The Indian Rock-ilution!

Trends in Indian music have been constantly changing ever since the very inception of the music industry. These trends have shown their various highs and lows over the decades and have always managed to draw mountains on the Musical Graphs. Whether it was Bappi Da’s disco music of the late 80s to A.R.Rahman’s soulful music in the late 90s. Whether it was Lata Mangeshkar and Kishore Kumar’s melodic numbers of the 70s to the current Sufi/Hip Hop/Remix theme that is all over the place these days, critics maintain that music isn’t music anymore and has fallen prey to the Spider’s Web of Commercialization. Whilst I agree that the Sell-Out seeds have been sown , I reckon all hope is not lost with the emergence of our own Rock Scene in the recent years.

Rock music has come a long way in India. Gone are the days when bands raked in the moolah playing International Acts’ music at Rock Shows. While there are yet a few crowd pleasers on the premises that play the regular ‘Sweet Child O’Mine’ or a ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ for the masses, the REAL rock and metal acts have finally decided to come off their own and get to compose some fresh original music. Around 7-8 years ago bands like Parikrama and Pentagram didn’t have a choice but to play their renditions of ‘Highway to Hell’ and ‘Killing in the name of’ , but now with the coming off age of our fanatical rockers and with creativity being the need of the hour, songwriting has taken off to a different tangent altogether. Although there’s barely any air-time for these bands on local radio stations or TV Channels, things are not all doom and gloom, with T.V.Channels like VH1 showcasing music videos of bands like Pentagram,Metakix,Brahma and other such bands. 

Rock is slowly and steadily making inroads into the Indian Musical Circuit and the artistes that have been instrumental in its development are many like Parikrama,Pentagram,Dream Out Loud, Split,Vayu,Metakix,Demonic Resurrection,Avial,Decibel,Indian Ocean,Indus creed, Brahma, Junkyard Groove, Motherjane, Sceptre, Superfuzz, Zero, Black, The Them Clones and the beat goes on … I’m sure I speak on every rockaholic and metalhead’s behalf when I salute these artistes for bringing us music in its most novel form, that is comparable to any international act’s works of genius and hence, I feel the urgency to throw some light on certain bands and bring them to your notice.

Profiling Pentagram

Pentagram is one of the most popular Indian bands and has been best known for innovating and experimenting a lot more than their contemporaries. Pentagram is one of the very few bands that plays Electronic Rock although their sound has changed over the years getting more synthesizers, effects and mixers into play getting a more electronic sound. Pentagram. The most obvious influence on their sound is the music of Rage Against The Machine. Pentagram was started in 1993 by Vishal(vocals) & Shiraz(drums) while Randolph(guitar/electronics) and Papal(bass) joined in a year later. Within the first three years they won three of India’s biggest rock competitions, one of which resulted in them signing a record deal for their first album with Plus Music in 1996. Pentagram were MTV India’s ‘Artist of the Month’ in 1997. They also won the Channel V awards for Best Live Band and Best Indian Band in 1997 & 1998. The band started tweaking their sound with generous use of samplers in their set blending it with a heavy rock sound.

Pentagram have very often made it to the news for all the wrong reasons for Vishal’s frantic antics, most notably the stir created at ‘Mosh Mania’ when Vishal was greeted with boos, only for him to throw the mic stand into the crowd which injured one person seriously. The crowd went hysterical and tried to breach through security to get their hands on him. During the Kargil war Pentagram recorded and released India’s first exclusive-to-internet song, ‘The Price of Bullets’. Pentagram have twice won the readers poll for ‘Best Indian Band’ by Rock Street Journal, The highlight of the bands career was playing the Glastonbury Festival in 2005 alongside worlds biggest acts such as Coldplay, Chemical Brothers, Tori Amos, Fat Boy Slim, The White stripes and others. The band is currently touring with their latest album ‘ITS OK … ITS ALL GOOD’. The song ‘VOICE’ is made it to the Top 5 on the radio charts at one time.

* this is a 10 part series, where Rooshabh will be profiling a band each week. Keep tuned in to get your rock history brush up.