Today on Sludgelord I am interviewing India's very own and brilliant Sludge/Doom/Stoner Metallers - Bevar Sea,
Bevar Sea are starting to make a name for themselves with their stunning debut S/T album which I recently reviewed here:
The guys have kindly agreed to talk to me about all things Doom, Stoner and Sludge Metal. So lets get down to business with India's finest Stoner Metal band.
Q1 – Hi Guys, Thanks
for doing this. For people who are unfamiliar with your band, can you
tell them little bit about the history of the band? Where you're
from, band members, when you formed?
Hey there! Here's the
history lesson - Srikanth started the band in 2008, jamming with a
few friends of his in Bangalore while learning how to play the
guitar. After a couple of years of jamming, with some lineup changes
along the way, there were quite a few fully formed songs ready, and
the band got its debut gig late in 2010. Since then, it's been a
steady climb, and the lineup has stabilised with Srikanth and Chacko
on guitars, Deepak on drums, Ganesh on vocals and Avi on bass.
Q2 – How would you
describe your sound.
Sludge soup for the
soul. But seriously, a trademark of this subgenre is open Black
Sabbath worship, and we check that box fairly blatantly. Essentially,
we just try to incorporate all our favourite elements - grooving
rhythms, big riffs, melodic solos, whiskey-fueled vocals - and see
what comes out.
Q3 – Is The Band a
Full Time Project or do you have regular jobs to support the band.
Pigs will fly before
anyone starts making a living out of playing heavy music in India.
All of us still need our day jobs very much.
Q4 – How has the
reaction been like to your music overall. At home and abroad.
At home, it's been
largely positive. We actually didn't expect that, since there weren't
too many avid fans of this sound around, but now we see quite a few
people sharing links to tracks by Sleep, Church of Misery and the
like. It's a good feeling! There have been quite a few international
orders for our album, predominantly from the USA and Europe, which
was also a pleasant surprise. We've sent out our CD to several
international review sites, so hopefully there ought to be more
coverage soon, and then we can better gauge what the reaction is
like.
Q5 – Are your family
and friends supportive of your music.
Most of our friends
were made through music, and the remainder are happy to turn up for a
concert now and then to support our asses. As for our families,
they're just happy that we're not total deadbeats. Overall, that's a
big yes.
Q6 – You released two
great EP's and released a whole shitload of great videos on YouTube.
Has this helped get your music across to a lot more fans.
I think calling them
EPs might be glorifying them a bit. They were just recordings of our
practise sessions while we were warming up for a couple of gigs.
Hopefully, we sound a bit better now! But yeah, I think giving people
easy access to check out our music, and having concert videos and
other fun stuff to absorb gives us a better chance of showing people
what we're all about, and eventually converting them to fans.
Q7 – Do critics
reviews bother you as a band or do you just care what the fans think.
We're open to
criticism, and honestly, we're quite self-critical a lot of the time.
One of the few things we could do without are the lazy reviews, where
the reviewers don't have a clue what they're writing about, and just
use the reference points closest to them, even if we don't sound
anything like that! If it's got enough of the 'lulz' factor, though,
we'll let it slide - why turn down a good laugh?
All that said, it's about
what we want to play, and while external opinions are always good to
hear, they shouldn't be crucial to decide whatever path we take.
Q8 – What is the
song-writing process like in the band. Is there one main songwriter
or does everyone contribute to all the songs.
So far, Srikanth has
been the main songwriter. Deepak does a lot of music with other bands
and projects, and the rest are too damn lazy! Anyway, Srikanth comes
up wit a bunch of riffs and ideas, brings them to the jam room, and
there, we see what works in a full band setup, and discard or tweak
with the stuff that doesn't. Inevitably, everyone adds our own
touches along the way, so that the finished product ends up being
quite distinct from its origin. We'll also occasionally mess around
with finished songs, and add new parts and dynamics here and there
for different gigs.
Q9 – How is the Metal
Scene in your home town or surrounding areas. Are there a lot of
places for bands like yours to play at on a regular basis. As India
is not known for its metal scene. Especially a Stoner Metal Band at
that.
Pretty bad, to tell the
truth. Very few venues left where we can organise a small gig, let
alone a large one. We have some diehard metalheads who make it to
every concert, but the numbers are rarely high enough to make it a
sure thing. We've got our inhouse initiative, The Mighty Riff, which
we hope to make a profitable model for regular gigs, so let's see how
that goes. As for India not being known for its metal scene, there
are very few bands from here that could cut it in the international
scene, so it's not all that surprising. Hopefully, that changes in
the future!
Q10 – Do you tour on
a regular basis. What has the reception been like to the band
performing live. Have you toured with any famous bands.
We haven't toured at
all! Organising a tour is a major thing - we need to find enough
places that want to have us play, we need to get time off from work,
make sure we don't end up losing money, and a bunch of other
headaches. There are only two cities we've played so far - Bangalore
and Chennai. The response in Bangalore is always great! Since it's
home turf, and our buddies are always around, we tend to be in our
comfort zone playing here.
Our gigs in Chennai have been a lot smaller, but even
having a few dedicated fans of our kind of music come out to see us
is pretty awesome. So, we haven't toured with anybody, but we did
open for Orphaned Land for our debut gig, and were in the lineup
alongside Kreator at Bangalore Open Air.
Q11 – Do you have any
plans to tour abroad or is too expensive to do at the moment.
That's our
long-term plan. If the band moves from a self-sustaining entity to a
profit-generating one, then we can start saving for an international
tour. That'd obviously be a big landmark for the band,
so hopefully
we can plan to have it just after our second album or so.
Q12 - How do you feel
about blogs and websites giving music away for free.
Tricky. We're not going
to pretend we haven't ever checked out the leaked release of an
anticipated album, so it'd be hypocritical to geton a high horse when
it comes to our music. The situation is quite complex, and hints of a
flawed system - physical media operates on one set of rules, laid
down by the record companies, but for a long time, the digital world
has been a sort of wild west scenario, where lots of people go "We
ain't paying you nothing!" and openly share media.
Now you could
argue that this is part of humanity's cultural output, and that
humans ideally should not be locked out of any culture for monetary
reasons, but then again, the cultural contributors still have to operate in a system
that requires money to survive. From a pragmatic perspective though,
we're hardly big enough to be hurt by unauthorised file sharing - at
this point, all it can do is spread awareness of the band, with which
we obviously don't have a problem. Besides the CD, we'll be offering
our music for digital download and free streaming online, so we're
just trying to make it as accessible as possible.
Q13 - What are the
most/least rewarding aspects of participating with the band.
Playing live to a
receptive audience is obviously a big one. Some of us were stage
newbies at first, but now, we tend to relax a lot more and just enjoy
the rush. Having people tell us that they got into some great bands
through our music is also pretty sweet. Mostly though, it's getting
to play the kind of music we like.
Least rewarding aspects
are struggling to find venues to play, occasional ego hassles with
show organisers, lugging our equipment around for practice sessions,
Q14 – What are the
future plans for Bevar Sea. Is the long awaited debut album coming
out in 2012. (OK Folks I wrote this interview before the debut album was released)
The album is the
priority! We're gunning at a September release date, as long as there
aren't any unexpected delays with production. Then, we've got The
Mighty Riff sometime next year, which should be a blast. There are
also plans to set up a practice/recording studio at home, and that'll
take quite a lot of work too. In the middle of all that, we hope to
get to play in some new cities. I guess that's the lowdown on our
immediate future.
(The album is finally released and has been receiving some brilliant press. I know the guys are very happy with the reception they have received so far).
Q15 – Can you
recommend any other great bands to check out in India. Regardless of
any genre. I do like Shepherd. They are a great band who I will be
featuring soon.
Shepherd kicks ass!
We'll be looking forward to that feature. Anyway, greatness is
subjective and all that, but as for the other bands we recommend,
Dying Embrace are obviously one of the favourites, since they were
playing their brand of extreme doom long before extreme metal was
common listening material here in India. Kryptos is getting great
reviews all over the place for their new album, The Coils of
Apollyon, so you might want to check them out.
Albatross is a band
that's kept getting better with every release, Inner Sanctum makes
for a monster live performance, and Gorified is a fun grind outfit
that's coming out with an album soon. Of course, all these guys are
good friends of ours, so maybe we're just a little biased.
Thanks for the time in
answering these questions. I hope it all goes well in the future and
maybe one day I will see you guys in action.
Thanks for the support,
man. We hope we get to play in your part of the world someday.
BandCamp
YouTube
imgur.com
