Live Out Your Slasher Fantasies with Scare the Children Tonight
Whether or not metal or horror is your jam, you have to admire the commitment, craft, and vision of the multi-national four-piece Scare the Children. Donning ghoulish costumes complete with all too-lifelike masks, and a dollhouse set decor straight from your childhood nightmares, the band (made up of some of the music scene’s best-known characters, though you wouldn’t recognize them from their nightmarish personas they inhibit on stage) has been dominating both the local scene and festival stages since their humble beginnings in 2014. It doesn’t hurt that the band are wildly skillful and deliver the goods each time out.
Tonight (Sep 14), after one year of recordings, production and working alongside numerous visual artists from Beijing, they’ll be releasing their much-anticipated album Odyssey, with an official release party at their home base of Temple. I shot their drummer Cedric a few questions about past experiences, their horror influences and the practical nightmare that is wearing a mask on stage.
I had never heard of horror metal as a genre before you guys entered the scene, but the coupling makes perfect sense. Is there anything specific that gets you guys marked as horror metal as opposed to something more old-fashioned like gothic metal?
Well, gothic is not really a genre of music, more of a fashion statement. But if you ask what differentiates what we’ve come to define as “horror metal" from other styles, I suppose it’s about the theatricality. However, we are not the first ones to come up with this. Alice Cooper’s been doing it since the '70s, and since then we’ve had acts like Gwar, Rob Zombie, Marilyn Manson, and others who understood the chemistry between metal and horror. Having said that, we like to think that Scare the Children (as with all the acts mentioned above) offer a very unique spin on the concept.
Many of you have an extensive history of working behind the scenes of the music industry in Beijing and China. Did your experiences beforehand inform the band in the beginning stages - from what you wanted to accomplish and how you wanted to present your sound?
Past experiences were certainly a plus for many reasons. Having been around the block a few times certainly helped us navigate the tricky seas of the Chinese music scene. It also helped us gain a better understanding of how to promote the band through local social media so that we, as foreigners, were able to reach a Chinese audience more efficiently. We often perform at festivals in which we are the only foreign act, playing alongside highly esteemed Chinese bands. We are very proud of having accomplished this level of acceptance, but it took us a few years of learning the hard way before we got there. Internally, the experience helped us develop our instincts so that we weren’t afraid to take risks both musically and with the live performances, keeping our audiences as well as ourselves excited about what we are doing.
It’s clear that a lot of time and thought went into the concept of the band - particularly the costumes, masks, and decor. What are some of the references or homages that we can find in your characters and set design? Is there a backstory to each character (I’ve always wanted to know the deal with the sailor)?
The costumes are of creepy dolls, basically. It goes with the concept of this album, which features a possessed doll that wreaks havoc on the lives of whoever comes across it. We each picked the concepts for our costumes individually. As for the sailor, we like to think that Marco was one in a past life, drinking rum and having a girl in every port [laughs]. But seriously, the sailor was based on Robert the Doll, the real-life possessed doll which was the inspiration for the movie Child’s Play.
This cutie is based off the inspiration for the movie 'Child's Play'
What was the process behind making the masks? If you look closely, those are top-notch, custom-made masks you all are wearing. How do you even operate under those things? Any ‘horror stories’ of the masks malfunctioning whilst performing?
Yeah, those masks are custom made by Xumin Fx, a professional FX company that makes masks and prosthetics for movies and such. They are shaped to fit our faces, so they are quite comfortable. But during performances, other factors come to play: the sweat-inducing heat, difficulty in breathing, not seeing clearly (Marco’s mask, for example, doesn’t have eye holes), etc. ... but we try to make the best of it, and hey, the show must go on, right?
A year ago you went on tour in Japan with fellow Beijing band Ogenix - what was that experience like? Is it true that Japan take their metal very seriously?
Japan was a blast. We played five shows in five different cities and it was a great experience. They take their music very seriously indeed and, both the bands and the venue staff, are incredibly professional and good at what they do, which made our lives a lot easier while there.
What have been some of the best crowd reactions to your shows? I imagine there are some diehard fans out there as well as people who are just terrified.
We often get asked about “best show,” “best crowd,” “best venue,” etc. These questions are very hard to answer. We’ve played so many different places and to so many different crowds and, more often than not, they’ve all been great for their own unique reason. Crowds at festivals are amazing because of the adrenaline surge it gives you to be cheered on by thousands of people when you are doing your thing. We end up playing better too, as a result. But we also love the smaller, messier, more punk rock crowds who get rowdy as f*ck. Recently, we did a gig in Mongolia, and that was one of the more intense shows we’ve ever done. They went ballistic and things got way out of control, it was awesome. As for individual audience members and why they come to the show, yeah, many come because they are metal fans, but others come because they enjoy the theatrics and showmanship. We get a special sense of accomplishment whenever people come up to us and say things like “I don’t like metal, but I love you guys’ shows,” means we managed to break through the invisible wall that often separates crowds.
So what are we to expect on the new LP? Is there a narrative to it? How long has it been in the making?
The album, very appropriately named Odyssey, has been two years in the making due to a lot of obstacles that kept popping up along the way. There’s a very complex narrative that flows from one song to the next, and before writing the lyrics, we would draft a short story for each song which would be a follow-up chapter to the previous song. Many of the smaller details and plot points didn’t even make it to the lyrics and are often implied. In short, it follows the story of a possessed doll that brings out the devil inside whoever it comes in contact with. It is first picked up by a boy in Europe in the 1930s. Eventually, during the war, it gets lost and from then on it’s passed on from owner to owner throughout the ages, until it finds its original owner in the late 80’s, now a grown man still coping with the psychological repercussions of what happened to him all those years back. Each song tackles a different time period and we try to make the melodies suit that period or the theme of what’s happening, almost like the soundtrack to the story. In fact, that’s how we composed a lot of the riffs - by envisioning what was going on in the tale at that particular point.
I have to ask - what are some of your favorite horror movies or urban legends?
For the most part, we like the classics: Halloween, Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and IT are all movies we grew up with as kids. Later on, when The Ring and Dark Water (Japanese versions) came along, that was a great turning point from slasher films to the more subtle, and arguably creepier, horror flicks. We also dig television shows like Tales from the Crypt, Tales From the Darkside, and more recently, Supernatural, which had a good run for its first five seasons. We should also point out that Matt was arachnophobic before watching the aptly named film Arachnophobia and can’t watch more than 25 minutes of it.
Scare the Children celebrate their album release at Temple tonight, Sep 14, 9pm. Entrance is free.
Never miss a gig: go here for a huge list of live shows in the city, updated daily: thebeijinger.com/events.
Photos courtesy of the organizers
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