New Delhi’s Warwan Go Visual

New Delhi metallers Warwan in a still from their video ‘Toofan’. Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Even though guitarist Kushagra Nautiyal is dishing about the New Delhi’s metal listenership ””not paying entry fees, not buying music and too few ardent supporters””he’s still bullish about his band Warwan’s prospects. He says, “I wanted to make it more marketable and cool. A lot of bands try too hard””like Sanskrit lyrics. It’s quite complicated and logon ko samajh mein nahi aata (people don’t understand it).”

Nautiyal and vocalist Aditya Paul started out in late 2015 with “Main Hoon Doga,” a djent tribute penned to Raj Comics’ superhero Doga, one that drew tens of thousands of hits before it was hit by a surprise copyright claim by Raj Comics. While cynical, Nautiyal and the band geared up to write and release their own music, recruiting producer Karan Singh Braria as their second guitarist, drummer Samarth Trehan and bassist Samir Leonard, with one regular collaborator including drummer Udit Mahar from rockers Nigambodh. With three videos out between 2016 and 2017, Warwan are playing to their strengths now”” strong video content that presents Hindi vocal-led metal that recalls the best in modern prog and djent””from Periphery (“Zanjeer” and the hilarious cop caper “Toofan”) to Tesseract (“Nishan”). They’re all part of their upcoming 11-track full-length album Chakra, which will include bi-monthly releases from the band through music videos and lyric videos up to September. Nautiyal says with a laugh, “I’ll leak everything now if I want to. What we’re doing is getting all the videos up””that’s eight videos and three lyric videos and then we’ll have the physical CDs, but a limited number, because nobody buys it. We’re still deciding, it’s not confined.”

And it’s all more or less in-house””with help from director of photography Gavvy Basnet, the band has all the audio done at guitarist Braria’s Destiny Studios. Braria is also in charge of editing and uploading their videos.

Braria and Nautiyal helm the songwriting, feeding off each other’s varied influences. Nautiyal says the songs on Chakra range from all-out djent chaos to dubstep and death metal, as well as calmer, weighty punches like “Samay,” which will be their next single and music video. “It has no growls. It’s pretty post-rock-ish. It’s less technical,” Nautiyal says. There’s a loose emotional thread tying together all the songs, but for now, Warwan is all about powering ahead in whatever way possible. Nautiyal says, “We’re trying to push metal to the mainstream. We’ve got plenty of hatred and it’s perfectly all right. Although the veterans might say, ”˜You’re playing and singing in Hindi, this is bullshit,’ we’ve kept the positive responses with us.”

Watch the video for “Toofan”