Greetings from Metal India and mighty thanx for taking out time to answer this interview with us. Shatriya, is a unique band in the sense that they play HM all right but they sing in Tamil, breaking barriers that metal must always be in English here in India. Their 1st album was titled “Violence” and was released in June 2001

I heard that u guys are currently in the studio recording for your 2nd album. Is that true?
Yeah, man. We are in the middle of recording our 2nd album. We are doing our ‘ Paranoid’.

Will this CD be released under Dhanosh prod. Too? And what has been tentatively titled?
Well, we haven’t decided whether to give it to Dhanosh or any other label. For now we just wanna concentrate on recording this stuff. Anyway Roadrunner Records is quite interested too!!!!!!!!!. We haven’t decided on title yet but our guitarist is keen on naming it ‘short circuit’ for the reason unknown to any mortals. 3. And does the current line-up of Shatriya differ from the previous one? – Nope. The line up is still the same. We’ve signed a pact that we are not allowed to leave the band even though we become grumpy old men, ha ha ha !

Tamil HM is a very unique concept; in fact I don’t think anyone in southern India is doing something similar and you guys away in s’pore are doing it. Can u elaborate why u chose to do something as radical as this?
Got nothing else to do!! — but seriously we’ve been listening to metal stuff for about 15 years and believe me we are still considered the outcast within Indian community here (like their cinema based music is far superior.) @#$* them. And we get too tired of this kind of typical mentality among the Indians here. So it is kind of a monumental %#@&? Off to all the systems. Besides, we want to create the next big trend and milk money out of it.

There has been a lot of extreme music done and damn good too in many European languages but none in the numerous Indian languages we have, this sort of baffles me – can u explain why?
On a serious note, we can’t understand a s@#$ what they are singing, be it English or their own language unless they sing like Frank Sinatra !!!!. So they can get away with it. Anyway we are not pioneers in this field too. There are some other bands doing this too and only difference is our sound engineer increased the volume a little higher during recording thus the heavy sound!!!!! ha ha ha. I think people don’t want to take risk and want to play safe game in this field. Well let them jump on bandwagon and rot!

Are there any shortcomings while composing HM in Tamil as compared to English? Also any difficulties you might have faced?
So far we don’t find any difficulties to compose as our main composer is still young, unmarried and full of fresh ideas (hopefully it lasts!!!!!). But since all of us have full time job and families to take care of, it is quite difficult to get together these days. But that just a minor problem and it won’t dampen our highflying spirit!!!!!

How were songs created – did u think up the riffs first and then write the lyrics or vice-versa?
Yeah, the riffs come first and then we force our vocalist to blabber something according to the music (poor guy) and finally we write the lyrics!

How has the response been to Shatriya – do u think u have a wider appeal? Cos lotsa people claim that the inability to understand English lyrics in metal makes it enterprising. Do u think that Shatriya will penetrate Tamil speaking homes of normal people or will u get restricted to metallers who can understand the language?
Here in our country the Indians are slow in picking up any new stuff (They still worship Bob Marley!!!!!). Metal is something new to these guys and please don’t bother about the old generation. Surely they won’t headbang to our music. Our intention was to create some sort of mark (a black spot on white cloth is more like it) in music industry. We get noticed thru our 1st album and our promo Video clips which were being aired constantly when the album was released. You should have seen their reaction, man. While watching a nice Tamil movie on Sunday afternoon with whole family suddenly they’d play our video clip with all the heavy music and headbanging. People were like ‘what the F@#$ is this?’ But the kids dig it. It may take some time though. Don’t worry we will corrupt their minds, he he he !

Your last CD didn’t contain explanation to any of the lyrics in English. Don’t you think it necessary to explain the meaning of the lyrics for non-Tamil speaking listeners? Some bands from Scandinavia publish lyrics also in English e.g.- Enslaved!
Yeah go tell that to the label guys. Actually we didn’t have the final say on the production of our 1st album. There were so many things we wished to change but couldn’t. Hope we can do better in our 2nd album and print our lyrics in all the main languages in the world!!!!.

Do you think metal in native languages will ever boom in India? Also do u know of any other bands singing metal in any Indian language?
Well, it may not now but surely it will catch on with the people soon. As you can see, the metal music in general is getting big in India now so hopefully we can get to do the cinema soundtracks soon!!!!!!

Has the 1st CD “violence” got any zine reviews or radio station airplay so far?
Plenty & positive. Thanks to those people. We received more support in Malaysia than in S’pore. I’m not so sure about India but there are couple of bands in S’pore & Malaysia like Divine Sutra, Kalki, Kashmir Stone, Aryan and so on.

Can u tell us something about the new material and its concept? And do u have a Shatriya website up?
All we can say is that the 2nd album has more groove and we took our sweet time to record it without anyone’s intervention. So no pressure there. The website will be up soon, please wait.

I was told that “Violence” had a lot of positive vibes in the music man but the CD title apparently is in contrast with that. Why so?
Again it was the label’s idea too. Initially we wanted to call it 1025 CE as a tribute to the first Indian army (Cholas) who landed on our land on that year. But the label guys didn’t like it (as usual!) and want the title to be more aggressive, thus born the title “VIOLENCE”. It is to make the album to get noticed in market (whatever…)

Thanks a lot for this interview and if there any last words of advice you might for any bands that wish to set foot into the murky waters of singing in their native language like Shatriya?
Thanks to u, man. All we can say is that do not expect too much when doing this kind of music as we are kind of swimming against the tide. Well get noticed sooner or later. Just love what you do, as self-satisfaction is more important…………and buy our 2nd album ha ha ha…
Interview By : Riju Ray (psychoray@hotmail.com)