“The Party is just starting,” says Bangalore’s upcoming rock/metal band Morbidence. The band, which came together less than a year ago, comprises vocalist-guitarist Abhineet Pandey, drummer/percussionist Sumit Madan, bassist/vocalist Suman Sadanand and guitarist Saveen Sadanand. Right upfront, the band discloses says that they all work in the IT industry and meet once a week to jam, considering music as their release from the “quiet desperation” of the daily grind. Fresh from their set at Freedom Jam in August, Morbidence are also concentrating on writing and recording their first album. Says the band, “Rehearsing, pre-production and tweaking our sound is a time consuming process and we are giving our 100% to the effort.”
The story behind the band
“Our vision of doing original music with mature content brought us together,” says the band. The brothers, Suman and Saveen who have been playing in various bands previously, decided to start a new band playing only original music. They got in touch with Sumit, who is a veteran in the music scene, and decided to jam together to see if they could gel, one session was enough and the decision was made. Abhineet the vocalist came in later.
You guys play music because
Says the band: “Life today is very mundane, everything is at our fingertips. Most of us sell out to big corporate companies in the hope of earning some money, getting that home loan, buying that flat, repaying that home loan for the rest of their natural lives, getting married, whatever. Where are we living? It’s like everything has already been planned out for us. I am sure we speak out for most musicians or other talents out there when we say that we wanted to live and do something with our passion, that we can direct and control. And we do this through our music. For us it is that joy when we put two notes together, form a groove and it forms this fist-pumping, head-banging melody – this is what lets us be.”
The story behind the name
The band explains, “Our first vocalist, before Abhineet took over the reigns, along with Saveen came up with the name Morbidence, The reasoning behind the name is that as individuals we all reflect on the world that we live in – utter, morbid chaos. Morbidence for us means – state of morbidity.”
The toughest part about being a new band
Says the band, “That’s being accepted for our ideas and who we are.
An original band has to overcome a lot of hurdles, like organizing rehearsals, finding gigs and writing new material. The most difficult part of being a new band in the city are the limited venues for live music and organizers expecting us to play covers most of the time.”
You still remember the time when
At their first proper show at Kormangala venue Legends of Rock, the band played a filler track exciting a lot more people than the rest of their hour-long set. The band recounts how, during the encore, people were already humming along. The band adds, “At another one of our gigs, an older gentleman came to us and told us that he reminded us of listening to Metallica from his younger days. Best part is being recognized on the streets after a couple days after the show and being asked when the next gig is and being compared to their [fans] childhood rockstars.”
Musicians that inspire you
The band says, “We decided earlier on that we will not stick to a genre, but play every genre that appeals to us.” Morbidence lists everyone from Whitesnake, Van Halen and Queen and AC/DC to Metallica, Megadeth, Iron Maiden and Arch Enemy as their major influences.
Compositions over covers
The band mentions that they have a strict “no cover policy” in the band. “We’ve found that it takes us almost the same amount of effort to pick up a cover as creating an original, so we choose to play originals. As experienced musicians, we've played a lot of covers as part of our earlier bands. Though we welcome both original music and covers by bands, we think it’s time that we do our own thing.”
Follow Morbidence on >Facebook.com/Morbidence
