Hyderabad’s Godless guns for global fame

In 2018, Hyderabad’s very own metal band, Godless, made the city proud when they performed at the Wacken Open Air 2018, Germany — considered to be the ‘Mecca of metal music’. But they aren’t done yet. In 2019, death metallers are gearing up for something even bigger. Come September, the quartet would be en route Europe for a multi-country tour, a first for any Hyderabadi metal band.
“We will be touring eight European countries including Germany, Poland, Netherlands and Czech Republic during September 2019. All the dates have been finalised and posters are printed but we don’t want to divulge all the details right now,” says Abbas Razvi, the bass player of the band, adding, “One thing’s for sure. We don’t want our music to be restricted to any city or country. We want to go international and are working really hard to make that happen.” One look at their recent work, and you’ll know what he means by that. with their second EP, Swarm, Godless created waves across the country. And they aptly followed that up with an eight-city India tour. “We have received some great response in the past few months and we are loving it,” says Kaushal LS, the vocalist, as he joins bandmate Abbas to sit down for a chat with Hyderabad Times. The duo took us through the band’s recent highs, let us in on a story about how KTR helped them realise their Wacken dream, spoke at length about their “intense yet empowering” music and bust the myth that metal music is all ‘dark and morbid’. Excerpts

Tell us about your experience of playing at the world’s most reputed metal festival — Wacken Open Air (W.O.A)?
Abbas: It was surreal! The festival was held in Schleswig-Holstein, a village situated in the northwest of Hamburg, Germany and metal pioneers from across the world converged there for four days. It was a massive crowd of over a few thousands metal heads, screaming and head banging to our music. We felt privileged to represent our country there. Honestly, we didn’t expect the kind of love we received at the fest. We played our original compositions such as Infest, Empty Graves, Oneiros and Infected By The Black and encores kept echoing long after we had left the stage. It was a high to share the same stage with Brazilian metal pioneers Sepultura, a band we grew up listening to, along with other inspirations such as Judas Priest, Madball, Arch Enemy, Hatebreed, Gojira and Dying Fetus, among others.

The journey to get there must have been intense...?
Kaushal: After winning the prestigious Wacken Metal Battle India (2017) in Bengaluru, we got the opportunity to represent India at W.O.A on August 1, 2018. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the resources to finance our trip. We had previously seen governments of North-Eastern states promote upcoming artistes and fund their foreign tours. So we thought, why not give it a shot in our city as well? So, we sent out a tweet to KTR and to our utter surprise, he reached out to us on the same day. He connected us to private sponsors and they funded the trip. We are extremely grateful to him for this.
You are one of the few death metal bands in the city. How do you keep the crowd coming back? And, would you say the Hyderabadi audience is receptive to this genre of music?
Abbas/Kaushal: At least Hyderabad is warming up to it! You see, we aren’t a band that overplays and like doing selective gigs in the city to keep our set fresh and interesting. Our recently-released EP, Swarm, has been doing really well and we are getting tighter as a band by the day. We hope to create a few more ‘Godless’ in the city each time we take to the stage!

The word ‘godless’ has a controversial connotation to it. How does the band interpret the word?
Abbas: The word ‘godless’ to us is an amalgamation of different meanings. It means being empowered without having to depend on anyone. It means living life on one’s own terms without being forced to believe in the societal norm, organised religion or imaginary faiths. hence, ‘Godless’.
The theme and lyrics of your songs are often intense and dark. How would you define your music?
Abbas/Kaushal: Our music is an eclectic mix of thrash and death metal. In short, it’s relentless. The topics we choose to deal with include politics, religion and contemporary issues. We use a lot of metaphors and allegories to describe the ills of the urban society. The subjects we touch upon or the messages put forward in our songs are intense and when synced with equally strong vocals, it sounds aggressive. Most of our compositions have instrumental layers without much of vocals. However, it is a myth that metal is all dark and morbid. The music actually relaxes you and often metal-heads return from a concert feeling at peace with themselves. Having said that, we must admit that metal is not meant for mass consumption and is indeed an acquired taste.

Considering metal is a niche genre of music, how challenging is it to earn sustenance being metal musicians in this country?
Abbas/Kaushal: We love the music we play and are extremely passionate about it. Money was never the goal. We thrive on our loyal fans. our commitment to the band forced us to let go off our jobs in reputed companies. While Aniket (drummer) quit his lucrative job at Amazon, Ravi resigned from Google to be a full-time musician. Today, all four of us have made our passion our profession. While I run a sound system firm, Aniketh teaches drums at a music school. Ravi works for a company that develops sound for video games and also gives guitar lessons. Kaushal shuffles between Bengaluru and Hyderabad as he’s part of a few other bands. If you want it, you can do it.