Rocking Goa

Delhi band Scythus on playing its brand of heavy metal at the Channel V Launchpad Nokia Indiafest-2012

February 12, 2012 04:53 pm | Updated 04:53 pm IST

Scythus in concert. Photo: Special Arrangement

Scythus in concert. Photo: Special Arrangement

A five-piece metal band from the Capital, Scythus, consisting of students from the city's different professional colleges, recently won second place in the Channel V Launchpad Nokia Indiafest 2012 in Goa. Interestingly, Scythus was one of the two bands from New Delhi to be shortlisted for the competition and eventually the only band from the city to win an award at this pan-India festival of music, dance, fashion, digital arts, drama and sports.

“We are totally a heavy metal band,” Varun Dayal, the rhythm guitarist with the band, tells us. The diffusion of the growling menacing vocals in the distorting strains of the guitar and loud bang of the drums is what impels them to perform and experiment with a music which “is an acquired taste and we do it because we like it.” Dayal further says, “We try to do something different every time with our music, we avoid being monotonous.”

In line with these ideas, Scythus mostly plays its own OCs. Samarth Trehan, the drummer with Scythus, says, “We come together often and try to create new patterns on the drums, improvise riffs on the guitar… Rohit Sharma, our lead guitarist, and I pen our lyrics. However, during our practice jams we do twitch the words to suit our ideas and music in a better way.” However, they even play covers once a while. Dayal rolls out, “Miss May I is a relatively new American core metal band we like playing in some of our gigs… Also a bit of As I Lay Dying and Lamb of God sometimes.”

In the past, this young band opened for the U.K. band Cyanide Serenity and Norwegian band Social Suicide and also played at the recent Jack Daniels Rock Awards. Speaking on their Goa experience, Dayal describes it as, “Pretty amazing, especially for meeting the other bands from different places.”

At the zonal level, two bands were shortlisted and then finally selected to take part in the competition at Goa, where 18-odd bands were pitted against each other. They were given a time slot to perform (about 12 minutes) in which Scythus gave Britney Spears' ‘Oops! I did it again' a rock makeover with a bit of Miss May I's ‘Forgive and forget' seamed into it, and also strummed out one of their original tracks ‘Massacre'. Dayal quips, “We were the only team to have done it all in the given time!”

This band, which roped in its vocalist Aryan recently through a social media site, also boasts of a great bass guitarist, Rishab Mahajan. On their journey Trehan says, “We have grown as individuals and musicians… we have all benefitted and learned from each other.” The collaboration has resulted in songs like ‘Prevail', ‘Shadows of yesterday', ‘Into darkness' and ‘Nothing to die for', among others. The band members are influenced by Meshuggah, Miss May I, Born of Osiris, Lamb of God and other legends of this angst-ridden genre. Their fan base too is increasing, with 1,500-odd people following them on a social media band profile page. So what's next? Trehan says, “We are planning to participate in ‘Hard Rock Rising', which is a Hard Rock Café initiative. We are also going to play at an IIT festival soon and also planning to launch our own EP.” Any famous labels? “No, we would be funding it on our own,” he signs off.

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