Escher’s Knot Wrap Up Tour, Plot Album for 2020

In between his gigs as sound engineer for Carnatic/playback/R&B artist Sid Sriram, Abijith Rao returns back to his most familiar role as growler for metal band Escher’s Knot. Since 2009, the band has released an EP called Tessellations and singles including “The Grand Design” (2014) and earlier this year, “Convolution.”

Rao pretty much manages the band and is even involved in the record engineering process for their upcoming full-length album, due in 2020. Earlier this month, they kicked off a run of shows in Chennai, New Delhi and Hyderabad (opening for American metal drumming great Chris Adler). Rao says, “Chennai had one of the best turnouts in a while, but we had a lower turnout for Delhi because it was a weekday. But Hyderabad was crazy, with over 200 people. We sold out all our 50 T-shirts.”

It’s their first run of shows with new bassist Vishnu Rajendranath (from Thiruvananthapuram thrash metallers Chaos), who stepped in for bassist Madhav Ayachit. Rao says, “Madhav left in April and one day, Manu (Krishnan, drummer for both Escher’s Knot and Chaos) spoke to Vishnu and he came in. He’s been working his ass off and it was a perfect fit.”

The tour has been a “wake up call” of sorts for the band to complete their long overdue album. With seven songs written, two more are in the works. “Some of the songs have been written four or five years [ago]. Five of them haven’t been performed live yet either,” Rao says. Of the ones that are currently part of their set, there’s “Mechanical Eye,” “Of Theories and Conspiracies” and “This Page Has Been Left Intentionally Blank.” Rao adds, “By December 25th, we should be done with pre-production on the album.”

To close things off in Bengaluru, they’re performing at a new gig series by Bengaluru promoter/label Proximity Music Management called Winter Fest, going back to back with Chaos, who are on the bill with tech/prog death metallers Eccentric Pendulum, grindcore band xRepeatx and death metallers Prime Rage.

Winter Fest ft Escher’s Knot, Eccentric Pendulum, Chaos and more takes place on December 1st at Fandom at Gilly’s Redefined, Bengaluru. Event details here. 

Watch a live version of “This Page Has Been Intentionally Left Blank” below.