By Aniruddh ‘Andrew’ Bansal
Even in their short career thus far, Bangalore, India’s stoner doom metal quintet Bevar Sea have already built a solid reputation for themselves in their home country as well as elsewhere, owing to their stellar 2012 self-titled debut album which boasts of righteous heavy music and spellbinding artwork, to go with their mesmerizing live performances whenever and wherever they’ve taken the stage. In my 2012-13 exile in India, I was fortunate to be introduced to the talents of this band and catch a few of their gigs, and even after returning to the States, Bevar Sea is one thing Indian I didn’t forget and their music kept recurring in my mind, particularly whenever I found myself in a cannabis-induced altered state of consciousness. Now, as they finish work on their next album, Bevar Sea have been confirmed as one of participating acts at next year’s edition of the prestigious Maryland Deathfest, set to take place May 21st to 24th 2015 in Baltimore MD with Bevar Sea slated to play on the opening day alongside the likes of Yob. Yesterday, I did a detailed interview with guitarist and principal songwriter Srikanth Panaman to get his thoughts on the MDF news, the next album, hindsight on the self-titled, future plans and more. Enjoy the conversation below and get ready for Bevar Sea to crush the US of A in 2015!
First of all, we’re all very excited to hear about your involvement in Maryland Deathfest 2015. How closely have you followed past lineups of that festival and how much does it mean to you to be a part of it?
Very excited here too! We’ve known about the festival from back when it was purely a death metal festival, and it has just kept growing over the years and has been assimilating other extreme forms of music like doom and black metal, and the festival is now big enough to have international bands come down and play exclusive nostalgia sets, like how Roadburn works in Europe. The lineups have been consistently great year after year and suit our musical preferences to the tee. Love or hate big format music festivals, they’re necessary for a country’s touring circuit to flourish. Bands have started to work day jobs all year and have taken to just touring around these big summer festival appearances. It’s a good, practical way of making sense of this dying industry.
Are you planning on booking more US dates around MDF or is it looking like a one-off gig as of now?
We’re looking at more dates in the East Coast region, but our promoter there wants us there for even longer. It’s still early days, but one thing is for sure, if the visa gods are kind to us and if we do play MDF, we will definitely play a whole bunch of other dates too. We will be promoting our second album that time next year and we’re going all the way to the other side of the world, so we will make full use of the opportunity presented. It’ll be cool to experience the tour bus sort of a thing which we never get to do being in a country with no touring circuit.
You’ll be playing on day one of the festival and sharing the stage alongside the mighty Yob, among others. Besides Yob who must be an obvious source of inspiration and influence for Bevar Sea, what other bands on the MDF 2015 lineup are you most psyched to see?
Thursday at Ram’s Head where we play looks fucking insane. Apart from Yob, there’s Ufomammut, Conan, Iron Man, Jex Thoth, and Primitive Man. I’m also looking forward to catching Amorphis playing the entire ‘Tales From The Thousand Lakes’ album which I grew up on, then there’s this entire diSEMBOWELMENT set, Metal Church, Cianide, Aura Noir, Neurosis, Goatsnake, Napalm Death, Triptykon, Antigama, Martyrdod, DRI, Wolfbrigade, Dragged into Sunlight, Inter Arma, Demelich, Master, Funebrarum, Sodom, Thantifaxath, and so on. It’s going to be a great time.
Coming to your music, the Bevar Sea self-titled debut album was released in 2012 and has been excellently received all over. Where do you stand with the next set of tunes and when are you expecting to release it?
We’re done writing three-fourth of the second album and we have set ourselves a deadline to polish up the last two songs as well. We’re most likely recording in November, and the album should be mixed and ready to the pressing plant early next year. We want to have the copies for sale when we’re playing the States so the release date has to be set accordingly.
Aside from the songwriting and performance itself, one thing that made the S/T stand out was Billy Anderson’s involvement and I thought sound-wise the album came out fantastic. Will you be enlisting his services again for the new album?
Back in 2011 when we were still a new outfit, I wanted to have the first album out of the way as soon as we could because I had been playing those songs for over three years with earlier line-ups of the band already. But we had no facilities to get the sound we wanted at that time, or the talent. So we taught ourselves basic recording and micing techniques and went about tracking – keeping everything simple. We needed someone like Billy who could understand the sound we were going after at that time because of our lack of recording experience, and the results were pretty cool. Since then though, I’ve got myself more into producing music – not professionally, but I’ve been taking serious interest in music production, and have been helping other ‘dirty’ bands close to me to get their sound. Dhwesha has their debut album coming out on September 1st which was produced, mixed and mastered by me, and Dying Embrace has just released a 5-song split with Pakistan’s Dusk which I did too. I’ve got better at choosing the right kind of equipment, and my ears are tuned better to recording, mixing, and mastering now. So I really have a clearer vision in terms of production for Bevar Sea now compared to three years ago, so who I need is a producing partner so to speak. Since I write all the music and I’m also tracking, we still need a fresh pair of ears to take on the mixing job, otherwise I’m going to be burnt out on these songs and I’d lose all the perspective. So we’ve got someone who’s going to work with me from the pre-production stage itself. Billy is a legend and a great guy, but considering his schedule, we really can’t expect him to spend this kind of time with us from the early stages of the process.
I believe you did quite well with the pre-orders and online orders for the S/T back in 2012 when you had the big release. What was the general demographic like, and what portion of the orders came from the US?
I’m not sure about the US, but it’s safe to say that a vast majority of the orders came from outside India. Whenever a review or an interview went up, a song got featured on a doom scene related podcast or a mixtape/compilation, we’d get new orders. The support in India is overwhelming in terms of merch though. We keep selling out things faster than we can manufacture, and that’s always been our problem so far.
In hindsight, did you feel that musically the S/T was lacking or missing something that you wanted to incorporate on the new album?
One fundamental mistake on the first album’s approach was that Deepak, our drummer, didn’t have it the way we would’ve liked. We mic’d up the kit and recorded a live show, without a metronome, and without ideal monitor mixes and without re-takes, so overall the first album is very bouncy and not too tight. We’re way tighter as a band than what’s represented on the album, and that needs to reflect on the recordings too. Also we’re not doing the 70s heavy rock thing on this one as much, it’s more straight-up metal, so tighter performances and arrangements are called for. Other than that, it’s all about gear and tones that I would like to do better with. I’m still proud of the first album and whatever we’re doing on the second only tries to improve it.
When you play 8-9 minute songs like ‘Abishtu’ and ‘Universal Sleeper’ and 17-minute tunes like ‘Mono Gnome’ live on stage, do you find yourself improvising or changing some parts impromptu just to keep it fresh and interesting for yourself, or does a Bevar Sea audience experience the same version each time?
We keep the structure and the number of repetitions the same. The drummer and the bassist would play different fills, us guitarists might do subtle different things, and the vocalist might change things up a bit, but overall we try and stick to the original. It’s easier that way for us to pay attention to our performances and get more effective as a live act, and the crowd doesn’t get confused about the familiar songs either. We’re definitely not a jam band.
Bevar Sea’s artwork has been exceptional from day one, and I always hear great things about it whenever I show it to people who’re completely unfamiliar with the band. To you, how crucial and/or fortunate is it that it’s your own guitarist Rahul Chacko doing these designs, and that he obviously has a better idea of the band’s music than an outsider?
Chacko and I knew right at the start that he was going to be in the band not just as a guitarist, but also as the artist. Along the way we figured that each song could have its own artwork and we could make different kinds of merch using them. He knows what the band exactly needs without much of a brief, and his work for the upcoming album will definitely be a huge step up from what was done for the first album, which was already pretty damn good. Chacko’s artwork is a very significant part of the band, and without it, we may not have come this far.
What are some of your favorite rock/metal album covers?
When I was younger, I loved all those classics with artists like Dan Seagrave, Andreas Marschall, Derek Riggs, and of course so many album covers by the Hipgnosis group. My other favourites are Arik Roper, Joe Petagno, Frank Frazetta and whoever else did all those Molly Hatchet covers, Paulo Girardi, Dan McPharlin among others.
For you personally, is Bevar Sea fulfilling your musical ambitions or do you see yourself starting or participating in other projects to play different styles of music at some point?
(Laughs) Once Bevar Sea’s album work is over, I want to get this crusty extreme metal band going. I’ve been meaning to do that for a year now and haven’t had the time. We were also just talking about a pre-Bevar Sea project that I used to have and that we wanted to record a couple of those songs and put them out for free consumption. We didn’t have a way to record back then and now that we do, we should perhaps just get it done and move on with our regular bands. I also want to really focus on getting my new label The Mighty Riff Records and its distro moving, and want to take up new bands and produce them for the label as well. I’ll may be look for two such projects next year.
And lastly, the obligatory ‘Indian metal scene’ question. My apologies in advance, but since I’m not there anymore to witness it firsthand, I have to! From what I understand, your primary aim with Bevar Sea and everything you do in Bangalore is to develop a sub-culture for the music you love. Do you think this sub-culture has maintained itself or grown stronger over the past couple of years, and where do you see it going?
Things are picking up. There are at least 3 really new doom bands that have come up in the past few months, with some killer extreme metal coming from places like Kolkata. There’s still a long way to go for India though but we keep organizing shows and bringing down cool bands to Bangalore. The next one is big for us. We’re doing a two-day festival in December this year, with Manzer from France, Nafarmaan from Bangladesh, Funeral In Heaven and Dhishti from SriLanka, playing with the well known local bands like Kryptos, Bevar Sea, Dying Embrace, and a few more. We’re really stepping up as organisers and our clout in the international scene is going up, with bands asking us for shows when they’re passing through. This means a couple of things – fans of our bands will be exposed to obscure bands from outside the country, and our bands get to play with fresh lineups, hang out with all the bands, and perhaps go to those places to play in the future as well. I know Bevar Sea are very keen on going to Colombo, Bangkok, Singapore, Dhaka, Kathmandu, Jakarta, Yogyakarta, Penang and the other hubs for underground metal in Asia.
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