Godless, the Hyderabad-based death metal act, is all set to perform at the iconic Wacken Open Air festival this week. The quartet, who were declared as the winners of the India leg of the festival’s worldwide search for new talent, got together to form the band in 2015 after the dissolution of Skrypt, a thrash metal act from the city. Having released their debut EP in 2016, titled Centuries of Decadence, Godless have garnered widespread critical acclaim from a number of international publications and made an impression of the country’s metal circuit as well. We caught up with the band to find out a bit more about them before they left for Germany to play at the festival.VICE: How’d you guys meet? Could you tell me a bit about your life prior to forming Godless–both as a musician and in general?
Godless: Godless was formed in late 2015 in Hyderabad. After Skrypt (Hyd) split up, Abbas and Ravi, who play bass and guitars respectively, recruited Shock Therapy (Hyd) drummer Aniketh and put out a demo with a session vocalist from New Zealand with the intention of looking for a permanent vocalist. We then recruited Bangalore vocalist Kaushal, who was (and is) a part of Eccentric Pendulum & Orchid (Blr) and also plays for Gutslit (Bombay).Even though we’re a relatively new band, we’ve been around in the metal scene for around 10 years or so individually. Our aim was to recruit a serious bunch of musicians with a similar mindset and commitment; we made sure everyone was well-settled in their jobs but could still take out enough time for the band to be able to rehearse 3-5 times a week and take this up as a full-time commitment.Tell us about the production and writing process behind Centuries of Decadence?
We started writing music for the EP before we even announced the band to the world. Since we were just starting off we were trying to find our direction and sound. We wrote a bunch of songs/riffs and ended up scrapping them when we finally wrote the intro riff to ‘Infest’. That was the moment we realised we wanted to make music that was dark, aggressive, and in-your-face. The riffs we wrote had a strong thrash metal vibe, but when the vocals and drums kicked in, it gave the songs that death metal sound. Everything just came together and our sound was formed. The songs just flowed naturally from there and we had pretty much finished our EP before our debut gig.When the time came for us to record and release it, we wanted to make an equally strong impact. We contacted Joe Haley (Psycroptic) to mix and master Centuries of Decadence because we liked their sound. We’ve always wanted to maintain an organic sound rather than an overly polished treatment. We tracked all the instruments in Hyderabad, the vocals in Bangalore, and finally sent everything across to Joe in Australia for mixing and mastering.Just going through the reviews–you’ve garnered a lot of attention internationally. What’s your opinion on the dearth of coverage given to the Indian metal scene these days within the country itself? Do you think it’s because the leading bands in the country now come from Tier II/Tier III cities which are usually not associated with the independent music scene?
Our goal from the beginning was to reach a global audience and not just the Indian scene. We always want what we write and release to be on par or better than what we see and hear around the world.The metal scene is generally not something that is really commercial enough for the media to want to cover. There aren’t too many dedicated publications that cover the entire Indian metal scene. Rolling Stone India is one of the only publications that comes to mind. But even they don’t cover the Indian metal scene too much. Maybe VICE should start an extreme music segment. Newspapers do the odd article here and there, but metal isn’t mainstream. There is a new dedicated heavy music podcast called ‘Haramcore Inc.’ doing some cool stuff.We still feel that a majority of the leading metal bands come from the Tier I cities, but yes, a lot of bands have been coming up from smaller cities and breaking into the national circuit recently. Apart from that, the metal scene in India is one big, close-knit community of its own. The bands usually are content with reaching out to people within the community.What are the logistics behind playing at Wacken? Does the competition cover any expense?
Wacken doesn’t cover the travel costs of the Wacken Metal Battle winners and it’s quite understandable. They’re the biggest metal festival in the world and it’s quite a big deal for them to be hosting the Wacken Metal Battle in 40 different countries and inviting the winners to play at the festival in Germany. The bands are provided with a campsite and F&B is covered at the festival.What made you reach out to the Telangana govt. and could you describe the interaction?
As we mentioned earlier, Wacken doesn’t cover expenses and it ended up becoming quite expensive for us to fly to Germany. For the last few editions, there have been a couple of local sponsors that helped with a small portion of the expenses for the winning band. This year’s edition didn’t have any.Apart from that, we had finished recording our new EP earlier this year, and the mix/master, artwork, etc, got done in July and ended up costing us a lot of money–and all this was happening at pretty much the same time that we were supposed to book tickets and stuff to Germany. We decided to approach the Telangana government and got some suggestions from a few people who happen to work for various newspapers. We created a Twitter account and tweeted out to Mr KTR who is a Cabinet Minister for State for various portfolios (and also the son of the CM of Telangana). He responded by saying that the government wouldn’t be able to sponsor our trip but he would try his best to find us a private sponsor. We were contacted by his office and they managed put us in touch with Lahari Resorts who wanted to support us and agreed to fund our entire trip.What other dates are you playing in Europe after Wacken?
We’re playing a show in Kiel on August 7 at Hot Rock, a hard rock and heavy metal bar. We’re trying to book a couple of more shows in and around Hamburg.Tell us about your upcoming plans–EP releases etc?
We will be back from Germany in the second week of August. We then head to Imphal for the very first time to headline a festival called Road to Rampage (August 25). Our second EP titled SWARM is due to be released late-October. We will focus on prep work for that and will start touring aggressively across the country to promote the record. We’re aiming at doing another international tour next year to continue promoting the new EP.
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Godless: Godless was formed in late 2015 in Hyderabad. After Skrypt (Hyd) split up, Abbas and Ravi, who play bass and guitars respectively, recruited Shock Therapy (Hyd) drummer Aniketh and put out a demo with a session vocalist from New Zealand with the intention of looking for a permanent vocalist. We then recruited Bangalore vocalist Kaushal, who was (and is) a part of Eccentric Pendulum & Orchid (Blr) and also plays for Gutslit (Bombay).Even though we’re a relatively new band, we’ve been around in the metal scene for around 10 years or so individually. Our aim was to recruit a serious bunch of musicians with a similar mindset and commitment; we made sure everyone was well-settled in their jobs but could still take out enough time for the band to be able to rehearse 3-5 times a week and take this up as a full-time commitment.Tell us about the production and writing process behind Centuries of Decadence?
We started writing music for the EP before we even announced the band to the world. Since we were just starting off we were trying to find our direction and sound. We wrote a bunch of songs/riffs and ended up scrapping them when we finally wrote the intro riff to ‘Infest’. That was the moment we realised we wanted to make music that was dark, aggressive, and in-your-face. The riffs we wrote had a strong thrash metal vibe, but when the vocals and drums kicked in, it gave the songs that death metal sound. Everything just came together and our sound was formed. The songs just flowed naturally from there and we had pretty much finished our EP before our debut gig.
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Our goal from the beginning was to reach a global audience and not just the Indian scene. We always want what we write and release to be on par or better than what we see and hear around the world.The metal scene is generally not something that is really commercial enough for the media to want to cover. There aren’t too many dedicated publications that cover the entire Indian metal scene. Rolling Stone India is one of the only publications that comes to mind. But even they don’t cover the Indian metal scene too much. Maybe VICE should start an extreme music segment. Newspapers do the odd article here and there, but metal isn’t mainstream. There is a new dedicated heavy music podcast called ‘Haramcore Inc.’ doing some cool stuff.
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Wacken doesn’t cover the travel costs of the Wacken Metal Battle winners and it’s quite understandable. They’re the biggest metal festival in the world and it’s quite a big deal for them to be hosting the Wacken Metal Battle in 40 different countries and inviting the winners to play at the festival in Germany. The bands are provided with a campsite and F&B is covered at the festival.What made you reach out to the Telangana govt. and could you describe the interaction?
As we mentioned earlier, Wacken doesn’t cover expenses and it ended up becoming quite expensive for us to fly to Germany. For the last few editions, there have been a couple of local sponsors that helped with a small portion of the expenses for the winning band. This year’s edition didn’t have any.Apart from that, we had finished recording our new EP earlier this year, and the mix/master, artwork, etc, got done in July and ended up costing us a lot of money–and all this was happening at pretty much the same time that we were supposed to book tickets and stuff to Germany. We decided to approach the Telangana government and got some suggestions from a few people who happen to work for various newspapers. We created a Twitter account and tweeted out to Mr KTR who is a Cabinet Minister for State for various portfolios (and also the son of the CM of Telangana). He responded by saying that the government wouldn’t be able to sponsor our trip but he would try his best to find us a private sponsor. We were contacted by his office and they managed put us in touch with Lahari Resorts who wanted to support us and agreed to fund our entire trip.What other dates are you playing in Europe after Wacken?
We’re playing a show in Kiel on August 7 at Hot Rock, a hard rock and heavy metal bar. We’re trying to book a couple of more shows in and around Hamburg.Tell us about your upcoming plans–EP releases etc?
We will be back from Germany in the second week of August. We then head to Imphal for the very first time to headline a festival called Road to Rampage (August 25). Our second EP titled SWARM is due to be released late-October. We will focus on prep work for that and will start touring aggressively across the country to promote the record. We’re aiming at doing another international tour next year to continue promoting the new EP.