A BITE OF KRYPTOS

(c) 2007 Puja Goyal

Source: Bangalore Mirror

"Kryptos" is not your average run- of-the-mill band. They are slowly turning into the face of Indian Metal, landing record deals with international music companies. Nolan Lewis speaks to us about their new album, "The Ark of Gemini", the state of Metal bands in India and much more, in a free-wheeling interview.

Why "Kryptos"? Ganesh and I formed Kryptos in 1998. We were classmates in college and since we pretty much had the same taste in music we inevitably got together and formed Kryptos. At first we toyed with different names, we finally settled on ‘Kryptos’ we knew that was the one that fit our music and us the best.

First Concert experience "Vibrations" was… … Definitely an eye opener. Even though it was a competition it was the first recognized gig that we did as Kryptos. Needless to say we didn’t make it to the finals but we got much needed exposure to the Bangalore audience and it just snowballed from there.

Tell us a little about "Spiral Ascent" "Spiral Ascent" was our debut album, which we released independently in 2004. We managed to rope in Niklas Sundin of Dark Tranquillity to do the artwork for the album, which was quite a coup for us since they’ve been such a big influence on us musically. The album was recorded at Clay Kelton’s studio right here in Bangalore and although it was done on a shoestring budget it turned out quite well.

We sold out the first 500 copies quite quickly and surprisingly sold just as much outside of India mainly in countries like Germany, Argentina, and Canada etc. Although the album is currently sold out we will re release Spiral Ascent in the coming months since there is still a large demand for it both in India and abroad.

What determines the life span of a rock band? Why are Indian metal bands not taken seriously? I guess the life span on any band depends on how passionate they are about what they do. Being in a band means you have to sacrifice a lot of things on a personal and social basis.

A lot of bands don’t last very long here in India because of a large number of factors ranging from studies, careers to families and societal pressure. If a band can walk that fine line between music and their personal lives then they will last for a very long time. Unfortunately metal bands here are viewed by society as a bunch of degenerates who just tend to make a lot of noise. It’s a pity they don’t take the time to understand what the bands and their music is about. The irony is, most metal bands here, including us, write about problems that face the common man in every day life yet it is the common man or society in general for that matter that hangs us by our thumbs just because we look a little ‘different’ or play ‘different’ music.

How did you feel when you first heard that you guys were recognized in places like Europe and South America… It felt fantastic of course because it’s always a great feeling to be appreciated for the music you play. We didn’t expect the album to reach so many corners of the globe so it was pretty surprising to say the least when received all these mails from people from other countries telling us that the loved our album.

Tell us a little more about your new album "The Ark of Gemini". "The Ark of Gemini" is a pretty vague concept actually. It’s open to interpretation. From our point of view the album is all about the two faced nature of mankind and how the planet is crumbling under this huge cloud of deceit. Not exactly sunshiny stuff! But different people could have different views once they listen to the album since there are a lot of subtle things in the lyrics that could be interpreted in a lot of ways.

The album basically deals with a lot of topics like Mythology, Religion, Corruption, Escapism and even some Sci-Fi concepts.

You have finally landed a recording deal with the uber-true OSM Records… Well actually they will be distributing our new album worldwide this year. Spiral Ascent was distributed through online distros but it wasn’t part of the main contract although it was the reason we got signed up in the first place. It was pretty straightforward actually. We send our album out to a few labels and OSM Records were the most interested in us and also seemed to share our vision so it was an easy choice in the end for both the label and for us.

How are the preparations for your European tour going on? As of right now our second album is almost complete and everything should be finalized within a month. Depending on how well the album does abroad we can start to seriously think of a tour of places like Europe for example. The label is quite keen on setting up festival dates for us sometime in the future, so until then we’re keeping our fingers crossed and hoping the album does well. One things for sure, when it does actually happen it’s going to be well worth all these years of hard work and we’ll relish every second of it.