Khôrada

13th May, 2016, was a tough day for metal fans around the world as Doom/Folk metal act Agalloch announced that they were breaking up. One of the bands formed in the wake of the Agalloch split was Khôrada. The band sounds unlike Agalloch or Giant Squid (Aaron Gregory is the vocalist). I really enjoyed their first release Salt and spoke to Don Anderson about starting over, the album and also his thoughts on the current metal scene.

Read my interview with Don Anderson on The Metal Wanderlust

 

Shashank Bhatnagar (UnBolly Inc)

Continuing from the last post on gig promoters in Delhi, the next person being featured is no stranger to the metal scene in India. Known as the vocalist in Undying Inc and Soul Inclination, Shashank Bhatnagar has in the past year started donning the hat of a gig promoter with Unbolly Inc. He is taking HEAD Party down south to Bangalore this weekend after working on over 40 shows in a short period.

Find out more about the origins of Unbolly Inc. what he is currently listening to and also future plans in my interview with Shashank Bhatnagar below

Hi Shashank, you are gearing up for the first edition of HEAD Party in Bangalore. How are preparations going?

Preparations are in full swing. We know pretty much all the songs from both the bands, kinda instilled in our muscle memory. It’s almost like a badass training regime (all thanks to our jampad commander-in-chief, Shashvat Pandit) but a lot more fun. Nothing beats the feeling of educating the masses on Heavy Metal & delivering power to the classics we have grown up listening to. Our team & artists are super excited for this.

How and when did you decide to start Unbolly?

I started Unbolly with my better half, Avi Bu. Got a dear friend and a veteran in art & music, Raj Das for creative. Got introduced to the lovely, Mr. Gaurav Soral, Loveleen Anand & Vishal Saini of Cafe Turquoise Cottage for the venue by another dear friend, Pranav Sehgal of Crooner’s Collective. Called up another old buddy from the industry, Manu Saksena to help me out with the production. And boom, first Headparty!

Now that we look back, birth of Unbolly has been pending since aeons.I personally, have been doing small scale Metal/Rock events since 2005, on & off. Giving our new team a name and a stronger direction came as recently as October 2017 though. But I never wanted to be an event organizer post 2010, have spent majority of my life being a musician, water boring/rain harvesting plants, selling homes, & personally training people for their fitter selves, wanted to keep it that way. Felt we had to come back, primarily because of the downfall Delhi faced in 2017, with the number of original Indie shows, venues, dropping to almost nothing. Overflow of Hindi Bollywood bands calling themselves Sufi and whatnot. Practically killed off every form of music, sense of belonging to the small community we had, or even basic respect for musicians around. To a level that we barely had any Rock/Metal bands left in this city. And yes, we hate everything Bollywood, or pretentious. Hence, Un-bolly.

How do you select the bands that will perform at shows?

We prefer working with professional bands who believe in promoting themselves on priority, have recent releases, and are downright Badasses when it comes to deliverance. Not only in aspects of financial dealings, but also reliability of the performance. We do try our best, to work with the best in business. We don’t do this for everyone, we do this with everyone. If we are on the same page, you’re on.

What has been the most memorable show you have organized so far?

Far too many to mention here. But the last #HEADPartyV7 at Café Turquoise Cottage in Delhi, definitely was something that gave us the confidence to take our style of Metal to a brand new city, Bangalore. We had the legendary “Demonic Resurrection” from Mumbai, held a Delhi debut for Jaipur’s “War Cry”,& our own little tribute to Vinnie Paul (Drummer of Pantera/Damage Plan/Hell Yeah). Needless to say, there were a hell lot of flying sweat, blood & bodies. Our heaven of 250+ monsters.

What are 5 bands that the readers should check out?

Highly suspect, Blue Saraceno, Hozier, Avatar, Kaleo

You are the vocalist of Undying inc as well as Soul Inclination. How you manage between your bands and organizing shows?

It’s extremely tough. Hence, trying to pull back on the events a bit and start writing music with both already.

Do you have any more shows planned for this year?

As of now, for Unbolly; 30th August, 2nd September, 14th September, 24th September, 11th October, 26th-28th October, 9th November. More dates to be added. Follow our page on Instagram (@unbollyinc) & Facebook to stay updated.

Thanks for answering all my questions. Do you have anything else to add?

Indian Rock & Metal will rise again. To all who abandoned it? You’d feel sorry soon.

Dhatu Drishya

It has been a while since I featured concert promoters on the blog. There have been a steady rise in metal concerts in Delhi over the past couple of years and I’ll be speaking to the people behind them. The first is the team behind the Dhatu Drishya.

 

Hi, you are gearing up for the 7th edition of the Dhatu Drishya. How are preparations going for the gig?

Umm we still need to work on the after party packs and quantity of the booze. Kidding! We are all set with the preparations part of this event. We always try to finish the preparation section a month before hosting the gig and we are really excited since like every time the line-up is kickass. Noiseware is headlining this gig and it’s been quite a long time to see these boys in Capital and at the same time we have 1833 A.D performing which itself has been in the Indian metal scene from past 10 years plus 2 totally new acts Jammers Graveyard (Guwahati) and Brazen Molok (Raipur) to look forward to. We hope that our fellow metalheads are also excited as we are.

How did the Dhatu Drishya series of gigs start?

Well that’s a long story but I can sum it up as – a new baker in town sets up his shop for cookies and all he wants is people to come taste and acknowledge its food for which he has worked hard on for several years and getting feedback so that he can make it more better and serve much better and tasty products. Setting up a new bakery or a band is a same thing and it applies in our rock / metal industry as well. One evening we were hunting ducks and chicks and went to a Chinese van to eat and then we passed out as we were drunk and decided to just chill.We realized that we are not the only one who needs people to acknowledge our music just like other local artists who work hard for several years put their heart and soul, sweat and money just to communicate their perceptions of life through their music and hear original music as much as possible. That was the day we decided to put up our first DIY gig in Sep 9, 2016 in Antisocial and everyone really appreciated our idea of bringing out fresh artists/ bands from different parts of the country. Eventually we decided to put this event every now and then so that people could hear and acknowledge more and more original music. We hope to continue in a same manner.

How do you select the bands that will perform at shows?

We have a set team we call it ‘Crew’ and friends from the scene. Every time we decide to put up a show we audition out around 8 or 9 bands/ artists from the entries we receive 2 months before the event date and we do Ini Mini Miny Moe then we ask the people from the scene only if they would like to see these bands performing live. In the same process we try our best possible way to select at least 1 act from the entries which is very new in the scene and has their original tracks ready and has a very limited experience of playing a live gig. Let me add one more thing that performing a gig is very different than competing in a battle of bands. So we make sure that quality and newness should remain intact as it should for a gig and we try our best not to disappoint the artist and the people who are coming for the shows as well.

What has been the most memorable show you have organized so far?

Each and every gig we have organized has been the most memorable experiences of our lives. Every show has its own uniqueness and memories to cherish. There is so much more than just hearing live music in our shows. You get to meet so many people who eventually become your brothers and best buddies, talk about music, talk about the independent art scene and we get to meet those bands and artists who have actually influenced us to create music and keep these genres active in our country and learn so many things from the experiences of these artists like We are really big Fans of PRIMITIV an old school thrash metal act from Mumbai and I personally never missed any show whenever they came to Delhi and last time we got them as our headliner which was like a dream coming true to meet these guys and share some thoughts about the very same music genre. So it’s always a special kind of feeling and boost in our blood veins when we get to see these artists playing on stage and see a very different style of music and each band and artist has something different to offer from their bags of creativity.

What are 5 bands that the readers should check out?

Ah it’s hard for me to say just 5 bands cz they are so many Indian metal acts people know less about and I would suggest people should really check out some artists who are not such big acts from our country but really have the potential to become one and that’s what we are looking forward to. From our playlist people should definitely check these 5 metal bands from our country.

1. Primitiv (Mumbai)

2. Ayog (Nagpur)

3. Acid Pit (New Delhi)

4. Adamantium (Pune)

5. Dymbur (Shilong)

Do you plan on taking Dhatu Drishya to other cities?

Yeah definitely and why not. We really want to expand our boundaries and explore new musicians and Indian metal bands which we haven’t seen or heard yet. So yeah if we get a chance and favorable conditions, we would surely organize something out of Capital and would like to promote as much as fresh acts as possible.

Do you have any more shows planned for this year?

As of now we cannot commit since we plan our next event once the upcoming event has been wrapped up but yeah Dhatu Drishya has some plans for future gigs just need to work out with the funds and other aspects since we do not have any sponsors and we do all of these events by saving our salaries and our pocket monies. We look forward to organize as many gigs like these as possible.

Thanks for answering all my questions. Do you have anything else to add?

It’s still a very small circle we have built over a long period of time in Indian Metal scene. We know that people have their own taste but we want them to acknowledge that Metal is also a form of music that people usually are not much aware of in our country and there are pretty kickass Indian artists who have set the world in amaze that this country has the talent which has been forged in fire and over the years of practice that is required to play such badass music.So start appreciating these fellas and all those you know who play live music. Your friends, a local artist you saw last weekend in club where you just went to chill out. And Indian Metal scene is emerging slowly but for sure is emerging and we can only put our efforts as much it’s possible at the end the people coming together to support are essence of these scene. Start going in shows where a local band is performing and we are sure you’ll experience what cannot be explained in just words. Stay happy Stay Metalhead

Jai Metal \m/

 

Alkaloid

Liquid Anatomy, the second album by Alkaloid is an album I’ve been listening to a lot lately and here’s what I wrote about it in the Now Playing column. “I am shocked at the lack of buzz online about this album. The second album from the band is a prog masterpiece and will feature on the “best of” lists of many at the end of the year. Just listen to the album closer Rise of the Cephalopods if in doubt.”

I spoke to drummer Hannes Grossmann about the album and more. Read my interview on the Metal Wanderlust

 

Demonstealer

Sahil Makhija aka Demonstealer is a well known figure in Indian metal circles as the frontman for one of India’s oldest metal bands Demonic Resurrection. A couple years ago, he released a solo album under the moniker Demonstealer, This Burden Is Mine featuring George Kollias (Nile) on drums. This month, will see the release of a new album under the moniker, Last Reptilian Warrior. The album features guest appearances by some of the world’s best metal musicians.

I also spoke to Sahil about Last Reptilian Warrior, the stellar line up of guest musicians on the album and also the future plans of Demonic Resurrection. Check out the video premiere at the bottom of this interview.

Read my interview with Sahil on Unite Asia

 

Amorphia

Thrash metal is the most popular metal subgenre in India. 3 of the “Big 4” of thrash metal royalty (the exception being Anthrax) have performed in the country in the past decade. There are thrash metal bands across the country including smaller towns like Cherthala in Kerala where Amorphia(https://www.facebook.com/Amorphiathrash) hail from. The band formed in 2012 and have released 2 singles so far,  Master of Death and Lieber Code. The latter features on their debut album Arms to Death, which will be released on April 15

Find out more about Arms to Death, recording the album and also the Indian bands that have inspired them in my interview with the band below.

Read the interview on Unite Asia 

Mike Low (The Artisan Era) interview

The Artisan Era is an American extreme metal label. Started by Mike Low and Malcolm Pugh (Inferi) the label has created a formidable roster of artists like Augury, Inanimate Existence and Dark Matter Secret and put out some eminent releases in the past 4 years.

I spoke to Mike Low about the origins of the label, balancing between bands and the label and more.

You started the label in 2014 How does it feel looking back?

We didn’t really know what we were doing, haha. It has been quite a learning experience and has come a long, long way. There was no planning, no promotion game, and just a less professional feel all around. Fortunately we were only releasing our own bands at the time and didn’t have to subject anyone else to that. As we grew and decided to start taking on other bands, we got our ducks in a row and have everything down to a T now.

How did you decide to start a label? Why did you decide to start a label that releases only extreme metal music?

Extreme metal is about 95% or more of what we listen to, so that wasn’t hard to pick. We originally started the label just to release our own music. Actually way back in the day, we had discussed just releasing one-man (or woman!) bands. Malcolm had ALR and I was working on a solo project after I quit ENFOLD DARKNESS. That project never came to fruition because I joined INFERI and ended up using the songs I was working on for The Path of Apotheosis. It was then that we scrapped the strictly one-man band idea and released INFERI and my other band OUBLIETTE. In summer 2015, we had a meeting with ENFOLD DARKNESS about releasing their second album, and that’s when we decided to expand and start working with other bands.

What has been your most memorable release so far?

The Path of Apotheosis. Without that album, The Artisan Era would probably not be succeeding as we are today.

What do you look for in bands before signing them to your label?

Originality, creativity, and not just a run-of-the-mill extreme band. We have to see something in the band that we don’t see in other bands. We don’t have a certain formula but Malcolm and I have to agree on them 100% before we sign them. We have been approached with some more known bands that we are not into… stuff that would have sold well, but we want to stay true to what we like.

What are the problems that you have faced?

Typos and misprints are the bane of our existence, haha. No, there really aren’t a lot of problems.

You are a part of bands like Inferi and Oubliette. How do you manage between the bands and running the label?

I just have to remember to play guitar as much as possible in between mixing and meeting deadlines. Malcolm is the head honcho of INFERI, so I do what he tells me to do. OUBLIETTE has not toured yet, but I do most of the manager-type work for us, as well as all the audio work too (for both bands).

What are the changes in customers and bands you have noticed?

Vinyl is killing right now!

Do you have advice for anyone planning to start a label now?

Don’t do it.

What is next for The Artisan Era? What are the next releases from the label?

Keep an eye on our page!

Here are some releases from The Artisan Era that you should check out: