Scribe: Analyze This

After the initial bumpiness, Vishwesh is now blazing a trail for younger Tam-Brahm metal aspirants to follow. “In my family, at least, that I’ve done this and been successful at it has made it easier for the next generation to think about music and filmmaking. And I’ve met a lot of cool Tam-Brahm parents who’ve come to me for advice on how they should help their kids out with their music,” he chuckles.

Scribe’s first EP Have Hard, Will Core was part of the five-way split CD Fine Tuned Disasters released by Sahil Makhija on Demonstealer Records in 2006, and that was when the band first came to be noticed by people outside Mumbai. Appearances at the Great Indian Rock Festival and Independence Rock followed, which despite promoter Farhad Wadia’s misgivings about metal, the band actually won. Confect followed in 2008. At a time when bands could still flog CDs for profits, Scribe decided to give away their album for free, a move that cemented their indie cred and significantly broadened their fan base. But Confect also saw a trend creeping in that would mark all their releases after ”“ the band began liberally sprinkling their music with pop culture references and in-jokes. On Confect, “Analyze This” opened with a generous chunk of dialogue from The Matrix; “Ate a Banana” closed with a riff rehashed from “Roop Suhana Lagta Hai” drawn from Tamil movie Gentleman. Add to that the atmospheric flourishes brought in by Akshay, and Scribe was moving towards a new sound, one that gained form and substance on their second defining full-length album Mark of Teja. Bollywood was coming to the Indian metal scene.

Despite their very different personalities and musical tastes, one unlikely factor bound the members of Scribe together ”“ a deep and abiding love for the over-the-top camp of Nineties Bollywood. “The first time I ever entered Prashant’s room, I saw that he had a wall full of VCDs, of everything from Alien vs Predator to Salakhain 2, which I didn’t even know was there. I mean, he had films like Baap Numbari Beta Dus Numbari, which was a film that no one had seen, but I’d seen it and loved it! It’s rare to find four other guys who love a lot of these stupid things that you’d think no one else had seen,” says Vishwesh.

Mark of Teja, says Akshay, was born during one of the many TV-watching sessions between soundchecks and gigs. “We watched some TV and realized that all the villains we saw on TV from the Nineties had peculiar traits ”“ they were all crazy looking, they have these tics and have these habits they can’t get rid of. We saw a lot of us in those idiots and we thought, ”˜What if each one of us is a bad guy?’ We grew up in the Nineties where all the super-villains were businessmen or politicians, so we thought, ”˜Why not both?’

But Mark of Teja touched on this only lightly. Using Hindi pop culture as a base, with ladlefuls of references from movies like Andaz Apna Apna, it built a complicated saga around five evil businessmen who clone themselves but find that for every clone produced, there’s another without a conscience and”¦ never mind, just think of a story arc where Andaz Apna Apna meets The Terminator. It’s another thing that the story was lost in the cryptic CD booklet that the band released, with no lyrics for the songs. Akshay admits that much of the telling may have been lost in translation. “But that’s exactly why we kept everything separate. We understand that most people now download the music and it doesn’t always come with CD art or booklets. We wanted it to be an experience however you listened to it, so of course, if you decipher the story, you’re adding to the experience, but if you don’t, you’re not losing out,” says Akshay. Mark of Teja bagged four of the top honours at the first-ever Rolling Stone Metal Awards in 2010 and, even more surprisingly, swept the more mainstream Jack Daniel’s Annual Rock Awards in 2011, taking home five awards, including the coveted Best Band trophy, a feat that’s yet unmatched by any metal band since.

Mark of Teja was also the proving ground for Vishwesh’s vocal histrionics, establishing him as one of the country’s most versatile vocalists. What was seen in flashes on earlier albums, morphed into a schooling in what one talented person could do with a single voice ”“ sample the last song on Teja, “Judge Bread” where Vishwesh plays accused, defendant and judge in a style that only perhaps King Diamond has been able to pull off, except King Diamond wasn’t playing hardcore.

“What Scribe actually represents, for me, is the freedom to do absolutely whatever we want. The five us are very different musically, so a lot of times we don’t know where things are going to. It’s a collection of five imbeciles and their influences, inspirations, dreams and eccentricities that becomes one schizophrenic piece of music,” says Prashant. That freedom means that the band are completely comfortable in their skin, which is what is communicated to the audiences at their shows as well. “Over time, we shed that skin where we wanted to be someone else, and instead became comfortable with who we are,” says Akshay. “The reason we all connect the way we do, is because we’re all, in the end, naked in front of each other.” He pauses, awkwardly. “Correction, not naked physically, but mentally,” he says a little sheepishly. That’s probably the keystone to Scribe’s popularity ”“ that just for a short while, everybody belongs. It’s okay to be short/fat/loud, it’s okay to be an advertising exec or a school student, it’s okay that the only metal band you know is Metallica; it’s okay that you like Bollywood music, and it’s okay to just be you. There’s no judge and jury at a Scribe show, there’s just the need to move “to Scribe’s Bollywood dance-masti music,” says Vaas.

This article appeared in the June 2013 edition of Rolling Stone India