It’s perhaps a tad too straight, when you hear the name of the album composed by the Bengaluru-based band The Down Troddence, to go ‘How Are You, We Are Fine, Thank you’, and the name, you realise mirrors the genre of metal music they go onto explore quite aptly. In their performance at Hard Rock Café in the city, their third time here, it doesn’t feel far fetched to describe their work as an eruption of sorts. Amidst the ten numbers they went on to sing on a packed night, with Malayalam influences sprinkled along intermittently, barriers began to blur, music played the ice-breaker and the headbanging was persistent while the energy on the dance floor was something to be experienced.
Though the heart of the band artistes is still middling in Kerala, specifically Kannur, the musicians are set against an interesting blend of cultures, with a couple of them working in Chennai, another in Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram, while their manager (which they assure is just a label) who is rather everything to the band, coordinates with them, whenever they go live in various parts of the country.
Munz, one of the vocalists in the band is the most articulate among them all and he insists as they get together, music is hardly ‘the’ topic that gets them talking. “Being in different places, we have so many stories to listen to among ourselves, even about the different cuisines we experiment with. Though it sounds stereotyped, we’ve found a family amongst ourselves, even if it means we have to make a lot of sacrifices,” he says.
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As they go back a little in their journey, what brought them together and still keeps them going over these six years, Advaith Mohan, the guitarist and Sushin, the drummer jump in to answer. “We were small groups travelling regularly to concerts through Kerala. As the scene in the state wasn’t ripe for bands to emerge and knowing the drought for quality was apparent, we had to bridge something unique.”
The idea of interspersing Theyyam and metal was born out of that. “As a group, we realised we had to remember our roots and what connected us. In terms of music too, there’s a sense of similarity that you can trace between two forms,” Ganesh Radhakrishnan states.
They’re quite practical when it comes to understanding that music can’t feed their pockets alone. A voice in unison extracts a reply, “Guess, the last band to prominently make big money was Metallica. At least in this country, that’s something you can’t foresee for a while now.”
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With Onam around the corner, the band will be readying for their performance in Chennai on that day and the regret of not flying down home is not all that obvious. “The overdose of so many days now nullifies the impact somewhat. Our passion to perform eliminates such feelings,” avers Munz and you trust the honesty with which he says it.