ARTIST

Crescent Lament was founded in 2007. Working from a folk-metal foundation and drawing on Taiwanese local culture, the band shapes a dark and ornate lyricism that traces the sorrowful stories of ordinary people.

Their writing reflects on history and justice and carries Taiwan’s voice to a wider world. The band’s first English-language album, Behind the Lethal Deceit, centers on an anti-war theme. The second album, Elegy for the Blossoms, written in Taiwanese, portrays the lives of courtesans from late Japanese rule into the early postwar years. The third album, Land of Lost Voices (2020), returns to a postwar Taiwanese setting and continues the narrative of Elegy for the Blossoms, using a broader palette of folk instruments to evoke collective memory. Land of Lost Voices was produced by Jesse Liu of Chthonic, mixed at Sweetspot Studio in Sweden, and mastered at Finnvox Studios in Finland.

Since its formation, Crescent Lament has appeared at major festivals in Taiwan, including Formoz, Megaport, Ho-Hai-Yan Gongliao Rock Festival, Spring Scream, and Wake Up Festival. The group performed in Seoul in 2012, took the stage at Belgium’s Metal Female Voices Fest in 2016, and toured Japan in 2023 and 2024 in cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, Nagano, and Nagoya. The band plans to return to Seoul in 2025.

Crescent Lament will release a new EP in late 2025 titled 薰篋仔內的批 (provisional English title: Letters in the Camphor Chest), continuing their work of giving voice to Taiwan’s history in song.