Thrash Metallers Spithope Get Gnarly on Debut EP ‘Care is Fiction, Fiction is Reality’

After first forming in New Delhi in 2015 and then altering their lineup two years later at Mumbai’s True School of Music, thrash metallers Spithope are now out with their debut five-track EP Care is Fiction, Fiction is Reality.

The band – comprising vocalist Chitransh Yadav, keyboardist Kush Asher, bassist Ishaan Kochhar, drummer Abhiluv Chandel and guitarists Aakaash Rawat and Manvendra Rawat – began work on the EP in 2017. The group says, “The songs were written and then re-written. Once we finally had what we wanted to share with the world, the process of recording and putting together our parts followed.”

Care is Fiction, Fiction is Reality is opens with the stomping “Don’t Teach Me” before we hear the furious “Not My Religion.” The record then moves onto the experimental “Talab” after which the prog offering “963” comes on. The EP closes with the soaring “Lost Love.” The band says, “We wrote most of the EP as a bunch of rebellious teenagers and young adults.” The songs feature raging guitar riffs and solos, slamming drum grooves, growls and more.

Lyrically, the group focuses on issues one faces during their formative years such as addiction, falling out of love, the way society can shape an individual and more. “The EP as a whole is based on the idea that the reality we think we live in, is a sum of everything we have been told about it. If we see them for what they truly are, our problems present themselves along with their solutions,” says the band.

Spithope recorded the EP from their respective homes due to the lockdown while some of the vocal parts were tracked at studios in New Delhi and Mumbai. The band produced Care is Fiction, Fiction is Reality themselves and sound engineer Gunjan Soral from Japipur’s Underroot Studios mixed and mastered it.

Going forward the band explains that they’ve written new music with a slight tweak to their sound from what they offered on the record. “You could say our new songs are more towards the ‘progressive’ side, with lyrics that are even more provocative, but with the same aggression as what you hear in this EP,” says the band. Spithope have also set up a crowdfunding campaign with online platform Skillbox to help recover costs from putting together and releasing the EP. They say, “Our aim is to push genre boundaries to the extent that they don’t exist anymore. We love stretching our audience’s brains and hope to always give them something to think about.”

Stream ‘Care is Fiction, Fiction is Reality’ on Spotify below and on other platforms.