Leng Pleng

Screeching into Phnom Penh this weekend after a Friday night show in Ho Chi Minh City, to play a Saturday show at Oscar’s on the Corner, and before dashing off for Siem Reap to play Atlantis, is thrash metal/hardcore punk band Cút Lộn, along with local metal band Nightmare A.D.  The visitors, and Nightmare’s Mia Priest, were good enough to answer some of LengPleng’s questions about the unusual brand of performance they will be bringing this weekend.

LengPleng: Does Cút Lộn have an origin story? How long have you been gigging?

CL: We started jamming in early 2018 and had our first show in June the same year at one of the closing events of a month long country wide Rec Tour 2018. The original idea was pretty broad, I guess we wanted to play hardcore music, but with more like metal style guitars, something that they used to call metalcore in the 90s, though different from what it normally means nowdays. But after a few jams what came out was closer to thrash metal riffs with hardcore punk style drumming behind them.

Then I guess we wanted to have this kind of fun and childish vibe to the band and crossover thrash style also worked pretty well with that. So having this basic idea behind, I guess everything else like costume performance, lyrics, cover art styles and music videos – all makes sense together following the same idea. The band name Cút Lộn in Vietnamese means a quail balut egg, which sort of represents the childishness of it and it can also be understood as “sh*t c*nt” or “pig sh*t” if pronounced incorrectly, so it’s pretty punk LOL.

LengPleng: Which bands to you consider your biggest influence?

CL: I think “crossover thrash” explains pretty well what we do musically, so you can name bands like Municipal Waste, Toxic Holocaust, D.R.I. here. We have different vibe parts here and there as any other contemporary band, but the solid basics are in the same area with those bands.

LengPleng: Your YouTube channel certainly play up your sense of serious silliness, way before COVID lockdowns made such lo-fi videos more commonplace – which is more central to the band, the heavy or the silly?

CL: Silliness, for sure. I don’t think we are that heavy actually – in Vietnam we played at many indie rock shows and with some live electronic music or DJ events. I know people for whom Cút Lộn is the only or at least one of the few heavy bands that they listen to and I’m pretty sure that most of the kids who listen to Cút Lộn do it more because of the fun vibe rather than because it’s thrash metal or whatever else metal. On the other hand, you can’t take the thrash away from it, it just works so well together!! So of course we don’t plan to abandon the 230bpm madness.

LengPleng: I note your use of knitted yellow mascot masks has even passed into the audience – there’s at least one in the crowd during the video of your MASS: I show. What motivated the use of masks – was it a bid for anonymity, a bout of silliness, or a response to ugliness?

CL: In Vietnam we actually use a lot of different costumes, not like a new one at each show, but we often try to come up with something special for the occasion. We did a show in a chin-chin meme guy costume, in a Grab driver costume, Brazil national football team costume, lots of different anime cosplay – you name it, we probably had it haha. But yeah, that knitted mask sort of became a signature, I guess because it’s a cute and easily recognizable character but it also looks stupid and ugly. That’s very thrash punk, right!

LengPleng: What is the scene currently like for metal and punk music in Ho Chi Minh and Vietnam in general? Do you feel isolated or within a community of musicians and fans?

CL: Our drummer organizes shows in Vietnam regularly, the guitarist also puts an event once in a while plus does recording and mixing for some of the local bands, the bassist works as a sound engineer in the longest running venue in Hanoi and our new vocalist does photography for live music events in his spare time, so we definitely don’t feel isolated. In Vietnam both Saigon and Hanoi have pretty good scene nowdays, the South has bigger crowds while the North has more experimental music and genre diversity I would say. Pop punk is HUGE in Saigon, the biggest band is called 7uppercuts – check them out!

LengPleng: Have any of the band been to Cambodia before?

CL: Yes, I’d say ever since we met the Nightmare A.D. guys during their first tour in Vietnam the connection between Vietnamese and Cambodian scenes keeps being pretty solid, especially with Saigon, because it’s so easy to go to Phnom Penh from there! I recall at least bands like Windrunner, Proportions, In Your Eyes, Voluptuary played in Phnom Penh, probably more. And Cambodian bands like Sliten6ix, Reign in Slumber, Nightmare A.D., Doch Chkae – all played in Vietnam at least once.

LengPleng: Four words (one each?) to describe Cút Lộn.

Minh: Sweat
Nguyên: Pain
Sergey: Suffering
Sọt: Joy

To get an update on the local side, LengPleng also had some questions for Mia Priest of Nightmare A.D..

LengPleng: Congratulations on getting the metal tour scene restarted – how did you come across Cút Lộn?

Mia: Hey, thanks man. Sergey, their drummer, is an old friend; he helped organise our first Vietnam tour in 2016, before Cút Lộn was formed. A few months ago, he mentioned that Cút Lộn was keen to play in Cambodia, and we threw around some ideas and eventually came up with the idea of doing a mini-tour together in both Vietnam and Cambodia. I’ve also met some of the other members like Quang (guitar), if not all of them as we’ve shared the stage at some point in either Vietnam or Cambodia when they played with their previous bands.

LengPleng: Nightmare A.D. has had yet another forced line-up change – tell us about who we’ll see on stage this time.

Mia: Unfortunately that’s how the wheel turns. Our previous drummer Todd relocated to India for a new job, and our guitarist Genesis wanted to concentrate on his family. Jon (keyboardist) is still in the band but he’s taking a break due to work commitments. Right now it’s just our new drummer Vivian, the notorious Ned Kelly on bass and myself on guitar and vocals, as a power trio. People have told us that they do feel the fucking steel during our recent live shows, so that’s a good thing I think.

How has the Phnom Penh metal scene survived the quiet times – are there new acts to watch out for?

Mia: There are new-ish acts like As The Heart Betrays (who are currently looking for a new vocalist) and I recently heard a one-person Black Metal project from a young fan of ours that has lots of potential. Unfortunately there aren’t many new acts in metal or punk from the Cambodian scene, but older bands like Doch Chkae and us are still hanging around.

LengPleng: I love how we now think of Doch Chkae as an older band.  Do you expect more similar tours in the near future?

Mia: We’re getting more new songs ready for our third release at either towards the end of this year or early next year. The release is the priority for now, but once we have this release out, we might do another tour again to promote it. We definitely want to reach more people, and we’re looking at possibly touring Thailand and the Malayan Peninsula on the next one.

Catch the madness at Oscar’s on the Corner on Saturday 13 with the addition of Doch Chkae – note the early time of 7 pm and door cover of 10,000R – and/or at Atlantis metal bar in Siem Reap on Sunday 14.

[All photos supplied]