Albatross is a "Horror Metal" band from Mumbai formed in 2009. The band started off as the solo project of bassist Riju Dasgupta. But later on, he met few likeminded musicians and this way Albatross was born. The current line up of the band is Biprorshee Das on vocals, Vignesh and Nishith on guitars, Riju Dasgupta (Dr. Hex) on bass and Jay Thacker on drums. Their first EP "Dinner Is You" was released in Sep 2010, which was about cannibalism and the Kuru disease. They are now working on their next  EP "Here Come the Kissing Flies".

Dinesh : Hi! Greetings from Whackk Team. So how are things at your end? How are you guys doing?

Riju : Things are happening for sure. We just had a major lineup change with The Scarecrow quitting the ranks and currently, we're training our latest recruit Nishith to be stage ready for our Mumbai show on the 10th of September. It's quite frustrating to start from scratch for the 3rd time, but we're all hoping this is a lineup that sticks. Side by side, Jay just wrapped up all drum parts for the forthcoming EP- Here come the Kissing Flies, and Vignesh should commence recording the final guitar parts at Demonic Studios soon. We've also decided to release EP 3 soon after the Vestal Claret split, so it's a busy busy couple of years ahead for us. And to top it all off I've just recovered from a bad case of food poisoning, but I'll try not to swear at the world! Bhenc**d!

Dinesh :  Lets start with a n00bish question. Who is Dr. Hex and what about Rijunator?

Riju : Ever since I joined Workshop in 2007-8, I can't go on stage without slipping into another persona; Riju Dasgupta is simply too boring a person. Dr. Hex is a name derived from Dr. X, the character from the Queensryche album - Operation Mindcrime; and he's a creature who loves the process of experimentation irrespective of the circumstances. The internal story I have for him (no one else knows this) is that he's a man slowly turning into an insect. Not against his will, he's quite aware of the change and he welcomes it. He can never take off the mask for fear of letting the world know that there is a metamorphosis happening. He's fascinated by the change others will be repulsed by.

Rijunator was a complete idiot. Like Suppandi, only better looking. The name of course is something Sahil came up with, it's merges my name with Terminator. Hasta la vista nahin, Hasta la XP.

Dinesh : How frequently do you guys jam? And who came up with the band's name?

Biprorshee : Well, your readers can know that we jam every weekend.  Most of us in the band have day jobs to take care of so that we can pay off our monthly bills. The week belongs to our employers but the weekend is the band’s. It is important and every band out there worth its salt will tell you that. Jamming for a few hours for a few days before a gig or before you hit the studio sure as hell won’t cut it.

I am glad we are kinda strict with that. No matter what is happening in our lives, that weekend jam is inevitable. So we have this nice little jam room that we rent for a few hours every Saturday or Sunday or both where we write our songs, rehearse, share our dirty thoughts for our neighbours and then drink some tea.

The band’s name? This tale has been narrated before. Riju and I wanted to form a band for quite some time before Albatross eventually was born. The idea was to do something around power metal, a genre we both are big on. When it came to naming the outfit, there were those usual ones around swords and witchcraft, dungeons and medieval history etc. No, we didn’t visit Lord of the Rings. Besides the fact that we don’t like the saga too much, we aren’t Europeans.

‘Albatross’ was a suggestion by Riju’s younger brother, Rono and the former took to it immediately. Besides the fact that it made a direct literary reference (try Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner) that we loved, in a way it made an Iron Maiden reference too. The latter was all it took to have me sold to the idea.

Dinesh : You define your music as Horror Metal. What are your major band influences? How do they blend into your music?

Biprorshee : Personally, I find this whole idea about categorising your band with a specific genre a bit annoying. “Hi! I am a black metal/thrash metal/death metal/metalcore/blah blah blah band.” Nothing else but it leads to more unnecessary discussions. “Hey! Checked out this <insert genre here> band?” “Yeah man. But it is nowhere close to/And it is so much better than those other <insert genre here> band.” And more. As I said, annoying.

As much as I love to call Albatross a heavy metal band and leave it at that, we chose this weird animal called “Horror Metal”. Instant question like yours. “Horror Metal. Now what’s that?” Nothing but a blend of two schools we love – horror and metal. Simple! We think of horror concepts, write a few songs around it and make a heavy metal song and dance about it.

When it comes to influences, the band becomes one big melting pot. Every member comes with their respective school of thought. While there is the risk of creating a mix that could sound very confused but we’d call it fun. The boundaries as we compose tend to stretch.

We tend to borrow a lot from literature. Hell! Had there been no Coleridge, we’d have a difficult time naming our band (and I would be one tattoo less on my body). Yes children, we champion the art of reading. Literature inevitably finds its way into our song writing process.

Riju and I more or less have a similar train of thought when it comes to the music we listen to or the books we read. Very old school. While Riju is a more open minded person with an ear and eye for everything that matches his set notions, I am the other guy who hates to experiment.

He swears by his King Diamond, Judas Priest and some such but trust Riju to never fail to tag me on Facebook with an obscure piece of music he recently heard. My Gods are constant – Iron Maiden and Pink Floyd. And then my playlist will include a lot of Megadeth, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Judas Priest, AC DC, Metallica, Aerosmith, Iced Earth and stuff like that. Yes, I am a mainstream bitch. Hold that against me.

Our drummer, Jay will of course wear his Dream Theater shirt everywhere except on stage where he insists on being topless. Somebody tell him he doesn’t have the goods to distract. You’ll also find him trying to rip off Portnoy stunts while beating the crap out of those skins. So you can guess.

The guitarists are more progressive in their music tastes (Don’t even get me started on it. As Dave Mustaine would’ve loved to say, “These kids need to go back to Rock School 101”.) With Nishith in, Vignesh has found the perfect partner to worship Jeff Loomis together. So while the rest of the band will take a break while jamming, grab a smoke or some tea, these boys write their secret songs in praise of Loomis.

Dinesh : Who among you usually writes the songs and what are they about (yes yes, horror metal, but what exactly are we talking about)?

Riju : I usually pick a theme for the concept of the record and draft a small short story around which the album is written. I also write a basic draft of the lyrics which Biprorshee modifies according to his vocal lines(Daniel Rego from Demonic Resurrection does a quick edit/proof read job too at times). The first 3 records will be pure horror stories- about cannibals, kissing flies and serial killing dolls; but I've had a few nightmares while I was on medication (not to mention the Lovecraft and China Mieville stories I've been reading) and the 4th record, whenever it happens might just veer towards weird fiction.

Dinesh : You guys are working on your second EP, do tell us something about that..

Biprorshee : Yes, our second EP is due after Dinner Is You that we released last year. It is going to be a split with US-based doom outfit, Vestal Claret and we are calling our set of songs – Here Come the Kissing Flies.

Yet another horror concept penned by the bassist based on blood sucking bugs.

We more or less have the songs composed and are currently in the recording process that our good friends Sahil, ‘The Demonstealer’ Makhija (Demonic Resurrection) and drum and sad jokes whore Hamza Kazi (from a hundred odd bands) are helping us out with.

We are particularly kicked about the fact that Niklas Stalvind, vocalist of Swedish heavy metal band, Wolf will be lending his vocals on one of the songs. As if covering Wolf’s ‘Voodoo‘ live wasn’t fun enough, this one is going to be super epic.

Dinesh : How is your touring schedule to promote the album?

Riju: There is no touring schedule in place. Now that you remind me, we need to have one ready by December. Time to hire Salman U. Syed as consultant.

We just have a launch gig in place so far in Mumbai. Which is going to blow your mind. To smithereens.

Dinesh : Any Indian or South Asian bands you look up to/ respect/ listen or would love to share stage with?

Riju : Tonnes of them, man. I'm personally a big fan of Bevar Sea and Dormant Inferno and I'd love to work with them sometime. And you can't not want to share the stage with the big names such as Demonic Resurrection and Kryptos. Among other Indian bands I like and follow are Devoid, Inner Sanctum, Parikrama, Colossus, Djinn and Miskatonic, Providence, Nerverek, Blood Meridian and I'm dying to check out this new top-secret-super KVLT project Aditya Mehta has been talking about forming. South Asian bands? Dusk from Pakistan comes to mind...awesome doom metal act. I'm actually working with one of my favourite Indian bands on this EP- Murari Vasudevan from Rat King, and the track he has sent in is really awesome.

Dinesh : One of the worst thing in India is that majority of the people don't believe in buying music which is damaging the Underground Scene in India. Tell us about that and how would you encourage people to buy, not steal the music?

Riju : You can't really ask/force someone to change their mindset. But I think all downloaders are complete idiots. Listening to songs on mp3 cannot rival the feeling of holding the physical copy in your hand and scrolling through the booklet. Paid mp3s are even worse. Why pay for 10% of the experience? I became a Mercyful Fate fan when I brought home 'In The Shadows' over a decade back, read the lyrics in the case as I sat in a dark room ingesting the music. It wasn't music back then, it was something beyond.

One of the major problems I see with albums these days, which is leading to the eventual demise of the physical format is what I like to call iPod culture. Thanks to iPod culture, musicians are writing albums which are say, 10 good songs...instead of writing complete albums, a journey which leads from song to song... like you know, from skull crushing Battery to Master of Puppets to the much slower The Thing That Should Not Be to Welcome Home(Sanitarium) and so on... Because who's going to listen to them in order now, considering they have (oooh) the iPod?

I recently purchased an autographed copy of Briton Rites- For Mircalla and Howie Bentley, the guitarist, says in the front page of the booklet- listen to these songs in order. They were put this way for a reason! And he was right. I completely dig the album.

Dinesh : Do you think social networking sites such as Facebook, twitter etc. are useful in the promotion of bands these days?

Biprorshee : Just promotion of bands? Social media is everywhere. You are making friends, sharing stuff, having sex, jacking your ex; man The Demonstealer is even taking care of your taste buds through the medium. Hell Yeah! Social networking is useful.

And I’ll tell you why. We roped in King Diamond guitarist, Andy LaRocque to master our previous EP. We have Niklas singing on the one we are about to release. How do you think we reached out to them with our music in the first place? Yes, you can argue that we are definitely not pioneering such epic collaborations but social networking had a major role to play here. There, we “promoted” our music overseas through Facebook.

I have often discussed this with my bandmates and have also come across this one question – “Do you guys have a website?” Now, I am not too sure but we probably began work on one and I have no idea what happened to it. But yes, we sure as hell have a Facebook page, which I believe is a much better option.

It is instant interaction with listeners. And that is the key word – interaction. Sure, the number of “likes” will never and should never be a measure of your fanbase but there’s no questioning the fact that those many people are aware of our existence. People who are actually interested in the music don’t just leave it at ‘liking’ the page but constantly post their thoughts on the music, on the band or just about any random thing under the sky and they know that the band will reply and vice-versa.

Such interaction is rare with a mere website. This is instant, as and how it happens and it is fantastic. Followers are regularly updated on what the band is up to, where they could catch the band live next, when is the next release due and what is happening on that front etc.

I am big on Twitter and have been at Riju’s ass for a while now to get a handle for the band or at least for himself but the bugger is too lazy.

A conversation is key to the promotion of any kind of brand and all said and done, social media has been a big boon to bands such as ours for this very purpose.

Dinesh : Any last words to your fans out there?

Biprorshee : Well for our own sake, I hope the words are not “last”. Here is where I’d give you the “Thanks for the support”, “Keep supporting Indian metal” and some more blah. Well that, yes. If you have been reading this, you probably know about us and we’d be more than delighted if you could lay your hands on our next release when it is out (and pick up our last if you haven’t). Stop by our Facebook page and say a Hello. We’ll ‘hello’ back and ask for some money.
Besides that, be good children, go to school (I hate illiterate people), read, listen to good music, and drink a pint of beer every day (after you hit the legal age. I also hate underage drinkers)!