Dharma Will Be Irresistible Viewing At Froth & Fury

‘What we’re hoping to instill in the listener is within them some sense of relief from whatever might be troubling them. If they can listen to our songs and if at the end of them, they can feel calmer, more peaceful, if they can feel at ease with whatever might be troubling them at any given time, that’s the ultimate goal of our music.’

Joe Henley is the vocalist of Dharma, a death metal band from Taiwan about to grace our shores at next months Froth & Fury Festival in Adelaide. They though, are unlike any other death metal band you have heard. They are for one, Buddhist, and through their music they share sutras to the backdrop of blast beats, crunching guitars and vocals in Sanskrit and Mandarin.

‘That’s the ultimate achievement in our minds, if we can help people in some way to work through their problems, and at the end of our show, at the end of listening to our album or at the end of simply listening to one of our songs, they can feel better about their lives, better about themselves, they can feel more hopeful about whatever is going on, it can get them through to the end of another day and help them start another one feeling better than the day before. Then our message has gotten through’.

Death metal, any extreme metal really, and Buddhism is not a combination you would expect. For a start, the musical part very much has a reputation within the dark realms, makes you wonder how the juxtaposition works.

‘I think we definitely do fit into the extreme metal pantheon. We call ourselves a Buddhist death metal band, I think some of our songs are very much death metal songs. Some maybe you would categorise as extreme metal, if you were concerned with labels. We’re not so much concerned with labelling it or fitting in with the scene as we are with just writing songs that we enjoy.’

‘As for metal being strictly anti-religious, I think if you look at certain styles of music, say black metal for example, of course the whole foundation of it is being anti-religious. Over time, different elements have crept into the black metal. You get bands that have come along that are labelled as post black metal where their music isn’t. It has nothing to do with being anti-religious, and of course the black metal fanatics, the diehards, the old schoolers, they would have their say on that. But we are mostly just concerned with doing our own thing and our music, though sonically would sound like it’s full of anger and rage and all the hallmarks of death metal lyrically, it has nothing to do with those elements. It’s quite the opposite. What we’re doing is we’re presenting on stage a manifestation of what is known as the wrathful or vengeful deities. Now, these are incarnations of Buddhas that transform themselves into something evil or malevolent in order to combat evil. In that case, that would fit right in with death metal. You’ve got evil beings fighting against evil beings, but the ultimate purpose is to bring about a victory over evil.’

Joe himself wasn’t born into this culture. A Canadian journalist and novelist, travelling the world, he settled in the area nearly twenty years ago, and immersed himself in the culture over time. Both the musical and historical. Meeting with drummer Jack Tung, who is one of the brainchildren of Dharma eventually paid off years later when Dharma got off the ground and they needed a vocalist. Learning to sing Sanskrit and Mandarin, while challenging, was accepted and worked on to deliver perfectly. Converting to Buddhism, learning the teachings and become at one with the history makes for an authentic experience not to be missed.

‘I’m not fluent in Mandarin Chinese. So again, that was just pure repetition to work. It’s just a lot of work basically to overcome this on a linguistic level, the cultural aspect was easier, but the linguistic element of it was quite challenging, and it remains very challenging and sometimes daunting to this day. But I like that. I don’t think it should be something easy. I like the fact that the artistic side of it, there’s some hardship involved, there’s some pain because it just makes it all the more rewarding when you get to the point when you have a show, when you have that sort of victorious moment of presenting it to people on the stage and doing it well and doing it accurately, it shouldn’t be too easy. You should have to earn that in some way.’

So what is a Dharma show?

‘We present it as a kind of ritual, basically almost like a ceremony. It begins with Master Miao Ben, who is the nun who is with us now. She performs a blessing for everyone at the show, and it essentially inviting the presence of the Buddha into the space that we’re inhabiting with ourselves, with the fans and the friends who have come to watch us perform. From that point on, we’re just presenting various sutras in this extreme metal context. Each of the songs that we’re performing is actually a real sutra or a mantra that has existed for millennia, for thousands of years, and we’re presenting it in this new extreme metal format. In between them, Master Ben also performs different traditional Buddhist blessings or introductions to the songs, and it ends with another blessing again for everyone there, for the Buddha, the Dharma, and for the Sanga for three jewels.

‘So it’s a ritual. It’s not unlike what you would see or hear at any sort of Buddhist temple, either here in Taiwan or anywhere around the world, but of course, the form is a lot different. It’s still a metal show. I mean, we still get mosh pits, circle pits, stage dives, all of that, and we still invite that. We still want that because this, in the end, it’s a Buddhist band but it’s also a metal band, and we want those two worlds to come together. So we don’t discourage any of the usual metal practices. We’re all metalheads at heart in addition to being Buddhists and Taoist in the band. We also worship metal. We have since we were preteens and teenagers. So our show is definitely a marriage of those two different worlds, the extreme metal world and the rituals of the Buddhist faith in culture.’

For a band influenced heavily musically by Cannibal Corpse, Rotting Christ and Suffocation, they are going to be irresistible viewing at Froth & Fury Festival.

Interview By Iain McCallum

Catch Dharma at Froth & Fury Festival at Harts Mill, Port Adelaide on Saturday November 9. Tickets from MoshTix…