I have been myself a fan of diabolicalconquest.com right from its inception; I had always wanted to interview Kunal Choksi the man at the helm of affairs at DC-the premier extreme metal webzine from India. It’s been a privilege talking to him

Firstly many thanks for taking time out for this interview, lets take it right from the start, how are things at your end, are you as busy as you were yesterday, I mean with the work on your site and in general?
Things my side have become incredibly hectic and stressful ever since I got married to my job. Then, frustrated with me deserting her at nights, my wife did the unspeakable and later dropped the bombshell on me by telling me that she was pregnant. Eventually, Diabolical Conquest was born and along with it began my ruination. The endless hours of attending to it, pacifying it, wiping its ass and changing its nappies almost everyday makes me want to abandon the friggin’ baby in a dumpster. But I can’t, it’s my own and I’ve developed some feelings for it and I’m stuck with it. Sigh, thanks for inquiring about it though.

Before going any further, tell when did you come with this idea of starting an extreme metal site? Any initial hiccups you faced while establishing the site?
Actually exactly a year before the site was created, I had formed the forum. My aim then was to try and make the forum popular and get more people to post on it. But pimping it turned out to be really difficult as the forum had no base and was just a naked floating thing. I started thinking about what it really lacked – it lacked a site. Although that may seem pretty obvious it wasn’t so because then I didn’t know shit about making a site. Plus I didn’t have a band or anything like that. Time went by and I was getting sick of pimping my naked bitch forum. Then one night it suddenly struck me – why, the forum could have it’s own site, a webzine! My English was bollocks but I was confident about my music and had a very good knowledge about it so hell, I could try and come up with some crap I thought. More importantly, I knew a few GREAT friends who had some experience in writing reviews. That time I only knew two of them. One of them was my oldest and closest friend, almost like a mentor at that time – Adam Conrad and the other one was Chaossphere who I knew was pretty damn good. Thinking about this got me so excited that I began walking in my room restlessly like an ant until my legs hurt, and then I had to get into bed to continue thinking about the same. I didn’t sleep that night – something that I always thought was an exaggeration when others said so until it happened to me for real. I got in touch with them very early next morning and they liked the idea. It was a huge relief but that was only half the work done. Like I said, I didn’t know shit about making a site. Even attempting to do so was out of the question. I was that e-dumb. I HAD to find someone who would make one for me. But who, I had absolutely no clue. After asking tons of people over a span of time I finally found a person who assured that he’d make one for me. I explained to him the way I want it and all the necessary stuff and things seemed set. I was very happy and told those couple of original writers about the site being online soon and even went ahead and recruited others. I found Mike Reeves and also got Rob to write for me then I guess. I convinced further two or three more people and things seemed great. But I never got any reply back from that site designer guy. Four months passed and my world was collapsing. My ‘staff’ was getting impatient and a couple of them even lost interest and dropped out I think. I guess it all started to seem like ball talks by an over ambitious Indian to them. It was getting pretty serious and I really couldn’t afford to let my precious staff members down. During that testing time most of them gave me their assurance and support, particularly Adam Conrad who I remember saying something like “I don’t care how long it takes as long as it goes up someday!” followed by “It’ll only give us more time to write more reviews for your site when it goes up!” I realised that if I ever wanted to make this vision or rather a dream a reality, I had to do it myself. Thanks to a friend I got the software for this kinda stuff and in Jan 2005 I began trying all kinds of shit with it and discovered various ways to crash my computer. I tried to make sense of the program’s help file that hardly helped, but eventually by trial and error (mostly error) method I made some progress. So finally on March 7th, 2005, exactly a year after the inception of the forum, the site went up and so did my penis.

I have observed your site caters to all genres of metal be itdeath,brutal death, old-school,grind,goregrind,black,black/death etc, how do you keep track of all these genres? Do tells us the significance of your site name?
Well the fact that I’m into many genres certainly helped me with this, especially when it came to the staff selection. I’ve been into metal since the tape days when there was no Internet. That time you had to be happy with what your friends gave you and you couldn’t demand on getting only stuff from a particular genre. So at an early stage I was exposed to various metal genres and I guess that helped me to be more open-minded. Now even though I still listen to many genres, I’m mainly into all forms of death metal and grind. Incantation’s ‘Diabolical Conquest’ album was the first cd I had ever ‘ordered’ from abroad. Like I said, my early days into metal were very frustrating. I was forced to do with whatever shit I got – that too with begging, ass licking, travelling all over the city, even paying for cheaply recorded tapes – and I was really getting sick of that. Surprisingly, it was my mom who encouraged me to explore the options of getting stuff on my own (it has been her biggest regret till date). So I sat with her credit card and ordered two cds from Relapse Records – dISEMBOWELMENT’s – ‘Transcendence Into The Peripheral’ and Incantation’s ‘Diabolical Conquest’. The label must’ve been so overwhelmed by someone ordering from a country like India back then, that they shipped out my order through FedEx I think and I received it really, really soon. So on that unforgettable morning when I was wandering around my house like an unleashed donkey, some fool rang the bell and expecting that person to be the milkman/newspaper man/watchman or some similar man asking for money I made the most grotesque frown and opened the door to see this uniformed man standing there. He handed me some strange parcel, took my signature and left. I stared at that parcel as if it were a boob and later started feeling it. In a desperate attempt to tear open that parcel I began juggling with it and what not, and finally after much struggle, Incantation’s ‘Diabolical Conquest’ cd emerged from underneath. Sadly dISEMBOWELMENT was out of stock so I got only one cd but that wasn’t on my mind. I spent one half of that day showing it to my mom and sis as if it were some trophy that I miraculously won and the other half of the day scrutinizing it lying on my bed and shaking my legs vigorously. When I formed a forum of my own, I instinctively named it ‘Diabolical Conquest’ kind of in dedication to that glorious cd. And later when I had to form my webzine, ‘Diabolical Conquest’ seemed to be obvious choice.

How many staff members are associated with DC (do tell us about their origins as well)? Do they all specialize in their respective tastes and whats the criteria for selecting your staff?
Apart from me, there are five staff members and about four to five contributors. There isn’t much of a difference between the two, just that the latter don’t have that much burden on them to contribute regularly but they are also not entitled to promos. I think it’ll consume a lot of time and space talking about each and everyone of them so it’s best if you could check out the staff page for yourself. Yeah actually they all do specialize in a particular genre or a sub-genre. For example, Nin Chan specializes in pure Doom metal, Chaossphere in Black metal, Mike Reeves in technical death metal and a bit of grind, Baz/Mike Lidia in brutal death and goregrind, Adam/Rob/Myself in proper as well as brutal death metal and also goregrind (not Rob though). I hope that made sense. I feel that specialization is needed otherwise the reviews won’t have that credibility. Often in an attempt to cover something outside of his line of taste/knowledge, he reviewer looks clueless. At Diabolical Conquest, I make it a point that the right person reviews the album even if it means sending the promo to a person half around the world. The requirement to write for Diabolical Conquest is that the person should be highly knowledgeable in any particular extreme metal genre/sub-genre and should be able to write well. I mean lets face it, there has to be something special about a writer – his tastes, the way he writes, his humour to an en, etc. that will make people want to read it. This is important because this is the time where people can easily download and hear the whole album for themselves instead of going by what some reviewer has to say. I admit it’s really difficult to find such writers but I really don’t want to compromise on the site’s quality. I feel utterly blessed looking at the writers I’ve managed to find so far.

On a personal note, what are your favorite bands/musicians? Are there any other forms of music you listen to apart from extreme metal?
I’m quite particular when I have to tag something as my favourite. You know, there’s generally some inconsistency in quality and I don’t wish to endorse that too. Still in spite of that, I really like Incantation, Immolation, (early) Amorphis, (early) Katatonia, Malevolent Creation, Carnage, (early) Massacra, (early) Morbid Angel, (early) Napalm Death, (early) Sinister, Pigsty, Summoning, Evoken, to name a few. I could list a lot more if it were album specific. As I’m a moody fucker I can’t keep listening to the same type of music. Thankfully 97% of the time I can manage my mood swings listening to various genres under metal. Outside of metal, I like listening to selected electronica stuff and old Hindi songs.

I have observed that your site gets very quickly updated in comparison to your other extreme counterparts worldwide, how do you maintain such spontaneity? Moreover your site has a fantastic web layout, who’s responsible for all that designing? Do you yourself have any computer background?
Well I contribute it to sheer wishful thinking. And also hard work and determination, oh and my writers of course. The site should have regular updates otherwise the readers will loose interest and this is particularly important in case of a new webzine like mine. So thanks to my writers, I have just enough material to make frequent updates. I’ll take all the credit for its designing. I know as much about computers as I know about girls – that is nothing at all. But then again as I’ve said earlier, I had no option but to do it myself. I can be this irritating perfectionist kinda guy who isn’t easily satisfied, so I guess because of that the site looks a bit decent. Also there was a conscious attempt from my side to steer clear from clichéd and stereotyped elements like blood, gore, blades, tits, etc. I wanted it to look fresh and contemporary. Initially there were some who said oh, the site hardly looks metal, but then I said, fucker, it’s the content that matters not the looks. We metalheads can sometimes be so obsessed with the imagery and looks in metal that it’s sad. I really wish to have a webmaster or someone who can help me out with this. This consumes almost all of my personal free time (which keeps on decreasing day by day) and I don’t know how long I can continue with this.

By the way do you bother to peep into the Indian rock/metal scene? According to you, is their future for any Indian extreme band/bands? Any plans of featuring Indian bands on your site in mere future?
I don’t care about rock and where Indian metal is concerned hardly anything appeals to me. Yes, there are a few good bands but they need to write new songs and put out a record. Only then they are going to get somewhere and will know where they actually stand in comparison to other bands. Also it’s irritating when the same damn bands keep playing the same damn songs at every damn show. Surely there is a future but only if they stop playing covers and come up with some original songs. But no, the rock stars are too busy impressing dumb bitches. I’m not averse to covering Indians bands on my site provided they are extreme enough and have something released in a proper format. That’s the standard requirement for the site. I don’t know why people here have that kind of impression about me/my site, all they should’ve done is just ask!

Can we see you expanding, I mean can we expect to see you starting a print issue of Dc-zine, a distro or a label soon?
Considering the complications that go with a print zine, I feel it’s more of a regression. Metalheads these days don’t seem to have the money to buy cds, what makes you think they will have the money to buy zines? Anyway, I don’t want to earn any money out of this. All this is purely because of my interest and love of metal and having a money-minded attitude towards all this will ruin it all, including my respect for it. I would’ve been happy to hook people up with some real metal, something I had problems with when I was getting into metal and I realise its significance. I have some good contacts with labels worldwide and some of them keep asking me if I can stock/distro some of their titles. But the poor mailing system in our country makes the idea of a distro very unfeasible. I’ve had so many shocking experiences with the mail that I can write a book about it. The height was buying my own (lost) cds from a raddiwala or what you call a second-hand shop. To start a label here considering the kind of bands and how serious they are about their music, you must be joking. I don’t think I’m the sort of person who would put up with their rockstar attitude and tantrums either. No time for that kind of stuff anyway.

Are there any musical sites/mags you browse through? Also tell me how well connected are you with the Asian scene?
Not really. I’m not very well connected with the Asian scene either. I had some Singaporean label send me their stuff but other than that I know little. If you include Japan then I can say that I’m quite familiar with their bands. But anyway, I’m not too concerned with the local/Asian scene that way. It doesn’t mean I’m going to give them a better review or anything; I’m going to treat them all just the same. If they want me to cover their bands, then fine, I’m not going to run behind them.

Before signing off let me ask you on a lighter note what else do you like doing apart from listening to music?
I’m just a normal person like everyone else. It’s not like I keep victims in a basement whom I regularly torture and then write about their suffering. People know me as Kunal their friend/relative/colleague, not the guy who owns and runs Diabolical Conquest. I don’t feel it’s necessary to even tell them about the kind of music I listen to. When I go out with them I patiently listen to whatever they play in their car or house or wherever, when I come home I listen to what I like. When I’m not listening to music I prefer going out – chill out with some friends, watch movies, go have some good (i.e. junk) food, then go to the gym but very occasionally, play cricket on Sundays if possible, you know just the normal stuff depending on the mood.

Anything you would like to say to any one, now the space is all yours! Thank you once again.
I wouldn’t want to waste my precious space (so rare these days!) but I’d just like to tell all of you, especially Indian fucks, to try and be level headed and not get carried away with this form of music – that’s what it is after all. Having Glen Benton come in your dreams and tell you about things you must do, as claimed by some great Indian metalhead, is not really a thing to be proud of. Oh and if possible, please try to fucking BUY some original stuff. Probably only then you’ll understand the value of it and maybe even respect it. Don’t whine. Also being an Indian doesn’t mean we’re naturally inferior or incapable of coming out with something world-class. When my site was new, a someone had commented about its credibility just because I was from India and said if only me, the same me, lived in the US or some other country, it would’ve been different. Looking at the site now I don’t think he or anyone would say that again. Lastly I’d like to thank all my staff members without whom it Diabolical Conquest wouldn’t be possible. And also everyone associated with it, even the dudes posting on the forum for providing me with constant entertainment and feedback.

All right, thanks Atul for this interview and everyone for being with me till the very end of this page. Now I only wish someone would make a Bollywood film based on me, complete with song and dance of course.
Dang, there goes all of my space.