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LAANG DESCRIBETHEMSELVES as “black metal from Taiwan based on the trauma of a survivor”. Taiwanese singer and guitarist Haitao Yang started the project in 2018, 18 months after he was declared medically dead; he was shot in the head during an attempted carjacking.
“I was in the US at the time,” Haitao, now based in Tennessee, tells Hammer. “I was returning to my car in a car park, and there were two people standing next to it I didn’t know. I just remember one of them walking towards me and then I was on the ground. I couldn’t feel anything. It just felt very cold, very numb.”
Haitao had a history of making metal before Laang. He lived in Taiwan until he was seven, when his family moved to Norway, and he ended up in some black and power metal projects. However, Laang冷’s more personal, cathartic black metal taps into Haitao’s Taiwanese identity via instruments such as the erhu (a two-stringed bowed instrument), while the synths and vocals carry the urgency of melodeath. It’s a combination that, together with the incredibly evocative backstory, is seeing the band resonate across the extreme metal underground.
“I’ve had people with similar experiences approach me on tour or on social media, saying they really appreciate having something that allows them to not suffer in silence,” Haitao says. “Seeing that this is helpful for other people is really rewarding, and I think that’s probably the most that I could hope for.”