Freddy Lim, soft-talking hard rocker, shakes up Taiwanese politics

After shaking up Taiwan's music scene, hard rocker Freddy Lim is unsettling its political establishment, writes Lisa Murray.

Lisa MurrayAFR Magazine deputy editor

Updated Dec 9, 2016 – 6.56pm, first published at 11.30am

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I am struggling to hear Freddy Lim above the sizzling teppanyaki grill of the neighbourhood restaurant he has been coming to since he was a child.

This would be entirely unremarkable except that Lim, who was elected to Taiwan's parliament earlier this year, is also a rock star. He is the lead singer for Chthonic, one of Taiwan's most famous extreme metal bands – think Black Sabbath not Guns N' Roses – and has been screaming out lyrics to fans around the world for the past two decades.