Quick Take: Demonstealer aka Sahil Makhija

(from left) Former Demonic Resurrection guitarist Daniel Rego with Sahil Makhija. Photo: Prashin Jagger

What’s the update on the new Demonic Resurrec­tion album?

I can tell you that Candle­light Records will release it worldwide [UK record label which also released DR’s previous album, The Return To Darkness, in 2010] and Universal Music will release it in India, by June or later. The album has about eight to nine songs, which has generally been the length of all our albums.

Most bands like to take time off from playing live and com­pletely concentrate on the album. But DR juggles both gigs and recordings.

We’re always open to tours. The problem is, in India, you only get calls to play live two weeks before the show. Plus, we’re not all full-time musicians so people take a week off and it makes life easier to record parts for an album.

This month, you also finish crowdfunding for your cooking show Headbanger’s Kitchen, which collected over Rs 2,50,000. Were you nervous when you started the campaign?

I was nervous because it was Headbanger’s Kitchen and not Demonic Resurrection. It was not my main project. But we hit the target amount of funds with­in a month. Making the episodes aren’t very time consuming, so we’re looking at 12 episodes. I also want to shoot more of the Uncooked series, where artists are just interviewed, and make a mini series out of it. One thing’s for sure, there are no repeats in the artists I cook for.

Reptilian Death was supposed to perform at Hammerfest in the UK this month. Why was it called off?

The main reason was that we needed to click with other promoters. So the shows surrounding the festival didn’t work out. It would leave us in financial ruin if we went to play just one show. It’s a tall order, especially for Reptilian Death, to recover that money.

This article appeared in the March 2014 issue of ROLLING STONE India.