Exclusive Release: What Google Can’t Find’s Debut Album ‘Introspect / Retrospect’

(L-R) Akshay Gaikwad, Arjun Menon, Gaurav Kakar, Akshat Vaze, Clinton Moniz, Bob Alex of What Google Can’t Find. Photo: Yatin Dhabi/Bad Pot Productions

What started out as a five-track EP last March for What Google Can’t Find (WGCF) has now grown into a grand three-part concept debut album; the first of which sees the Pune alt metallers dabble in introspection, time travel and crunchy riffs galore. Introspect / Retrospect follows a pensive protagonist through his encounter with a stranger, a lapse into his past and the counterfactual thinking that ensues.

Much of the 11-track album’s story comes from bassist Akshat Vaze (“The concept is really personal,” he explains), who put together the band with his former bandmate and guitarist Saket Dekhane for Pune’s annual Fête de la Musique in 2011. Now, the band comprises Vaze, vocalist Akshay Gaikwad, guitarists Gaurav Kakar, Clinton Moniz and Bob Alex [also of experimental metallers Noiseware and post-rock act Aswekeepsearching] and drummer Arjun Menon.

The all-new WGCF have long ditched the German punk/industrial covers (save for a rendition of Rammstein’s “Mutter” on their 2011 debut EP Stigma) and moved on to philosophically heavy themes like those on Introspect / Retrospect”” and its tentative sequel, After Life.

The 11-track cruncher, which was largely penned by Vaze, guitarist Moniz and vocalist Gaikwad and recorded at Pune’s Monkey Wrench Studios, is built on pummeling drums and Alter Bridge-informed riff work, with a hint of punk-leaning existential rage and the occasional growl.

While album opener “If I Were You” talks about “the struggle of becoming the best versions of ourselves and finally coming out of our own shadows,” the protagonist’s story picks up with “From Here to The End,” following him as he is drawn to a girl in a crowded room (the groove-heavy “Paper Planes”). Vaze adds, “Their encounter triggers his mindset over how decisions can take a different path in one’s life.” The story shifts temporal dimensions and the protagonist wakes to find himself in the past (the urgent riff-busting “Timelines”) and takes the opportunity to change the decisions he’s already made, leading him down a different path. “From then on, he gets to know it’s all a dream,” Vaze explains.

The story ends with the penultimate “Princess Cheesecake Will Find His Baker” that places the protagonist crosses paths with the girl in the same room again; but only to introduce a new character with “Still Sirens,” the lunging album closer (and starting point for After Life) that “talks about the lies we often tell ourselves to be able to survive.” Says Vaze, “The entire album is about how you meet these people who have a big impact on your life and how these people will change you in a way. But it’s up to you how much you have to change for the good or bad.”

Listen to ‘Introspect/Retrospect’ below.