You ain’t cool if you ain’t old school: Heavy metal band Kryptos

The decade-old 'baap' of heavy metal bands is in town to perform as one of the pro-acts at IIMA's Chaos 2011. DNA catches up with Kryptos, one of the spearheads of the Indian heavy metal music scene and learn about their decade-old journey so far and their music in an exclusive interview. Excerpts.

"With the band's formation in 1998, we have had the distinct pleasure to travel across cities, states and most recently, even continents," stated Jayawant Tewari, bassist, adding that the band is influenced by the old school masters like Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Kreator, Dark Tranquility and Coroner.

"Our music is mostly metal with melodic and the 80's thrash influence," he said.

Besides Tewari there are four others in the band - Ryan Colaco on drums, Nolan Lewis as vocalist and on guitar, Rohit Chaturvedi on guitar and Salman - the band manager.

This is Kryptos's second visit to the city and though they haven't specially prepared for the show, is hoping to set the stage on fire. "We are really pumped about our show at Chaos. There hasn't been any special preparation. We plan to play songs from our first two albums - 'Spiral Ascent' and 'The Arc of Gemini' - and maybe something from the upcoming album," Tewari said.

The group's third album will be released by Enorm Music, a German publisher, which according to Tewari is the organizer of the Wacken Open Air Festival - the biggest metal music festival in the world. This music fest is attended by more than 80,000 people. The name of the third album will be unveiled on January 26 and will hit studios in February.

For Kryptos, 2009 was a life-changing year.

"That was the year we opened for Iron Maiden when they came to perform in Bangalore. Maiden has been our influence ever since we started playing. Besides that I attribute the change in the music scenario of India to their first concert in 2007. It was when Iron Maiden played here that the world stood up and took notice.

Finally India existed on the map. That, and the 'Global Metal' movie, a documentary on the music scene of different countries. Our vocalist Nolan and manager were featured in it. That really changed things for us. There were even people in Europe who recognised Nolan from the documentary," Tewari said excitedly.

The same level of excitement lingered on while talking about the Europe tour. "It was sheer madness," is how Tewari described it. "It was the first time that we've played in Europe and it was amazing. Our Europe tour kicked off in July 2010 was called 'Invasion Europa'. We played at venues across Hungary, Germany and Sweden and played alongside legends like 'Mayhem', 'Blaze Bayley', who was also the singer for Iron Maiden for a while and other bands like 'Primodial' and 'Exploited'. Our music appealed to a lot of old-timers, who came up right in the front, and started pumping their fists and got into our act. It is one of those things that are hard to put into words."

Besides, one major line-up change that happened when two members quit and two others joined, Kryptos hasn't seen much change since. While most of them have regular jobs, it hasn't been easy by any means, but that isn't something that can stop them.

They recently performed at the Kathmandu Engineering College, Nepal. "It was the first time an Indian band performed in Nepal. They have a great music scene too. It is amazing how ignorant we can be about a country right next to us that has some insane bands and even more insane audiences," feels Salman.

Talking about the biggest gripe with the Indian scene over the past decade, Salman said, "There has been growth but there are times when they are taken aback with the lack of professionalism here, besides bad sound system in most Indian venues. This makes it very difficult for the band to come with their best. When we played in Europe, even the smallest of pubs have everything in the right place. Bands outside India have light engineers, sound engineers, stage teams etc. to help them out and ensure that they focus on the music and deliver their best. Here all we have is a manager who has to manage everything."

"In Germany we saw how loyal fans are towards bands from their own country," said Tewari while seeking support from Indian fans. He further said that a few words in German and they (the crowd) were up on their feet and roaring. Fans need to understand that every time they buy a band's album they don't just help a band financially, but also stand by what a band does as well as the time, effort and energy that the band invests in their music."

The band judged the Blizzards of Rock competition at Chaos late into the night on Friday and performed yesterday, with axes in hand and ready to justify their tag line "You ain't cool if you ain't old school."