An old school metal band from Bangalore, Kryptos has been creating music from last 15 years. They released their album globally and also have been playing at international metal festivals across Europe. Kryptos founder, vocalist and rhythm guitarist Nolan Lewis tells us what makes them click…
How did the band come together?
Kryptos was formed in 1998 by myself and our ex-vocalist/bassist Ganesh K. who is currently the vocalist for stoner/doom band Bevar Sea. We were classmates and shared a great passion for rock and metal music from the 1970s and 1980s. At first we decided to jam together just for fun but then as we started getting better at our instruments we thought we could take this further. Fourteen years later the band is still going strong.
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Main influences are Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden as well as some heavier thrash bands like Kreator and Coroner and also doom bands like Candlemass. We were mostly influenced by old school metal bands.
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Well, in the early days, there really wasn’t much going on. I mean it was really difficult to get good equipment or gigs because there was no Internet or cell phones and things like that. So communication was really difficult.
Also there was nowhere to record. So releasing an album was out of the question. Travelling to gigs was also a big issue since our only mode of transport was bus or train and sometimes we’d travel 48 hours to just play 20 minutes in cities like Mumbai.
What is the theme of your last album The Coils of Apollyon (released in September 2012)?
There’s no real theme or message as such. It’s just a lot of different subjects put together to create something fairly different. There is a lot of stuff on our album about the occult, science fiction, the paranormal, mythology so it’s a mixed bag of all the strange things that happen on the fringes of reality. It’s quite fascinating once a person really delves into these topics.
As one of the oldest metal acts in India, your advice to the fraternity…
I’m not too great at giving advice but, if there was one thing I’d say to them, it would be worry about the music first and then worry about the music business.
A lot of bands seem to do it the other way round but that defeats the purpose of playing music in the first place.
What's the response to The Coils of Apollyon ?
Great. We seem to be selling quite well, according to our label AFM Records (Germany) and we’ve been getting superb reviews from all over Europe and a lot of people there have been taking a lot of interest in us as well as the Indian metal scene in general.
Tell us about your upcoming Europe tour…
Our upcoming tour will see us playing at the In Flammen Open Air (Germany), Ragnarock Open Air (Germany), Aalesund (Norway) as well as what is probably our biggest gig yet at Wacken Open Air (Germany). We had a great time the last time we went there and a lot of people are pretty excited to see us again so we’re just as excited to get back there.
Listen to Kryptos @ www.reverbnation.com/kryptosmetal