Sometimes fate is curious. Eveythying started with an info card in Rockstadt Extreme Festival in Rasnov, Romania and led to this interview with this new Progressive Metal band from Bangalore of Karnataka State in Southern India. A solid proof that metal community is united worldwide. In this interview with Vishal Naidu, the co-founder of FALLEN LETTERS, we will learn more information about their band, the metal music in India and we will broaden our horizons (an audio from the interview with FALLEN LETTERS can be found here)!
– Hello Vishal! Welcome to The Gallery Extreme Web Radio! I am glad to be able to talk to you!
Vishal Naidu: Thank you. I’m really glad and excited as well to talk to you about FALLEN LETTERS. Thank you for the opportunity.
– Before everything else, I must say that I found out about you in Rockstadt Extreme Festival in Romania a few weeks ago, where one of you, I do not remember who to be honest, just gave me a card with the band’s info. So I found your spotify page, listened to your songs and here we are, talking about music. Did you enjoy the festival and which performance was your favorite?
Vishal Naidu: Yes! The festival was great. It was six days of amazing metal. I’d say that I enjoyed most BEHEMOTH, PARADISE LOST. Also AMON AMARTH was great. One of my favorites was also BLACK DAHLIA MURDER. DARK TRANQUILITY! A lot of bands that I may be forgetting right now.
– So, you enjoyed PARADISE LOST? It was not their best show!!!
Vishal Naidu: Really? Yes, they had some sound problems but it was my first time watching them so I really enjoyed them.
– Was it your first time in Europe?
Vishal Naidu: No, actually it was the second time. Last year, I had gone to Brutal Assault in Czech Republic. This time we thought that Rockstadt’s line up looked great so it would be a shame to miss it.
– Since I guess Greek metalheads do not know you, I want you to tell me a few things about your band. Who are you and how did you meet each other and decide to form a band?
Vishal Naidu: FALLEN LETTES is a Progressive, Alternative Metal band which was formed in Bangalore. Aditya Ramesh is my other guitarist with whom we formed the band. He has been my classmate from college and we used to exchange a lot of ideas about music. We had similar tastes since we like bands like OPETH, KATATONIA. There was a lot of idea exchanging and we had a lot of material ready so we decided to do something with it. That is when we decided to form FALLEN LETERS and started recording and putting everything together releasing our first EP. Now we are a full band with a bassist called Abhay Prakash and a drummer called Mukund Narsimhan. Also, we played live in July. We are hoping to play more and grow as a band.
– You already mentioned some, but tell me what are your favorite bands or artists that influenced your music?
Vishal Naidu: I mentioned OPETH, KATATONIA and PARADISE LOST as well. AMENRA is another band that influenced us at a later point. PORCUPINE TREE also. We really like band that incorporated heavy music into clean vocals and more melancholic parts.
– Do you know any Greek bands?
Vishal Naidu: I might know. Maybe if you tell me a few names.
– ROTTING CHRIST, SEPTICFLESH.
Vishal Naidu: Yes I know them! I did not know they were from Greece. I love the sound of ROTTING CHRIST. The atmosphere they create with Black Metal and the chanting. Also, SCEPTICFLESH are known for their amazing orchestration. I think Jens Borgen has produced their album.
– I think you are correct about that! A few months ago you released your first EP, “Forlon Pages”. I want you to tell me about the creative process you followed.
Vishal Naidu: Sure. As I mentioned before, me and Aditya are just hanging around talking about something and we come up with an idea. Then we record it on our phones and then build on top of it. He sends me some parts of it and then I add something more so this is how the song is formed. There are some that are just my composition or just his but most of the songs are a combination. Also, I am the producer. So, I pin these elements together and add some demo drums and bass to see how they sound and once we have an outcome we like, we record it at my place. When we have the final song we send it off to mix and master. This is how we finished this EP. We did one song after the other. Every song gets better and better production-wise because I keep learning things about this process.
– I want to focus on “Beneath the Opaque Veil”. It’s my favorite song because it changes the pace all the time and it creates a very melancholic and dark atmosphere. Vocals are amazing, also the guitar playing. I know that it was mixed and mastered at Fascination Street Studios in Sweden known for producing bands like Amorphis, Kreator, Katatonia, Sepultura etc. How did this collaboration happen?
Vishal Naidu: It’s an interesting story. When we show Fadcination Street Studios production history we were really surprised because many of our favorite albums were mixed, mastered and then produced there by Jens. So, there is a guy called Johan who works with Jens. I think he is an assistant right now. He is learning from Jens and he has a youtube channel where he had uploaded a cover for the full “Great Cold Distance” album from KATATONIA. I reached out to him and told him that I loved the sound of KATATONIA’s album so I wanted to send him one of our songs to work on. I wanted to find the right song to send him so when I had the “Beneath the Opaque Veil”, I sent him the demo, he got pretty interested and that’s how it happened. It was a great experience, great mix, great sound.
– What inspires you regarding the lyrics of your songs?
Vishal Naidu: Sometimes it can be a personal experience or experiences from my environment. Or a known story like in “Beneath The Opaque Veil”. It’s like you say that you like to watch horror movies and want to portray something like that through the song as well. It’s a combination of everything, mainly personal experiences.
– I hate to say that we are not very familiar with the Indian metal music scene. How are things there regarding metal music? Are there metal bands, metal clubs, festivals etc?
Vishal Naidu: It’s a very growing genre in India. A lot of bands have emerged and there are some classic Death Metal bands from India like DEMONIC RESURRECTION, GUTSLIT or GODLESS which are some of the most known bands. They have played to some famous festivals like Brutal Assault or even Wacken. Recently, I think KASCK played in Wacken. They are Thrash metallers. So, yes. The metal music scene is really good and specifically in my city, Bangalore there is a great metal scene and we have gigs almost every week. It’s growing a lot and it’s a great place to be. Honestly, we are hoping to get more international soon. Another great band is BLOODYWOOD which is pretty famous.
– I will definitely look them up. What are your plans for the future? Can we expect a full length album in the near future? Or any shows, local or abroad?
Vishal Naidu: Right now we want to play more shows so we gain more experience on that area. Along with that, we already have material ready for another EP and maybe after that we will record a full-length album. That is what we are really looking forward to. We do have enough songs already but we are not sure yet. We may make it a full length album of release it as an EP. Also, we plan to play some more shows locally and later who knows, maybe abroad too. To big festivals like Rockstadt!!
– I think we covered everything. Thank you again for your time! You may close the interview as you like!
Vishal Naidu:I really appreciate you taking the time and reaching out to me because giving our card was one thing. It’s another thing that you reached out to us. We are really greatful for giving us this opportunity. It really helps us. Things like that help us grow as a band!!
Interview: Kostas Boudoukos
Photographs: Anish Mohan
Audio Transcription, Design & Editing: Kostas Boudoukos
Date: June 13th, 2024
External Link: FALLEN LETTERS – Official Page
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