Exclusive Premiere: GrooveBot Intertwines Love for Gaming and Metal With ‘Gentle Scars’ Video

Last year, Mumbai rock/metallers Paradigm Shift’s guitarist-composer Chinmay Agharkar aka GrooveBot released his industrial/nu-metal debut single, “Toxic,” featuring vocalist Pratika Prabhune. Since then, Agharkar submerged himself into working on jingles for advertisements while also mixing and mastering grunge covers for his other rock band Hook. Now, the musician is back with a brand-new GrooveBot track, the shapeshifting “Gentle Scars,” featuring Mumbai-based singer Siddharth Basrur.

On how the collaboration came together, Agharkar says, “I’ve been an admirer of Basrur’s work for a while now.” He adds, “I distinctly remember hearing his rendition of ‘Fields of Gold’ by Sting and have been wanting to work with him since then.” Groovebot also roped in bassist Aditya Kadam (from singer Jonita Gandhi‘s live band, metallers Hellwind and comedy metal group Workshop) to lend his talents to the song too. “He perfectly understood what the track needed,” says Agharkar.

The track includes plenty of dark undertones that Agharkar attributes to the kind of headspace he found himself in last year. There’s heaps of heavy rock on the table though, from crunchy guitar parts, thumping drums, Kadam’s swiveled bass parts as well as Basrur’s symbolic vocals. “The song’s lyrics are about my fight with myself,” says Basrur. He adds, “The lyrics were written about two to three years ago, at a time where I felt I could be doing so much more, but was in a spiral of self-doubt and stagnation. I guess the old adage stands; ‘the only thing really stopping you, is yourself.’”

The track’s accompanying 3D animated video – designed by graphic artist Ronen Samson aka Dark Matter – combines GrooveBot’s two worlds of gaming and music. The fascinating clip is created in such a way that it resembles a cut scene from a video game. Agharkar says, “Ronen has built-up every single element you see in the video from scratch.”

Looking ahead to the rest of the year, the musician plans on readying an EP by the third quarter of 2021. He says, “Apart from that, both my bands Paradigm Shift and Hook might have some releases in the pipeline so I’m excited for those.”

Watch the video for “Gentle Scars” below: