Coming from Aamchi Mumbai, Devoid have been one of the leading Metal bands in the Indian scene. Having opened for the likes of Cradle of Filth and Decapitated and touring almost all corners of the country, they recently qualified for the Wacken Metal Battle India leg and played in the 24th edition of Wacken Open Air. We caught up with lead guitarist Sanju and drummer Shubham in the green room, just before their maiden show in India after returning from Wacken:
Eight Octaves: You guys started in 2005, you have been through some line-up changes and complications as a band. So, tell us about the journey, how has it been as a band in these 8 years?
Shubham: We actually started in 2004, we played this show called Campus Rock idols and we fucked up. We covered Master of Puppets and a song of ours called Poems of Death, which does not exist anymore.
Sanju: Oh! I need to hear this!
Shubham: Yeah (laughs). Back then we were kids. We had a bass player called Abbas; I don’t know where he is now. And then, I don’t know how we met Frank (Pawar); our bassist before Abhishek. We met him through Rahul Hariharan’s contact. I don’t know; he just came down from (looks at Sanju) where did he stay? Meera Road.
Sanju: I like how you say came down. (Both laugh)
Shubham: Meera Road to Chembur to jam, and we jammed some Slayer songs and that was it, that was like – Yeah let’s do this! Then Arun, I and Keshav were in the same colony. So, we grew up together and sort of listened to the same music. And we just started the band. We’re in the same colony, listening to the same music, so we better do something about it. So Keshav had this problem – he used to play too fast. Any song, he’ll play double or triple the speed. He couldn’t play slow. So, we said, “Let’s play Slayer that should be comfortable for you”. That’s how the band started. And then, we started writing our own songs. Possessed is one of the first songs we wrote. It was called Suicidal something back then, I don’t know (smiles) it was completely different then. And after that, the complications. So, Keshav and the band had some musical differences, let’s put it that way. He’s still a very good friend and we’re still in touch with him. Actually, I spoke to him like 2-3 days back. He’s pretty chilled about it. And, he went to UK in between to study, and this guy filled in (points to Sanju). We found him through YouTube, and he was covering Glasgow Kiss (by John Petrucci) and he nailed it. When I saw the video, I was like – “What the fuck! Is there a guitarist out there doing this? Let’s call him!” So, he used to stay in Thane, so we went to Thane to jam; because we wanted him to fill in for one year, we didn’t want to stop. We were playing and we really gelled along! It really clicked for us! And then Keshav came back, and those musical differences still continued. They were not evident back then, but after some time it was like the sound of the wall. It was good. Keshav is a brilliant guitarist; he is coming up with a band very soon. And I’m sure he’s going to fuck it all up. I mean he’s a very, very technical guy. He is fast, but his technicality was different. That’s why we didn’t gel in so well. So, we called him and said – this is the way to go. And Frank, again musical differences. Not just musical differences, I don’t know what to call it.
Sanju : It was just not working out. He was not showing up at a couple of jams because of a couple of things he had. Like, he was working plus he has a wife and a couple of commitments. As much as he loved the band and all that
Shubham : He was very passionate about the band
Sanju : Yeah, very passionate. But the thing was like, we couldn’t meet up, we could just meet on a Sunday. And that was not enough for us. And couple of Sundays he couldn’t make it.
Shubham : Basically, he wasn’t able to practise, because of which playability was affected. The band was really progressing fast and he wasn’t catching up. I don’t want to doubt his skills or anything. He’s a very good bassist, everyone knows that. But, again, sort of a musical scene and it wasn’t working out. It’s like if we have to take a tough decision for the band, then we have to. There’s no stopping it. That’s it.
Sanju : Kamdar has been a really good friend of ours.
Shubham : Oh yeah! I forgot!
Sanju : Yes, you’ll forget him obviously
Shubham : Kamdar was, he came into one of our jams, when me, Keshav and Arun were jamming and Frank wasn’t there. So he just came down to check out what was going on and he had his Bass with him. He picked up a song on the first take, one of our own songs. And we were like “Whoa!”. And he was very good; we didn’t feel like that thump of the bass ever! And we were like “Okay, this guy is good”. So after a year later, when Frank left, he was our obvious choice.
Eight Octaves: Tell us about your song writing process a bit. From “A God’s Lie” to “The Invasion”, your sound has changed a lot.
Shubham : It wasn’t a conscious effort to change our sound. Our sound has been changing. We listen to different bands every day and that influence maybe kicks in. We just play what we want to play, it’s about having fun. If you’re not having fun as a band then you need to stop playing. “The Invasion” specially was a very combined effort. Everyone has pitched in. These guys were coming up with the riffs and Kamdar and I would be patching them up.
Sanju : Yeah, like stitching them together.
Shubham : The guitarist worked on the guitar parts and we add the drums and bass and everything changes.
Eight Octaves: But while composing, what is the main procedure? Do the lyrics come first or the riffs?
Shubham : I guess the lyrics came side by side.
Sanju : There is no fixed procedure as such. In fact the second song in the album – Pandemonium is Now, was started with a drum pattern composed by him. He just wrote down a drum pattern from something in his mind, which he couldn’t tell us. So, he gave us these like – “Hey guys, here. This is something I have”
Shubham : And then they added the guitars and bass and made it something else and sounded better. And we were like – “Yeah, let’s do this”.
Eight Octaves: So, basically it depends from song to song?
Sanju : Yeah, it’s like sometimes Arun writes some parts, I add some parts and Kamdar comes in with some parts. It’s a combined effort.
Shubham : And it’s a challenge most of the times. Like whatever parts Arun makes, he has this weird thing going on in his head, we have to stop to understand it. When he makes a song, he writes the whole song. And we don’t really add on much to that. And this guy, when he writes, Arun just can’t play those riffs for 2 weeks. We keep challenging each other.
Eight Octaves: Tell us about your gear a bit. The gear you use live.
Shubham : I don’t have anything. (Everyone laughs)
Sanju : I will tell you a short story about this guys sitting in front of you. Our man here does not have a drum kit at home, practises on pillows till date and has just the double bass pedal, a couple of cymbals and he works his way through that. Other than him, Arun uses a Schecter Hellraiser Solo 6 and a Line 6 POD HD500. Kamdar uses an Ibanez bass and a couple of pedals, like a compressor and all. And, for me, I use a Line 6 POD HD500 as well and I’m endorsed by Gibson.
Shubham : He got some really special treatment at Wacken. He didn’t carry his guitar there. Gibson was there and they had given him a guitar.
Sanju : Yeah, I just went to the bus and collected it. It was epic.
Shubham : That’s where the endorsement really helped us.
Eight Octaves: Now coming to a major factor – there is always some kind of stage fright or nervousness associated with it. Sometimes it depends on the crowd or audience, sometimes on the person.
Shubham: It’s still going through me right now.
Eight Octaves: But, how do you cope up with it? Any tips for the young bands?
Shubham: As a drummer, I don’t know man, just keep playing and enjoying it. What I do is keep myself warmed. I don’t know, that one snare hit is enough for me to forget everything.
Sanju: Once you’re on stage, when you are together, you can hear yourselves; you forget it.
Shubham: You just have to feel your music. I just try to feel my music on stage, that’s how it goes and then I’m in the groove.
Eight Octaves: You’ve been around for 8 years now, so how much has the acceptance of the Indian crowd changed in these 8 years?
Shubham: Indian crowd has a very long way to go. Bangalore was the Mecca of Metal at one point, but it’s still stuck to that era. We have Old School-New School wars in India; that never happens anywhere else. The current bands under Old School were New School too at one point of time. So, you have to accept things as they are coming. Even in our music, you might see some Core influences, I don’t give a fuck. If you like the music, listen to it. But, I don’t know, the war has to stop. This is Metal. You’re being un-Metal if you’re saying New School is bullshit. People are listening to it, so shut up. Even in Mumbai it happens at times, and they are really nice people in general, but when it comes to music, they are these walls. Like – “No no, these are not good. You guys are un-Metal because you listen to these stuff”.
Eight Octaves: Who would be your major influences?
Shubham: Well, it has to be the great Thrash and Death Metal bands – Slayer, Cannibal Corpse, Vader, Megadeth, and Carcass. We listen to everything, we take inspiration from everything.
Eight Octaves: Why the name Devoid?
Shubham: The band was supposed to be named Demised by the way, but then we went on Google and saw there are 55 bands named Demised. So, we said fuck Demised, we won’t name it Demised. Demised was like cool, as we were back in 10th standard and all. Then Arun came up with Devoid. I didn’t know the meaning of the word then. I asked him what is Devoid and he gave me some funda about emptiness, which I don’t remember. But it looked good on the logo and well, that was it mostly.
We had Devoid speak about themselves, the band, the Indian scene and a let out some secrets too. But you can’t complete an interview with Devoid without asking them about their recent Wacken experience. Cashing in on the opportunity, we got them candid about Wacken a bit:
Eight Octaves: So, you recently qualified for the Wacken Metal Battle. Firstly, congratulations on that! Tell us the preparation process that went through before the qualifications.
Shubham: Salman told us that Bangalore Open Air is coming up and we need some established bands in the scene to play, obviously as he wants to pull in some crowd to the competition as well. We told him that we don’t do any competitions; we’ve come out as a band through shows and not competitions. Competitions have not been our style or it’s like any competition we play, it’s not our style of music. We told him no, but then we said – Zygnema gave it a shot, they were there last year. They were one of the inspirations for us to apply for the competition. So we did, we got in. We played the first round in Mumbai.
Sanju: In Thane, my hometown.
Shubham: I don’t even remember the show, United 21? (Looks at Sanju)
Sanju: Yeah, United 21. There is only one venue there.
Shubham: Fucked up sound, everything was fucked up. But again…
Sanju: Yeah, in fact I broke a couple of strings. Like back to back two strings in one song.
Shubham: Yeah, and then we were like – This is already fucked, so let’s just have fun.
Sanju: And Arun says – “I’m not going to play, take this guitar and play” and he jumps into the crowd and gets beaten up a little (laughs). We went for it and somehow it worked for us. We got through along with Providence. Actually, that day only one band was supposed to get through, but they really liked us both. Providence were really very good. We went through it and then we came down to Bangalore at Bak Bak Bar. That was also a pretty chilled out scene. All the other bands were good at that point of time.
Shubham: And Providence really killed it that day.
Sanju: Providence really killed it.
Shubham: And we were surprised, we were like “Okay, they are definitely going in”. It was one of our, kind of, in recent times one of our bad shows. It wasn’t the best show. I don’t know why Providence didn’t get in, obviously they had certain criteria under which they were judging, but we really wanted Providence to get selected. They were amazing and they really need to perform a lot more. So, once we got through the second round in Bangalore, we were like “Oh shit”
Sanju: Yeah, now we were playing in BOA!
Shubham: Till that time we were just having fun, but after getting qualified we were tensed. Like – “How the fuck will we do this?” We never play competitions; we haven’t played one since our starting years. So we were confused what to do here. We just had 20 minutes. But it was good. It was not like other competitions, we had a proper sound check and all.
Sanju: And Animals As Leaders were there, we were doing our sound check before them and we were playing just before them and all that.
Shubham: During the sound check we were at the side of the stage and all and we were like “No one is there, nothing will happen”. We just saw Sycorax finish their set there and people came running in towards the stage and I was like “Whoa!”.
Sanju: I think that pushed us really. We owe it to our fans. We gave it our best shot and luckily it worked out.
Shubham: That was the Indian part of it; I don’t even need to tell about the German part.
Eight Octaves: Still, how was the experience there?
Sanju: 10 on 10. That’s all. The performance there was great. Even there we got 20 minutes on stage. The gear was something we had never played with in our entire lives. Really really good stuff. The vibe over there was awesome. Everyone’s metal, everyone’s great.
Shubham: We got Wacken condoms by the way (everyone laughs). In a goodie bag they gave Wacken condoms, we guys went mad (laughs). There was so much metal there.
Eight Octaves: What is it like in Wacken for a band?
Shubham: It’s not a band scene; it’s more of an experience scene. When you go there, first of all everyone is so nice. We’ve heard so many shit about the Germans, but they are not that. They are very nice.
Sanju: They are very nice and everyone is so supportive. There is no hierarchy there, nobody looks down on you. There was this tenting area where we got to know everybody and this artist area and having some coffee and cup noodles and there was Randy from Lamb of God and Tomas from Meshuggah.
Shubham: They were just chilling!
Sanju: Everyone was just walking by and we were like “Oh my god!”
Shubham: You can’t explain it in words, you have to be there. Everything there was metal. They live their metal. Even the fans there are so organised.
Eight Octaves: How different would you say the scene is there compared to India?
Shubham: The scene? Well, it’s different but you know what? The Indians bands are really coming up. The quality of bands here are increasing. There are so many bands who can kick the asses of foreign bands. But at the same time we had seen Legion of the Damned and Whitechapel who raped our asses.
Devoid are: Arun Iyer – Vocalist & Rhythm Guitarist
Sanju Aguiar – Lead Guitarist
Abhishek Kamdar – Bass Guitarist
Shubham Kumar – Drummer
