EO: You guys make innovative organic rock band fusing electronic and metal influences. How best can you describe ‘your’ kind of music? Any inspirations?
Jack: We get asked this a lot, and to be honest every time I like to give a different answer, because I actually find it very difficult to pinpoint our sound! Personally I’m a fan of bands like Nine Inch Nails, Metallica and Gojira – I like the idea of creating heavy and melodic ‘sound-scapes’ if you will within the confine of a good song, rather than necessarily sticking to one particular genre of music. As long as it’s catchy and heavy, then I’m happy!
EO: What do you think is the secret of your success? Your thought about the current ‘metal’ music scenario worldwide?
Jack: I think our relative ‘success’ (if you want to call it that!) in India so far is down to our dogged determination to tour and to keep come back to the country. It’s no secret now that the tour we recently returned from was our fifth outing in less than three years, which is apparently some kind of world record for an international rock band! We’re lucky enough to be able to visit these amazing places, and even luckier to be asked to come back again and again. Aside from that, the fact that we always take a lot of time before and after each show to hang out and connect with our fans is something that we recognize as extremely important, and I think that we’ve been able to make fans (and friends!) for life through doing that.
As for the metal scene worldwide, I think that by it’s very nature, it is a genre of music that doesn’t necessarily rise and fall with fashions or come and go regularly like some forms of music. That being said, I do think that it is experiencing a re-emergence on the world stage. India in particular is experiencing this, with all of the international bands that are now flooding into the country. We first toured in 2009 when the international scene was just beginning to start up, and we said to each other ‘in a few years India will be one of the hottest metal markets in the world’. Three years on and you guys are proving that to be true! We’re just lucky enough to be a part of it.
EO: Share with us one concert experience that you, as a band, consider to be your best.
Jack: I keep going back to Octoberfest 2010 at Palace Grounds, Bangalore, when we played in the tent and it was totally packed out. We were added to the bill so late that we honestly didn’t think there would be anyone in these to watch us, but people said that they would come, and they did! We had a HUGE Wall Of Death and people seemed to react really well to the show. The press was buzzing about us the next day, and it seemed like that performance was the one which really set things in motion for us in India.
EO: How did it feel performing at the Great Indian October Festival? Any other tours that you guys are planning for now?
Jack: We’ve obviously done it twice now, and I really just like the whole event and atmosphere throughout the weekend. This year we got to play the main stage (headlined by Children Of Bodom), which was great and although I personally didn’t have the greatest set of my life, hopefully people still enjoyed it – with any luck we made a few more fans too! We see Bangalore as our ‘home’ in India, so we love coming back to play again and again.
EO: What else is ‘Cypher 16’ planning to unveil in the near future? Any new albums that you are guys are going to launch?
Jack: We have a new EP out early next year, and a re-release of our current EP through a certain Metal magazine in the UK coming next month which we’re very excited about. We have some seriously cool stuff happening behind the scenes which we’re looking forward to sharing with everyone as soon as we’re able to – rest assured, there will be some big announcements coming before the end of the year, and some even bigger tours happening I 2013!
