Ali: To get started, your Instagram showcases some cool guitars. What are your favorite guitars and favorite guitarists?
Liu Zhenyang, aka J.L.: (laughs) I have actually sold all of those guitars. That picture was taken in my dormitory. I wasn’t focused on studies at the time. I used to be a French major, and it’s really boring, so I was playing guitar every day.
One of them is an Edwards E-AL-166. It’s a signature model of Alexi Laiho. What’s interesting is that it’s partially made in China, then transported to Japan to assemble, then sent back to China. (Ali: Very efficient supply chain, I’m sure.) Children of Bodom was the first metal band that I listened to; he was a huge influence. I sold that guitar for 400 bucks on a Chinese website, and then I moved to the guitar that I’m using now. It’s a Solar V1.6. It’s not particularly good, but it gets the job done. The guitar that I’ve used for live shows is a headless model. It’s designed and manufactured by a small guitar enterprise in China named HNV. That guitar is totally good.
Speaking of guitarists, I would like to mention Stephen Taranto. He’s an Australian guitarist who plays super technical stuff. He’s popular on riff Instagram now. I would also mention Tosin Abasi. He’s a beast. After 2000, there aren’t so many guitarists that innovate guitar playing directly. But Tosin did that with his crazy thumping stuff.
Ali: I’d like to learn about your strategy for recording guitars. Do you mic up amps or record DI?
J.L.: It’s definitely DI. I live in a small apartment here. There’s a grumpy old man that lives on the floor under me. He always complains about me walking too loudly in my room. When I was recording my voice, I was afraid that he’d hear it, so I locked myself in my closet. A claustrophobic experience. (laughs)
OK, speaking about guitars, the guitar signal goes into a J48 DI Box, then to the audio interface, then into my computer. It’s as simple as that. It’s the plug-ins that do most of the work. (Ali: What software amp do you use?) For the moment, I’m using Fortin Nameless.
Ali: Is your default strategy, like, for each riff you’ll double it and pan hard left/right?
J.L.: I used to do quad tracking. But I’m not a machine-like player, so if I quad track something, it will get kind of messy. So for this new album, I only recorded two tracks, one to the left, one to the right. And I really focused on my playing. To the extent that I want every note, every pick attack to align inside the DAW.
Ali: And the drums, I assume they’re programmed as well, what plugin do you use for those?
J.L.: For the moment, I’m using Superior Drummer 3, but with a lot of processing. (Ali: And what about the saxophone? … is it a software saxophone?) No, definitely not. (Ali: Do you play it or is it a friend?) Hoplites: I played part of it, and I think my friend would like to stay anonymous.
Ali: What is your composition process? Do you have a bank of riffs? Like, do you write tons of riffs and later assemble them into songs?
J.L.: For this album, I did what I call “half improvisation”. Sometimes, when I’m watching anime or YouTube videos, I’ll have my guitar in hand and randomly play riffs. Sometimes, you come up with something interesting, so I’ll record it with my phone. From time to time, I would go over these riffs. If a riffs sounds like it could be put into this section of a song, I would transcribe it to Guitar Pro.
Ali: I have a note of artists that you’ve talked about before. There’s metalcore, thrash, black, death, progressive metal, and general prog like Zeuhl and Porcupine Tree. However, it sounds like your music is trending towards breaking the confines of metal and prog entirely. Is this an intentional goal? The new album features some hardcore punk sections, avant-garde experimentation like with the saxophone, and an ancient-sounding acoustic interlude in the final track.
J.L.: I posted about this on my Chinese Twitter, but I didn’t on Instagram or Bandcamp, because I don’t want people to find this to be boasting about it. But I’ll tell you what I think.
I would like to pursue a state that I call theia mania. It’s Ancient Greek, meaning “divine madness.” I want to achieve this state without resorting to, say, drugs or alcohol. I used to listen a lot to a band called Aspid, a progressive thrash metal band, and I would achieve this state. I was going crazy inside my dormitory, to the point of talking to myself, totally in delirium. I wanted to make an album that could recreate this state, and could bring some listeners to this state.
It kind of failed actually. I’m not too satisfied with it after a couple of listens. Speaking about genres, It’s my experience that everyone is talking about genres. Those rating sites are all about genres. People give you this label. OK, you are a black metal band. You are, I don’t know, a noise rock band. You are indie electronics. When I was a listener and a rater of other people’s music, I would do the same. But when people do this to my music, I feel kind of uncomfortable. I recognize that may sound arrogant to say.
"You are indie electronics."
– Liu Zhenyang
Ali: Do you feel boxed in?
J.L.: Yeah, boxed in. When I was writing riffs, I was thinking, okay, that’s the riff that’s going to make people think, oh, this is black metal. That’s the riff that’s going to make people think it’s punk. And I grew tired of it, so I said to myself, well, just don’t give a fuck. Just do your crazy stuff to try to achieve good old theia mania.
Ali: Where do you plan on going from here? You said you’re not entirely satisfied with this project. What direction do you intend to go to try to achieve that divine mania?
J.L.: Actually… that’s the news that I’ve talked to you about, and I’m going to talk about it at the end.
Ali: Yeah, let’s do that at the end. Let’s move away from music for now. So you’re born near Ningbo, in Zhejiang province? Is that a good pronunciation?
J.L.: (laughs) Yeah, Zhèjiāng.
Ali: Alright, I’ll not say that word again. So it’s a city near Shanghai, and from what I understand, it’s among the cultural centers of modern China. What was it like growing up there? Did you notice a lot of change in your lifetime?
J.L.: Growing up, we were just busy with schoolwork, but you could say that’s a good thing, because it shields you from the struggles of participating in real society. Then, we go through an examination that, air-quotes, “determines your future.” The Gaokao. The official name is, “University Entrance Examination”, something like that. I remember listening to metal records every day when I was stressed out before the exam. I remember listening to Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk by Emperor basically every evening while doing exercises. But, speaking of changes, I don’t think there are so many changes. I would say that Paris is making me want to go home now. I can’t stand it. In my hometown, there’s basically zero crime. I’m just staying here for my studies.
Ali: I’d like to learn about the metal scene in China. I’ve seen clips from your shows, and it’s exciting to me that there’s a vibrant scene brewing there at the moment. First of all, how popular is rock music in China and how popular is metal?
J.L.: China is strange. Statistically, there are so many people. If you go to live shows, oh there are so many people! They’re into metal! It’s incredible! China has so many metalheads. But in reality, if you take into account the whole population, it would just seem infinitesimal.
Ali: Right, there are like 10 million people in Ningbo. That would make it the second most populous city in the United States.
J.L.: The scene in Ningbo actually sucks. Normal metal shows in Ningbo, usually there are only like 15 people. Most of the venue is empty, just random people moshing there. But because there’s a lot of space, they can do whatever they want.
Ali: Is metal more popular in the south?
J.L.: Hm… I would say that’s generally correct. In the north, it’s all about Beijing. Shandong, Tianjing, and the other provinces are not that active, I would say. But in the south, you already got Shanghai, that’s a major center, and Guangzhou, that’s another center. They have a lot of, really, a lot of metal bands. Regardless of their quality. (laughs)
Ali: What about rock music more generally?
J.L.: I think rock is thriving a lot more than metal. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them, there’s Omnipotent Youth Society? (Ali: They’re one of the few that I have heard of.) They’re the most famous, I’d say.
Ali: How did you get into metal?
J.L.: What got me into metal? I was watching the first season of The Voice of China. I think it was 2012? There’s a guy whose name I still remember. His name is Chi Hai Shing, and he sang a song called “Fox”. In the middle, he suddenly started screaming. The judges were totally scared of that, and nobody turned their seat for him. While they were discussing his music, one of the judges said, well, you could go into death metal music. At that moment I was like, what is death metal? That sounds so cool. At the time, I was heavy into Michael Jackson.
I went onto some Chinese website and typed in death metal. The first song I downloaded was from Children of Bodom. That actually got me a bit scared that night. They have this low guttural scream. I wondered, is that sound even producible by humans?
Ali: Have you seen metal shows get canceled before?
J.L.: Too much. I can tell you my own story. I was playing a festival on September 9th in Shenzhen. Another band was told that they can’t play until after midnight, because September 9th is day that Mao Zedong died, and this other band was Japanese. Although in the end they played before that time, the pre-show warning felt ridiculous. When I was playing my set, we were so excited. I saw people moshing, and I was reaching theia mania, divine madness on the stage. So I jumped down and moshed with them. We were kicking bottles, and I was pushing bandmates around. I give my bandmate a drink, something like that. I didn’t realize there were police at the festival. They saw what we did on the stage, and they were not happy. Right after our set, we were asked to leave.
Incidents like this are normal. I’ve seen way worse. On the new album, the fifth song has essentially one lyric, me shouting, “excite, excite.” It’s Ancient Greek for “going out,” or you could translate it to “fuck off, get out.” What I was trying to depict there is playing live shows. I’m pointing right at the policemen and shouting, excite, fuck off, get out motherfucker.
Ali: What type of art is promoted by the state? In the USSR, there was the concept of socialist realism, for example. Is that an idea in China?
J.L.: There’s this ridiculous story that took place last year that had every rock fan in China laughing so hard. So, Omnipotent Youth Society is from a province called Hubei. It’s perceived as one of the underdeveloped provinces in China. The last song on their first album is called, “Kill that guy from Shijiazhuang”, the capital of Hubei. Its lyrics are a metaphor about this society. There’s one lyric, “living like this for 30 years until the skyscrapers collapse.” What does that skyscraper represent? (laughs)
The government of Hubei realized that we don’t really have anything that make us stand out among the provinces in China, but we do have Omnipotent Youth Society. So they started this policy last year about “making Shijiazhuang a rock city”. They started by changing this “Kill that Shijiazhuang man” song into one praising the CPC. That got EVERYONE laughing so hard. It’s ridiculous.
Ali: So did Omnipotent Youth Society release a new version of it?
J.L.: I don’t think so. It’s just the government releasing a brand new version of it. (Ali: What? laughs) I have a screenshot of the drummer posting, “fuck off,” on his social media account. (Ali: That’s crazy. Did they have someone else rerecord it, how did that work?) I think they got the stems, removed the vocals, and asked some random teenagers to fill in new words. (Ali: Is it working? Is Hubei the rock province?) Not at all. (laughs)
Ali: What drew you towards linguistics? What languages do you study?
J.L.: Through my tutor, I developed an interest in fieldwork. In America, there’s also this tradition. I don’t know if you’ve heard about it, but there’s these Algonquin languages, Ojibwe, and also a language called Massachusetts. Some linguists take their computer, a notebook, clothes, and go to their villages, staying there for a few months, just to study the language. Eat with them, work with them, play with them.
At the moment, I’m carrying out fieldwork on a language called Munia in a region near Tibet. It’s spoken in tiny villages high in the mountains. Very hard to get to. The people there, though not Tibetan historically, are classified by the government as Tibetans. They were conquered and assimilated culturally by the Tibetans.
Ali: From my understanding, Noam Chomsky was influential for his notion of an intrinsic universal grammar, but apparently this idea has been falling out of vogue. What’s the deal with that?
J.L.: I’ll say my personal opinion first. I’m not into Chomsky’s stuff at all. I think he sucks. But still, you cannot deny that he had a lot of valuable contributions. What he does, we describe it as “desk linguistics.” What we do is fieldwork, going into the real world, seeing real language being spoken. He grabs a book and starts drawing trees for his universal grammar. From my point of view, we’re still far from drawing this conclusion. As a fieldwork linguist, I would say that there are still thousands of languages that are waiting to be described. Every year we are finding new features that surprise us. In this language that I studied, people would put a spatial orientation onto verbs. To the extent that there isn’t even north/east/south/west in this language. They don’t need it.
Ali: I want to discuss this recent story that I was reading about the exiled Chinese political artist Ai Weiwei. I see some parallels in your work, although his art is more overtly political. You both make art that, as you put it, criticizes the unfairness, inequality, and demoralization of society, and you both operate in Europe at the moment. As a Chinese dissident, Ai Weiwei was universally celebrated in the west until a few weeks ago, when he drew upon his own personal experiences in Palestine and tweeted a denunciation of Zionism. Immediately afterwards, many of his art showings were canceled in Europe, including in France. Since then, he has said, “I think maybe I was celebrated for the wrong reasons in the West.” And furthermore, “Western censorship poses a greater threat, as it operates in a more concealed, solid, and enduring manner.” My question for you is, now that your music is becoming popular internationally, do you fear that it, too, could be celebrated for the “wrong reasons” by some in the West, especially as it relates to your usage of Ancient Greek and neoclassical aesthetics?
J.L.: So this question brings me to the news I want to share with you today.
Is Hoplites being celebrated by some for the “wrong reasons?” It could be. Some people dwell on how it’s cool because of the concept, a Chinese guy in France making music in Ancient Greek, wow! For me, it’s just a fun thing to do, so don’t take this too seriously, please. I did not relocate to Paris as claimed on some sites. I'm just doing my studies here, and I'm ready to leave as soon as my studies finish.
The news is simple. I’m not enjoying the situation that Hoplites is in right now, so I’m shutting it down for a period of time. Because of all this stuff that’s going on, and how some people are treating the music. This should be a fun project, and I’m not finding it fun anymore. Hoplites is going on hold.
My interests have shifted to a new project that I’ve been preparing for a long time. It’s called Dgra, a Tibetan word meaning enemy. I will use the language that I study in my fieldwork, and probably some Chinese and English too. I think it will generally be art rock, prog-y rock. I still don’t know too much about the details.
Ali: One last thing that I wanted to ask. This really shocked me. As an egalitarian, you’ve denounced NSBM (National Socialist black metal), as we do as well. You’ve claimed that this trend exists even in China?
J.L.: Yeah, I could tell you about that. There’s this band called Holyarrow. They make music in Hokkien, a Chinese dialect. Linguistically, it’s pretty cool, but that guy is NSBM bullshit. He never posts NSBM stuff on Facebook or Instagram, so nobody outside China nows he’s a Nazi. But if you use Chinese Twitter, he is the Naziest of the Nazis.
Ali: Do people like Burzum in China?
J.L.: Too much. Because, you know, it sounds cool to the teenagers. But you know, Burzum, has his own thing, minimalism, you could say, has some sense musically.
Ali: It’s got some good atmosphere.
J.L.: But people’s aesthetics need to improve. That’s my point of view.
Ali: That’s all my questions. Thank you for answering them so candidly and so profoundly.
J.L.: I would say that some parts probably need to be moved out because you know, I don’t want the government to see it and take me to the police station. (laughs)
Ali: No problem. [further discussion about the bay area]