Danish band, Cold Night For Alligators, was in India to headline Pronite, Dhanak, the annual cultural festival of IIST, Trivandrum on September 22. We caught up with the band for a little question-and-answer round before the concert. Read on!

Eight Octaves: Greetings from Eight Octaves! You’ll be performing at Dhanak ’13 in Trivandrum. I believe it’ll be your first show in India. What are your expectations from the crowd?

CNFA: This will be our first time performing outside Europe, and we are really looking forward to play the show for our Indian fans because we always wanted to come here, so of course, we are extremely honoured being able to play this show. We can’t wait to get on stage. Well, we usually hear crazy stories about the Indian crowd, so we really don’t know what to expect. But of course we hope they like the show, and join the party we have on stage!

Eight Octaves: How would your setlist be like for the day?

CNFA: Well… We’re playing the songs we know how to play, and that’s like 50 minutes or so.

Eight Octaves: Your music offers us quite an insane amount of technicality along with some amazing groove laden melodic punches, all played on 8-string guitars. What artists would you say influenced you the most into shaping your sound like this?

CNFA: Bands like Between The Buried And Me, Born Of Osiris, and Meshuggah have all played a big part in shaping our sound, especially in our first years. Obviously we still enjoy these artists but as of late we have kind of “allowed” ourselves to find inspiration in different places and genres.

Eight Octaves: How was the response to your last EP, ‘Singular Patterns’, both locally and internationally? Should we be expecting a full length anytime soon?

CNFA: The response was pretty great everywhere! One thing that people noticed was that the record seemed more complete and focused, which we appreciated, because we thought that ourselves as well.

Eight Octaves: Tell us about the early days of formation of Cold Night For Alligators.

CNFA: A few of us (Kristoffer, Jack, and Roar) merged from another band because we all wanted to play more heavy stuff than the grunge we were playing at that time. Since then we’ve had to replace a couple of members but our current composition seems like a perfect fit. From the initial thoughts on what music we were going to play we’ve evolved quite a bit, but we love everything about it.

Eight Octaves: Cold Night For Alligators is quite an interesting name for a band. What is the story behind it? Has it got anything to do with the famous song by Roky Erickson?

CNFA: As some may know, we got the name off a font online. We weren’t that into the font itself, but we liked the sound of it. But most of all we wanted a name that wouldn’t instantly label us or put us in a box, for which this seemed like a perfect fit. It wasn’t until after we decided on the name that it came to our attention that Mr. Erickson had made a song with the same name.

Eight Octaves: How is the local metal scene in Copenhagen nowadays?

CNFA: It’s really alive. There are a lot of bands in Copenhagen, and in my opinion, every band has their own thing going for them, it’s really interesting.

Eight Octaves: Besides metal, what other interests do you have?

CNFA: Perhaps we don’t have any common interests all of us together! Some of us like football, some cars, some cooking, some working out, some mixing other peoples music. Hard to say really!

Eight Octaves: Have you given a listen to any Indian artists lately? If yes, do you have any favourites?

CNFA: I only know Chaos and Skyharbor. But Skyharbor is a mixture of many members from different nations; so i don’t know if people consider it an Indian band.

Eight Octaves: Finally, besides the concert, what other plans do you have when you come to India? A little sightseeing maybe?

CNFA: We really want to see what India is about, and how things are going down, so we are surely going to check out some amazing places in Trivandrum. And definitely a trip to the Beach!