Kraken: Turning Into Happy Beasts

Delhi rockers Kraken will release their debut EP later this year. Photo: Courtesy of European Bike Week 2015

It is a summer day in Vienna and Delhi’s newest rock band ”“ Kraken ”“ have just made their international debut at European Bike Week 2015. Enjoying the spoils for their first gig overseas, the six members were at a backpackers hostel and found a piano and a couple of guitars lying around,  which called for an impromptu jam.

For their guitarist and principal songwriter Moses Koul, however, this was a chance to show his bandmates a song idea he’d been working on. Says Koul, “We started playing and we suddenly found so many people from the hostel were all standing around us and digging it.”

The song, now under the working title “Doggy,” is what co-vocalist Vipul Verma calls “the love song” on their upcoming five-track debut EP. The vocalist adds, “There’s another song that we wrote after Austria; it’s more about open fields and chilling.” He’s talking about one called “Kawaii,” which Koul tells us is more about “autumn in Japan.” The guitarist adds, “I’m influenced by travel, aromas, food and that sort of stuff.”

That explains why they’ve chosen working titles like “Mango Duet” and “Yo” for their songs. But he’s not giving any definite answers as to whether this EP stays in the same frenetic realm of their post hardcore/ math rock and metal influenced debut single “Dance Jane Dance,” which released in 2014. It’s been their claim to fame, but Koul talks like an old soul when he says they’ve matured. He says, “It’s uplifting rock music. It’s not a metal album. Just because metalheads are listening to us, doesn’t mean we’d cater to them.” While Verma says he’s not bringing out any of his growls on the EP, Koul says he’s been listening to everything from Japanese jazz fusion to experimental hip-hop.

The band, who came together in 2013 and extends to covocalist Shagun Trisal, keyboardist Reuben Das, bassist Rangarajan Venkatraman and drummer Reet Mukherjee, have been working on an EP since 2014. Koul, who writes most of the material and jams on it with Mukherjee before letting the rest of the band add inputs, scrapped material worth two albums. They’re now heading into the studio to record with producer-guitarist Keshav Dhar, who is also mixing and mastering the yet-to-betitled EP.