It’s a heavy metal musician’s dream. A dream to perform at the Wacken Open Air (W.O.A.), a four-day music festival in Germany, before a global audience. It’s a matter of prestige. It’s surreal. And this year, a city metal band, Godless, has bagged a place on the list, the first ever from the State.
The quartet – frontman and vocalist Kaushal L.S., bassist Syed Abbas Razvi, guitarist Ravi Nidamarthy and drummer Aniketh Yadav – describes their music as a crossover of two extreme genres of music – thrash and death metal.
“Wacken Open Air is a place where lakhs of metal heads come to see their favourite bands. It is where our heroes such as the Polish blackened-death metal band Behemoth, thrash metal stalwarts Slayer and legends Judas Priest have played. The feeling is humbling and unreal. It is yet to sink in, that we – Godless – are going to represent India this year at Wacken,” says bassist Abbas Razvi. Armed with a set of originals from two albums, Centuries of Decadence , and a second unnamed record at a production stage at Hertz Studio in Poland, Godless is geared up to play a 20-minute set of crushing guitar riffs and blast beats.
Dark themes
In tune with the heavy metal sub-culture’s constant romanticising of dark themes that deal with death and destruction, morbidity is a recurrent theme in Godless’ lyrics. “The band’s lyrics primarily revolve around the morbid, the macabre and the fear of the known with some subliminal tropes thrown in,” says vocalist Kaushal. For example, the band’s song Infected by the Black is their take on popular culture. The song deals with the ‘turning’ from human to zombie.
No small feat
To find a spot alongside major acts was no easy task. The band had to rehearse at least four days a week and compete with more than 40 bands from across the country. The winners were announced on June 17 in Bengaluru and there has been no looking back.
Speaking to The Hindu , Salman Syed, founder of Bangalore Open Air, and W.O.A. partner, confirmed the development. “Godless will represent India at Wacken. It’s a platform to spread their music on the world stage and get picked up by agents and land endorsement deals,” he said.
