Hear Pacifist’s Headstrong New Songs ‘Against The Tide’ and ‘Resolve’

Mumbai post-hardcore act Pacifist raise their voice for indomitable will and fighting the good fight with their latest singles “Against The Tide” and “Resolve,” which released in February and March respectively.

The follow-up to their powerful debut EP Greyscale Dreams (2019), Pacifist vocalist Sidharth Raveendran says the vocals and lyrics came in last for these new tracks. “I was the most underconfident and had a bit of a rough time on the personal front in the last year. So the sense of achievement in finishing these songs, bringing them to life and finally putting them out there has been a very, very redeeming experience,” he says.

Bringing together wiry guitar work from Apurv Agrawal and Ashish Dharkar, fist-tight basslines from Utkarsh Jaiswal and the first recorded material from drummer Sood, “Against The Tide” is impassioned in its pace while “Resolve” slams it home, hauled to the end with a chaotic breakdown. Raveendran says their sonic influences come through stronger than ever before. The vocalist adds, “’Post-hardcore’ can be a lot of things, and I think that wide palette is what drew us towards it in the first place.”

Recorded in November 2019, Sood recalls that the band tracked each song in the same room at Island City Studios in Mumbai. “Some solos and amp-noises (because we love noise) were recorded later at a session at Blue Cassette Studios,” he adds.

“Against The Tide” is complemented by visuals put together by filmmaker Rana Ghose (also founder of artist agency REProduce Artists), repurposing black and white footage from a documentary called Leviathan with text and animation by visual designer Anusha Menon. Raveendran says of the song, “‘Against The Tide’ had this grander-than-life aspect to it, especially with the crescendo towards the end. It felt melancholic, but had an undercurrent of strong, positive hardcore energy, a message of hope.”

Pacifist penned a fist-pumping song for the Indian independent music community with “Resolve,” featuring clips gathered from their previous gigs, including a set at Magnetic Fields Festival in Rajasthan in 2019. “I feel like the two songs have this weird twin-nature to them, a duality of sorts. One looking inwards, the other looking outwards,” Raveendran says.

The band are presently on tour with Pune-based instrumental/prog band Celestial Teapot, with stops in Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Guwahati. Sood says, “Sometime in late 2020, Ashwin Naidu (the drummer of Celestial Teapot) contacted me. He was a fan of our band, and honestly so was I of his band. In hindsight, his call aligned perfectly with Pacifist’s release schedule, so you could call the tour pretty serendipitous.”

While a Mumbai homecoming show will be planned (it was originally the tour kickoff date on March 3rd), Pacifist’s members will settle back in the city and aim to write more after the tour. “The goal is a full length, and we’re gunning for it,” Raveendran says.

Watch the video for “Resolve” below. Buy/stream the songs here.