Birthed in 2014 within the Cambodian capital, thrash group Nightmare A.D. have conjured their dystopia-tarred thrash metal from their hometown of Phnom Penh to neighboring regions in Vietnam. Across their discography, you may hear extreme metal influences in the realm of Voivod and Dark Tranquility as well as Fear Factory and Coroner.
We recently spoke with frontwoman Mia Priest about their upcoming album Caricatures of a Delusion, Singapore Air Force conscription, trans role models in the metal community, industrial influences, best Cambodian metal bands, etc.
Throughout metal music’s history, there’s been a vast spectrum of gender identity expression, from Mina Caputo (Life of Agony) and Haela Ravenna Hunt-Hendrix (Liturgy) to Marissa Martinez (Cretin) and Xandra Metcalfe (Uboa). Were there any queer artists that acted as a role model for you personally?
Kat Shevil Gillham (Thronehammer, Winds of Genocide, Nine Altars) was and still is one of the trans / queer artists who I definitely look up to. Her band Winds of Genocide was signed to Pulverised Records (I know the guys who run the label), and the bassist of her band (Dan Hughes) had a solo project called Rotting Bull that released a split with my Singapore-based blackened thrash metal band Blood Division.
She helped to allay my fears and gave me some much needed advice on accepting my gender identity, as well as helping me affirm that I didn’t need to conform to any cis-heteronormative standards or stereotypes as an individual to feel valid and be seen as who I am. I was really fortunate and glad that I got to meet both her and Dan in-person; they drove up to meet me when I was in Edinburgh last year, as ScotRail was down due to the strikes (bus services were also impacted as a result) and couldn’t make my way down to Durham or Newcastle to see them.
After I publicly came out with my transition, I’ve got to meet other wonderful people in the trans community who share a similar love for extreme music: my friend and author Larissa Glasser (Hekseri) happens to be one of those people, and she reached out to me to do an interview for the University of Victoria regarding trans-women in metal, and that’s where I got informally introduced to Marissa Martinez (Cretin) and Melissa Moore (Sonja, Crossspitter, ex-Absu). I’d already known of their bands before, but we never spoke in-person. Melissa and I got in touch with each other after the University of Victoria interview. Absu toured with my former band Impiety in the past, so Melissa and I have been chatting ever since, exchanging ideas and working together. That’s all I can say for now, but something wicked this way comes.
While the metal community can be embracing of one’s gender identity, not all have the same accepting perspective on the LGBT community. A majority of Americans strongly favor laws or policies that would protect transgender people from discrimination in jobs, housing, and public spaces [Pew Research Center, 2022]. What are the overall social and political stances towards the LGBT community in Cambodia?
Unfortunately, my experience as a trans / queer person is different from someone local who is trans / queer, and I cannot translate that from my experience living here as a foreign trans-woman raised mostly in Singapore. There are two separate systems in terms of how things work for foreigners and for locals, not in a classist way per-se, but in terms of practicality and the deep cultural divides that either side isn’t able to fully embrace.
I do have to point out that many Khmer trans-women are not treated well by the general populace, and are often seen as criminals, as a number of them resort to petty crime in order to survive (they aren’t given any work or conditions to thrive in due to the social stigma of being trans, thus creating a vicious cycle). Many local LGBTQIA+ people do get bullied at school or at the workplace, and there are no dedicated laws to protect them from discrimination. I want to make it clear that Khmer people aren’t malicious in general; most are kind and go about their own business, but you will of course have a few bad apples in a big basket. The locals who are prejudiced don’t actively seek to discriminate against or harm me mainly because I’m foreign, but I’ve gotten my fair share of transphobia / homophobia from the trash of the western world, as they float on over to look for young, financially-destitute “tradwives” who have no choice but to put up with their toxic bullshit.
All that being said, there are local and foreign-run organizations here that do provide support and resources for local LGBTQIA+ people (as well as abused / unhoused women and children), and that the general populace is starting to be more aware and tolerant of different sexualities and gender identities. I know two local trans-women in their 20’s who are changing things up here by being actively involved with campaigns by international human rights advocacy groups. The Pride events have gotten bigger and better as well over the years, increasing our visibility in the public sphere and showing people that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being who you are. Things are improving, albeit slowly. Same sex marriage is still not legalized, but that’s unfortunately the case throughout most of Asia. I won’t comment on the local politics as I have no horse in that race, but my only wish for Cambodia is for further LGBTQIA+ acceptance along with the elimination of poverty, and that Cambodia will prosper in the knowledge that diversity is strength, and that repression will only lead to misery.
In 2018, Nightmare A.D. released Phantoms of Our Ruin, which melds thrash, hardcore, and synths. I’ve never heard genre fusion fully alike this style; what bands were in your musical palette during the writing and recording process at this time?
I would say acts like Perturbator and Carpenter Brut played a part in our influences, along with industrial metal bands like Fear Factory and Ministry. There are also minor elements of death metal and sludge, but I would say that we are still predominantly a thrash metal band, despite the synths and influences from other subgenres of metal.
‘Corruptors,’ ‘Phantoms of Our Ruin,’ and ‘Caricatures of a Delusion’ artwork close-ups
Much of your artwork and musical themes revolve around the concept of political dystopia. Can you share more about your fascination of this theme?
I was raised in an authoritarian dystopia, so you will see such Orwellian themes prevailing in most of my work (I design the artwork, write the music and lyrics for the band) as a form of catharsis from years of repression and breaking off pieces of myself trying to fit into a neat little box and yet failing miserably at it. It is a system that upholds productivity on a pedestal while ignoring the maggots of social decay as they gnaw at the very foundations of this flesh-powered capitalistic monolith of a city-state. Due to the uncompromising machinations of this system, I watched my family fall apart over money and unresolved mental health issues, eventually leading to the bitter divorce of my parents, my mother’s death, and my father leaving me behind for his new family in the Philippines while I was conscripted in the Singapore Air Force in 2003.
The news was on all the time in our air base, and on top of my existing familial issues, I was exposed to non-stop death and destruction every single day for two full years: the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the tsunamis in Indonesia, India, and Thailand, terrorism threats, etc. I watched thousands of people suffer and die in Kabul and the surrounding provinces, as our pilots assisted in refueling US / NATO war planes and providing cargo / troop transportation support. It was all too much. I tried to take my own life, but was caught by my superiors and remanded in a mental health facility under high-risk suicide watch. In the end, I managed to find the will to live (the facility was a nightmare, no pun intended) and was discharged from the facility under the care of my father (who came back to Singapore for a few days and was informed by my aunt that I was remanded in the facility), after being reviewed by numerous psychologists and psychiatrists to ensure that I wasn’t going to harm myself further.
After surviving what was probably the worst period in my life, my fascination for dystopian societies and how they operate dramatically increased, and since creating music and writing lyrics and prose have proven to be quite cathartic in my healing process, I guess it was only natural for both my morbidly masochistic fascinations and the creative aspects of myself to merge.
It’s not too often that metal bands travel to Cambodia on tour. Have you had the opportunity to see any American or European metal bands perform in Cambodia? What bands do you recommend from the Cambodian metal scene?
Unfortunately, there is truth to your words: the bigger metal bands do give Cambodia a miss as there isn’t a big scene here to support or finance bigger acts, so they normally just play in Saigon or Bangkok instead of Phnom Penh. That being said, we’ve played with a number of European and American metal bands here, including Implore (Germany), Hexis (Denmark), NervoChaos (Brazil), and Octopoulpe (Mexico), The Dumpies (US), etc., some shows of which I organized under Get in the Penh.
For other bands in the Cambodian metal scene, I would recommend our friends in Reign in Slumber, Doch Chkae, and After God. The scene here is incredibly small, and so the four of our bands pretty much make up the entirety of the extreme music scene in Cambodia.
What’s a Cambodian or Khmer phrase you might hear in the crowd at a metal show?
It’s more common to hear singular words being muttered about in Cambodia rather than whole phrases, and the words you might hear most from a crowd at a metal show would be…
“Chui,” which means “Fuck”
along with “Tov,” meaning “Go”!
It’s been about five years since the last Nightmare A.D. record. When can we expect new music? Can you give a hint at what future material may sound like?
You won’t have to wait too long. We took the aforementioned amalgamation of genres on Phantoms of Our Ruin and coalesced them, concentrating our sound into a more evolved form for our upcoming 2024 full-length album Caricatures of a Delusion. We’ve had time to focus on developing and fleshing out our sound, and I think the full vision of Nightmare A.D. is finally materializing and coming together, especially with the current and immensely talented line-up of Vivian, Jon, and Aaron. They have been wonderful to work with, and I know that we will have a solid record by the early half of this coming year.
If I could describe our sound as a subgenre, I’d call it dystopian thrash metal. Will it stick? Maybe, who knows.
One thought on “Interview: Mia Priest of NIGHTMARE A.D. [Cambodia] Talks Trans Metal Community, Suicide Attempt, PERTURBATOR Inspired Dystopian Thrash Metal, Local Phnom Penh Scene”