Earlier this week I posted some material of a band from a then new and now still unorthodox metal nationality on The Baboon: India’s Demonic Resurrection. Earlier this year their third studio record The Return to Darkness was released. Since that time I have been spending a considerable part of my attention on this band. Time to take a closer look at them.

By Niek

Precisely for that purpose I have been in contact with Sahil “The Demonstealer” Makhija, the band’s guitarist, vocalist and mastermind, nowadays also the only remaining member from the original line-up. He’s agreed for me to upload and present you some of the band’s older songs (which I’ve already done). This interview article features one exclusive track off their new album. Both pleasant for your ears and a nice way to hear their musical development. So let’s get to it.

Q: First off, about yourself. Dramatic nick names are far from uncommon in the world of (extreme) metal. What is the story about your own?

A: My story is of a 16 year old kid into Norwegian Black metal having no clue about Lord of The Rings or European Mythology from where most of these names stem and trying to find a good stage name. That kid named himself Demonstealer, mostly because Demonslayer was way too cheesy.

Q: Apart from singing and guitaring in Demonic Resurrection, you are also in Infinite Hate Project, Reptilian Death and Workshop, and you have been in Exhumation, all bands from the Mumbai area. Moreover, you run your own metal record label, having signed all of these bands. Ànd you have been the only stable factor in Demonic Resurrection’s line-up since the band started in 2000. Are you some kind of a father to the extreme metal coming from your area? Were you (among) the first to pioneer the genre? How did this happen?

A: Hahaha! You’ll have to ask the Indian metalheads if I am the father or not, but seriously I’ve just done what I’ve needed to do because metal is my life and I talk the talk and walk the walk. I was definitely not a pioneer of any sorts. There were metal bands in India since a while. It’s just that we were one of the few bands that started the original music movement in 2000 along with Kryptos, Threinody and a few other bands. Before that cover bands ruled the scene. With Workshop we are probably the first band of our kind in India but on a global level we are still one of the crowd.

Q: When we look at the band’s last three own releases (so disregarding the 2007 split-album), the recurring theme in all album/EP titles and many song titles is ‘Darkness’. Why is that and how does this relate to Demonic Resurrection’s musical style or genre?

A: Darkness just seems to be our thing, like certain bands tend to latch onto certain themes. Like everything Deicide writes is death to Christ, every Cannibal Corpse song is a horror movie and everything Fear Factory does is machine related. So for DR after the new line-up in 2003 darkness just sort of became our thing and I wrote the trilogy of darkness which starts at A Darkness Descends and went on to Beyond The Darkness and ended now with The Return To Darkness. However, I will have to find something new to write about. With relation to our music it’s just the story and the music tells the story.

Q: In January 2010 the band released its new album, The Return to Darkness. The quality of the songs that I’ve been able to listen to is very high, both music technically and song structurally. How long have you guys been writing and recording to get it right?

A: In India bands don’t work the way they do abroad. We don’t take six months to write an album and record it and then tour for six months. We tour and write music through the year while holding day jobs. So you can say this album has been in the making the day we released the EP in 2007, making it almost three years. We started recording in August 2009 and finished in December 2009. But the songwriting took us three years, mainly because of the way the Indian scene is.

Q: When I listen to A Tragedy Befallen, I seem to hear a certain Indian atmosphere, if only due to the style of the clean vocals. Do you deliberately try to mix a certain Indian identity through your music?

A: There has never been a deliberate attempt to bring anything Indian to our music. What you are hearing is just a reflection of ourselves and what we bring to the music and if someone can relate that to India and being Indian then it’s cool.

Q: How is your music received by your direct surroundings and the Indian metal public in general?

A: We have a huge following all across the country and that’s the reason we are where we are today. Because of the tremendous support from our fans across the country. The album has done really well and we’ve gotten a lot of great reviews from fans and even the local press and websites.

Q: I for one have good experiences with long-ass metal songs, because they generally display a great amount of epicness. They tell stories. The Return to Darkness features one such long-ass song, Lord of Pestilence. I have not been able to listen to it yet. What can we expect of it? 11:29 minutes worth of shredding guitars? Violins and atmospheric tunes alternating with loud bits of demonic violence?

A: This is one of the parts of the story in the album. Musically you will find a lot of dynamics in the song, lots of sections, as I call them, which relate to some part of the lyrics. This song has the longest guitar solo on the album as well. I think the less said the better and once you hear it you can tell us if you enjoyed it.

Some of Demonic Resurrection’s older stuff can be downloaded here, after subscription, for free. If you’re looking to buy the new album, The Return to Darkness, the album will be released worldwide on July 12th of this year. If you don’t feel like waiting that long, send an e-mail to demonstealerrecords(at)gmail.com and ask Sahil personally.

Niek
©Deathmetalbaboon.com, 2010
Helping people get deaf since 2009

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Tags: black, death, Indian, Interview, melodic, progressive, Promo

This entry was posted on Friday, April 23rd, 2010 at 7:30 am and is filed under Interviews, Promo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.