Death Metal Band Gutslit Is Setting off on a Record-Setting Asia Tour

Touring a handful of countries might sound easy when you’ve got a van and Schengen visa to take you around Europe, but Mumbai brutal death metallers Gutslit are flying out to 13 cities across Asia over 16 days, as part of their Gutted At Birth Tour.

Founder member and bassist Gurdip Singh Narang at first says he’s “shitting bricks” but then asks not to mention that. He quickly adds, “I don’t care if you write that. It’s quite stressful. I haven’t slept properly for a month or so. I’ve had dreams about passports and visas and flights. Even if my agent calls, I think, ‘Shit, has something happened?’”

In the works since early in the year—it was announced in April with a crowdfunding project towards recovering the costs of the planned tour—Gutslit will tour with German death metal band Stillbirth. The tour starts in Dubai on September 21 and goes through India, Nepal, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea and Thailand. Vocalist Kaushal LS, who joined the band in 2016, says, “It’s going to be quite taxing. Everyone’s in for a ride.”

Like most Indian bands, Gutslit too has seen members walk in and out of the band while maintaining activity since 2007. They’ve played with a programmed drum track when they had no drummer in their early days, but stayed focused on building a listenership. By the time their debut full-length Skewered In the Sewer arrived in 2013, Gutslit was easily one of the most incredible live acts in the country—their “butcher shop” of a set running at breakneck speeds with then-vocalist Aditya Barve, Narang on bass, Prateek Rajagopal on guitar (who joined in 2013) and Aaron Pinto on drums (since 2011). Rajagopal offers a breakdown of the band roles: “I think the good thing is that we have specific roles in our band. If Gurdip is handling management and touring, Aaron handles the visuals, Kaushal handles lyrics, content and editorial, and I handle the music.”

The tour is taking off on the back of their 2017 album Amputheatre, a relentlessly violent record dedicated to medieval torture techniques. How violent? Sample their latest video for 'From One Ear To Another', made by Improper’s Mehr Chatterjee and Aditya Dutta. It features a style that ties in Grindhouse, Sin City and Samurai Jack, and gets all kinds of gory with its twist ending. Narang, who has been so far talking in a fairly stressed-out manner, says beaming with pride, “It’s the biggest promotion for an album. Including our Europe tour (earlier this year), we’ve hit almost 20 countries. Everything’s actually worked out.”

Check out their video here:

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