By Aniruddh “Andrew” Bansal
Bangalore-based stoner doom outfit Bevar Sea is a band I knew about for the past year or so, and I was pleasantly surprised by the purity in their old-school approach which is evident from the original material they released through YouTube and other online platforms. With them there’s no bullshit, just pure heavy music, and that’s what makes them one of the most promising bands in the Indian metal scene. But I never got a chance to see them live, until now. The opportunity finally presented itself, and my decision to attend last Saturday’s Bevar Sea-headlined Rif52 gig at the B52 lounge in their hometown was instantaneous. I wasn’t disappointed by what I saw, as they succeeded in creating an extremely strong first impression on me, as a live band. The day after this memorable gig, on April 1st 2012, I met up with frontman Ganesh Krishnaswamy at the Guzzlers Inn to talk about the gig, the band’s upcoming debut album, his hugely impressive vinyl collection, and a few other things. I can honestly say that this was one of the most enjoyable interviews for me, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy reading the conversation below. After you’ve done so, make sure to check out the Bevar Sea facebook page for more info on them.
Last night’s gig was amazing, dude. What did you think of it? You must have enjoyed playing that special set.
We curated the gig as Bevar Sea, and we said that we’re going to find three bands to play with us that evening. Shepherd is a really special band, because that kind of music isn’t played in India at all. They’re playing some of the dirtiest crusty sludge you can ever hear. It’s awesome music, and Dhwesha is really bringing back old-school death metal with the Vader and Bolt Thrower vibe they have going on. They’re an amazing band. And of course Albatross seem to be doing the right thing at the right time. They had their album launch and wanted to do a couple of gigs down South, so we said let’s put these three bands together, and we won’t play a Bevar Sea set, but we’d play a tribute set to some of our influences. It was a great evening, it was hot, humid and sweaty, just the way I like all our gigs to be, and it was an awesome time.
Was that any particular reason for doing the tribute set? Did you feel that this gig was more special than any of the previous gigs you’ve done?
It’s interesting, because every gig is more special than the previous one for us, you know. For us, it’s like a kid in a toy shop kind of a thing. We just love being on stage, and we just love playing loud and playing heavy riffs to our fans. A couple of months back, we did a Black Sabbath tribute set in Chennai, and we never really got a chance to do that in Bangalore. So we said that though we won’t play a complete Black Sabbath tribute, there are other influences too. There is Saint Vitus, there’s Pentagram, Cathedral, and Thin Lizzy. So we just decided to pick a few of these bands. We would have loved to play a two-hour set where we could have included bands like Trouble and more Kyuss. But it’s just that we didn’t have the time to do it. We are in the middle of recording our album, and there are a lot of things happening. So we just wanted to keep it a short 60-minute set and I think it was a great set that we did last night.
Was it hard to pick those songs? There must have been so many other songs you would have wanted to play.
Yeah, absolutely. It was really difficult for us to do that. We argued, and a lot of mails were exchanged (laughs). Finally, everybody in the band got to do the song they like, and the one song that all of us love to do is “Emerald” by Thin Lizzy. It just worked perfectly with the whole Cathedral medley we had going on.
What are some of those other songs you would like to play, given a longer set duration?
We would have loved to play some Trouble, as I said earlier. Also, I wanted to play some early Judas Priest, from the Rocka Rolla and Sad Wings Of Destiny era. We would have loved to play some covers by Earthride. There are a lot of newer classic doom bands also. There’s just way too many bands. We could do a six-hour tribute set and we still won’t be happy with it, and there would still be two hours worth of bands we’d like to cover. We’d love to cover some UFO as well, because most of us in the band are big UFO fans. None of us are virtuosos or anything. We’re just bedroom musicians who just got lucky, but we just have the balls to go out there and do shit, I guess (laughs). So yeah, there are a lot more bands we’d like to cover, like Blue Oyster Cult for example. Srikanth [guitars] has been wanting to do “This Ain’t The Summer Of Love”. There are others also like Uriah Heep, but we just can’t get around to doing everything.
You mentioned your debut album, which you’re in the middle of recording. How’s that going, and when can we expect to see it released?
We’re done with the tracks. We’re going to be sending it to a very special producer to take care of the mixing and mastering for us. The material will be ready latest by July, but we want to release it with The Mighty Riff gig. We’re finalizing a couple of international acts for TMR, so let’s see. It will definitely happen this year, but I really don’t want to commit on a date or a month, but before the end of the year for sure. I can’t wait for it to be released. I just want to get done with it so we can start working on newer material.
One thing I noticed last night was, people were asking for your original material. Even though you couldn’t play their requests, it would have been satisfying to note that people are actually asking for your song, and not another cover instead.
Absolutely. A lot of people at the gig last night actually used a few choice words to describe their anguish (laughs). I was called a bastard for not playing our songs, but it’s very healthy. It feels awesome that people are asking for our songs. Someone actually told me, “Dude if you’re playing an all-covers set tonight, what a bunch of cunts you are!” And I was like, OK, that’s alright (laughs). So yes, there’s no other way to describe it. It’s just awesome.
You mentioned that the songs for the album are ready. When did you start working on them and how long did it take for them to be written?
Well, this lineup of Bevar Sea, with the exception of a couple of lineup changes, we’ve been playing since September 2010. We’ve sort of restricted this album to four songs, and it will run for 42 minutes. We’ve been playing these songs for the longest time. They’ve all been a staple part of our set list, so everybody knows the songs. We keep putting out demo tracks of the songs online, so people are familiar with them. So, it’s going to have “The Smiler”, which is one of the first songs for which I wrote lyrics, and then “Abhishtu”, which has become a Bevar Sea classic. Then we have “Universal Sleeper” as the third track, and the fourth song on the album will be the song called “Mononome”. That’s an epic, and my personal favorite Bevar Sea tune, because it runs for 13 minutes, it’s a classic doom song, and has a lot of bluesy influences which I love. It’s got a lot of boogy thing happening in the middle. It’s a great song, and this is going to be a pretty good album when it comes out. The new song we played last night is called “Where There’s Smoke,There’s A Pyre”, but that will not be included in this album. We plan to put that one out as part of a split release with another band. We’re still working on that.
You presented your influences last night, but when you’re in songwriting mode, does other music influence and inspire you in that process?
Oh yeah, definitely. There are a lot of bands that do that to me. Motorhead comes to mind. I like the honesty and carefree, no bullshit way of writing songs. But then, I also like some of the early seeds of black metal or extreme music, bands like Mercyful Fate and Bathory. These guys have a little more of a twisted view of things, and I love that approach. When I’m writing lyrics, it’s just a mix of everything. Things like films, news, comic strips, everything influences me and I try to keep my mind open to write better.
Well, I know that you’re a vinyl enthusiast and collector. When did that start, and how did you develop that interest in the first place?
I started my vinyl collection sometime last year. I don’t have as extensive a collection as I would like to have, so it’s just that I wanted to start listening to the music I love, the way it’s meant to be heard. MP3s really fucked it up. They just murdered music completely. Although I love the portability aspect of an MP3 file, I just find it very .. it’s like very bad porn, which just sucks, you know (laughs). So, my favorite format would be tape, followed by vinyl. I’m still looking for a really good tape player, but I just can’t find one. I have a decent tape player that I’m satisfied with, but vinyls are very special because you can actually hear certain things that I CD will never be able to replicate. It’s like a full-bodied woman. Great tits, great ass, and just so beautiful. Calling it fresh is wrong, because it’s not a fresh sound. It’s how music should sound. It’s the opposite of fresh. It’s beauty at its rawest sonic form. That’s what I like about vinyl.
Even tapes are portable too, right? We can carry them in our pockets.
Yeah, tapes are! For the life of me, I can’t find my walkman anymore. So I can’t get around to carrying the tapes. So if anybody out there has a tape player to sell, please get in touch with me!
I’ve noticed that vinyl in the US is becoming a really popular thing. People actually go out in huge numbers and buy it. But it hasn’t caught on in India, and I don’t think it ever will. Why do you think it will never be popular in India? Is it just because of the cost, or something else?
One is the cost. The other reason is, music was never an all-inclusive thing, at least personally for me. I always felt better when I heard a certain band alone in the confines of my room. It was a personal thing. For some reason now, because of what music has become now, it’s like you go out with 1500 of your friends and it’s a circle jerk thing where everybody is like, “This band is so awesome!” It’s just fucked up, the way people consume music. They try to make it a trend. That’s the thing I like about vinyl. When a bunch of us buy a few bottles of booze, we go back home, sit down and put on the vinyl. It’s like another dimension. It builds a bond between the people who are listening to it as well.
It’s like you’re directly related to the album, and it’s almost like it’s being played in your room live.
Absolutely. And now, I don’t know about the rest of the world, but in India, I guess these trends are coming from somewhere else, in which people like to go to coffee shops. We never went to coffee shops. We would much rather go to someone’s house, play the tape, CD or vinyl, get a few beers and just chill out. But that’s not the thing anymore. Everybody wants to go out and do it. It’s like that Family Guy episode where people like to write Hollywood scripts in coffee shops so that other people see them. It’s a great observation by Seth McFarlene, because it’s exactly what happens. People want to be seen doing “cool stuff”, and that sucks. When people tell me, “Man, you gotta listen to electronic music!” I tried it, but doesn’t work for me. They’re like, “No! You have to do LSD to like it!” I said, no man, that’s not how shit works for me. Fuck that, you know (laughs). So yeah, it’s like that. Vinyls will never catch on here because it’s not a trend. Vinyls are for real people, not for wankers. Vinyls are expensive, so I save up for two, two-and-a-half months and place an order at Hellride Music or Amazon. I place a substantial order, and I don’t order every month because I just can’t afford to do that.
I know it won’t catch on in India, but generally speaking, do you think if analog comes back, it can help eradicate piracy, as it won’t be so easy to copy music then?
See what happens there is, thanks to piracy, a band’s music reaches much further than the geography defined by a record label or its distribution network or whatever. Anybody in Fiji can get a hold of a Martyr album or Mastodon album, even though there is no distribution network in Fiji or Polynesian Islands. They are available on a lot or torrent sites of Rapidshare or whatever, and people have access to music. So that way, the reach for the band’s music is much larger. If analog comes back, the bands will suffer, because of the fact that analog isn’t a portable format. A tape player in your car, yes. But the manufacturers have made sure that analog will never make a comeback. In fact, car audio systems now come with a fucking USB port. So, piracy is here to stay. It doesn’t matter if it’s rock music, classical or Bollywood, every car has a USB port in it. So people are going to use that, and not buy CDs or tapes. So I think bands have to become smarter, and actually adapt to that by finding a legal way of distributing their music and things like that. But I would love for analog to make a comeback because I belong to the analog school. Having said that, a band’s reach will be that much restricted. I just feel that analog is a very personal thing, and we don’t live in a personal world anymore.
In the vinyl collection that you have right now, what’s your most prized possession?
That’s very difficult to answer. I have Sleep’s “Dopesmoker”, Priest’s “Rocka Rolla”, Maiden’s “Powerslave”, Trouble. The thing is, I don’t collect all vinyls. If I’m putting money on it, it is a prized vinyl anyway. I have the new Pentagram album “Last Rites”, and it’s such a fucking great-sounding album. Bands like that should release only on vinyl. They should not release on digital formats, because it just kills the music. CDs just kill Pentagram’s dirty rock thing they have going on. On vinyl it sounds perfect.
That brings me to my final question. I think your music will also sound great on vinyl. Isn’t it a dream of yours to see the Bevar Sea debut album on vinyl?
Definitely. I’ve taken that up as a personal project. We will release vinyl, but we are going to release the CD first. Next year I want to get this band off its ass and do a small bar tour of Europe if possible. I’m trying to work that shit out, so we’re going to be spending some money there. But hopefully we’ll collect some money from there and build some contacts who can help us out with vinyl production. So the first album is definitely going to come out on vinyl. That’s my thing, you know, and I’ll make sure it happens.
Related: Riff52 gig review