosicum, admiring his oil painting work very much. After a detailed research, we found Uncle 3 has illustrated high-quality Chinese Metal cover and all of them delivers a strong message; It fits in easily to our style! So we finally contact him and he brought this awesome "Majestic Brewing Order" cover artwork.





When I first listened to your EP, I noticed some obvious elements. Except the countless influences (Thrash, Hardcore, Crossover, and even Black Metal), it's the language you use that I saw first. You sing in Cantonese and I understood that it's an important element to you ?
Could you tell us more about its importance, and about your many musical influences ?


A: Vocal: Cantonese is definitely a core element of the band. It's so important to us because it is our mother language.

I was born in colonized period (i.e. British colonization of Hong Kong) and I grow up under western education. I speak all three languages - Cantonese, Mandarin and English. As I grow up, I start to confuse my national identity - Am I Hongkongese or am I Chinese? I don’t self-realise until 2006 when I started my first China tour with my old punk band where my previous band sang in English. Each night people greet me and some of them asked me: where are you from? I am confused and this slowly built up an internal debate. After the tour, I am enlightened and will to proudly sing in my mother tongue - Cantonese. As a result, I started to sing in Cantonese and write songs in Cantonese ever since.

Since the 1997 handover, the Chinese Government has planned a lot of new policies to suppress Cantonese; It also preferred the charset of Simplified Chinese (i.e. Mandarin) and suppressed the usage of Traditional Chinese (i.e. Cantonese). Facts could be found in the past 5 years. In 2010, the CPCCC submited a written proposal suggests increasing Mandarin programming in Guangdong television main and news channel. In 2014, the Hong Kong Education Bureau rapped over Cantonese' not an official language. In 2015, the Hong Kong Education Bureau suggests the primary student should learn simplified Chinese. I can see the Chinese government has a tendency to endanger the Cantonese culture so ever since that straightening me to sing only in Cantonese. I consider myself to participate in the Cantonese culture preserving movement.


Your relationship with the Chinese government are a bit strained. What are your thought about the student pro-democratic demonstration that happened in 2014, despite the fact that 2017's election are coming ? Did you participate ?

A: We participated in the beginning of street occupation of the umbrella movement. I witness a lot of internal conflicts in between student organizations. Also, I see how the activists use the opportunity to get the legislation vote by hijacking the umbrella movement. Overall, the umbrella movement is a failure and I can conclude it is an ugly and hopeless movement. The majority of locals are not well-prepared for the 2017 election and hence the proposal of 2017 election has been rejected by the Hong Kong Legislative Council.


While listening to your EP, I noticed that these students demonstration are inspiring you for lyrics, just as antique poetry does. What is the link between both ? Is there one ?

There is no direct link in between them. We just praise the Tang’s poem as it is one of the fundamental element of Cantonese culture. We promote the Cantonese culture by transforming the poems to songs. As I mentioned in the last paragraph, the student demonstration is an uninspired movement, hence it is not an inspiration for the band. Side Note: Song "Bring In The Wine" did actually inspired by election way back in 2012. We felt powerless that we could do nothing to see 2 asshole candidates to become Chief Executive (currently) voted by a small group of rich plutocracy and government officer. The anger brought to the aggressive move on the second half of the song. "AI WO WUA" expresses our strongest denounce to the movement. It is included as a bonus track in the CN version CD.





Relationship between Hong Kong and China are a bit mixed, between love & hate ?. Some times ago, I had the luck to interview Nature, from Tengger Cavalry. He told me that living his passion for Metal had been hard in China. Since Hong Kong had a different status for a long time, was things different for you (than Tengger) ?


It’s always hard to be a musician in Hong Kong. There are a lot of difficulties to play music in Hong Kong. This is a long topic so I shall briefly cover 3 important coherent factors: the high cost to run rehearsal space / performing venues, the limitation of public transport for musician, and the government tilted cultural policy.

Hong Kong is geographically small and it is overcrowded with skyscrapers and living condos. The city planning is poor as there is no rental space that dedicates to musician in Hong Kong. As a result, musician has to seek industrial buildings to construct rehearsal rooms so do music venue entrepreneur; it has to reside in a place that it will not produce noise pollution to the living area. In the meanwhile the musicians seek industrial buildings for rehearsal room, the government starts to reform the industrial building usage, allowing industrial buildings to be transformed into hotel property. Consequently, such act brings up the price of industrial buildings. Facing the limited choices and high price of rental space, eventually it becomes a stumbling block for musician/ venue entrepreneur in Hong Kong.

Even the musician is lucky enough to run their own rehearsal space, the next problem they have to face is public transportation. Last year, the Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) has renew the policy on passenger's carry on - Passenger carries oversize instrument has to apply permit. Instrument such as a standard 6 string electric guitar has already exceeded the size limitation of oversize carriage so a permit is required. Also, there is size limitation in the carriage so not all musicians are benefiting from it - instruments such as zither and cello are considered to exceed the maximum size for the permit. Any passenger carries oversize instrument is subject to pay a fine or even to be escorted to exit the station. As a result, musician with “oversize” instruments are not allowing to take public transport; Musician with oversize instrument is limited to travel by uber or van. This discourages the musician to perform as it limits the mobility of performing opportunity.

Lastly, the Hong Kong government does not provide fundamental support to the music culture development in Hong Kong. The government has a tilted cultural policy - support is only limited to Chinese traditional music / classical music and for any other genre it is not discussed in the Legislative Council. Cultural fundings are only provided to dance / drama / orchestra / opera / visual art while bands are excluded from the policy. The lack of support is a huge discouragement for a lot of musicians to continue to work in the field. Hence, playing in a band is leisure hobby but not a full-time job in Hong kong. The exclusion support also affects underground indie venues; they are slowly wipe out since the government renew the industrial building usage policy. Indie venues have short lifespan because the rental price is exponentially increasing. By the time the venue build up the reputation in local, the rental price is rise to sky high that entrepreneurs are no longer want to run venues.

That above main factors basically avert musician to continue to play music in Hong Kong. So it’s not hard to understand why bands are disbanded few years once they face the bottleneck.


Before the interview, we had some words and you told me that the Hong Kongers metal scene was a bit different than the rest of China's metal scene. Can you tell us the difference and the particularity of your scene ?


A: The overall acceptance to extreme music is much higher in China. The metal scene in China has a greater variety of subgenres compared to that of Hong Kong. The community is smaller in Hong Kong. Also it is is heavily led by foreign trends. Right now most of the heavy bands in Hong Kong are playing metalcore or djent.

Do you have some bands that you would like to share with our readers and Scholomance's team ? 


A: Evocation (招魂) from Hong Kong, Shepherds the Weak from Hong Kong, 




Bob: I shall recommend technical death metal band Dismembered and death metal band Karmacipher (www.facebook.com/karmacipherhk). Both of them comes from Hong Kong, has refreshing elements and I think they should be worth a listen.




Demolition hammer has reformed and I think Scholomance should keep an eye on that.

What are you future projects and CharmCharmChu's one ? 


A: We will have our first China tour in June to promote Majestic Brewing Order. That's also our first time to play outside of Hong Kong.


A last word to end you first French interview ?

A: Cherish every moment in your life, leave no empty cowbell!



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Interview: Morgan


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