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First of all - who are Rat King and why was it formed?
Rat King is me and Murari. I was the drummer for a band called Fall of Reason and he was the guitarist/vocalist in a band called Maelstrom. We used to gig together a lot, so I eventually started playing drums for Maelstrom when their drummer split. So he'd come over to my place and we'd rehearse and write new material for Maelstrom. One of those songs - which would later end up as the title song on the album - was what really triggered the whole project. It was a platform for us to really go crazy creatively, without trying to pigeonhole ourselves into any single genre.
What are your main influences?
Music and cinema. Collectively, we listen to a plethora of music that sometimes contradict each other. But we always have some kind of a common ground and that keeps us from having too many creative conflicts. Musicians like Scott Walker, John Zorn, Greg Anderson. We're also huge film buffs. David Lynch was always the most preferred topic of discussion at my place. We'd smoke up and listen to Ennio Morricone or Angelo Badalamenti scores and hear things that we hadn't heard earlier and get inspired to do something similar with our music.
How would you describe your music?
I really don't know, man. We don't really care about categorizing our music and it cracks me up when people try to trace back to our influences and label our music and proceed to get it wrong :D. But for the mere convenience of putting it along side something else, we call it experimental. Which is again way too ambiguous. For me, Rat King is the perfect representation of the diverse array of music we listen to. If you listen intently you'll hear elements of ambient, classical, world music, industrial, metal, neo-folk and even jazz.
Your debut album was a concept album named 'The Plague of Hamelin'. That statement in itself poses two questions; why a "concept album" and why pick "The Plague of Hamelin" as the concept?
We wrote the whole album like a soundtrack to a non-existent movie. It wasn't a conscious decision to do a concept album. We were trying to figure out a band name and we came across an article about the Rat King sightings in Germany and we thought it was pretty cool. I think we were listening to the title song and it had a kind of hypnotizing effect on us, almost like an evocation (maybe it was the weed, who knows :D). So we tied up the concept behind the band name to the Grimm brothers' "Pied Piper of Hamelin" and made it into a low budget b-grade kaiju movie soundtrack called "The Plague of Hamelin".
The release got excellent ratings from our webzine, but what do you think of the release yourself?
Oh man! We're completely psyched about that. 90/100! That's more than I ever got in school, haha! I like the album, ofcourse, and I would like everyone to listen to it.
What can people who blindly buy/accidentally download the release expect of it?
They can expect to hear something they've never heard before and frankly never thought existed. "ZOMG! They have bands in India?!" is the general reaction we receive and we're making good use of that novelty value by coning the western world into listening to our music!
What do you consider to be the best track on the release, and why?
That's a tough one. As far as whacky compositions go, Metamorphosis I and II are my personal favorites. But for someone who's checking out the band for the first time, I'd recommend the title track. I think it sums up the band and the concept behind the album pretty well.
I couldn't find much information about live performances. Is Rat King as well a live project? Is it hard for bands to find live gigs over there?
We'd love to do a full live production of the album, but it poses a major technical and financial predicament, so as of now Rat King is just a studio project. Bands here do have a hard time getting gigs, but it's not for the lack of organizers or venues. The bands suck. Most of them, anyway.
India isn't known at all for its alternative scene. Is there any scene in India? What are your views on it?
What you need to know about us is that we're a country obsessed with the idea of social security. You won't find musicians here. What you will find though, are IT employees and college graduates who have picked up the guitar out of boredom or want of getting laid and are waiting to abandon it at the prospect of a better job or a better living. So naturally, none of the bands stick around long enough to make any mark. There are exceptions ofcourse, but only a handful and not enough to be actually considered a scene.
What are - next to music - your other passions in life?
Cinema. Walter Pater said that "all art aspires towards the condition of music", but the way I see it, there isn't a more sensorially complete form of expression than cinema. I'm always watching films and getting inspired to convey those artistic ideas in my chosen form of expression, which is music.
What can we expect of Rat King in the near future?
You can expect another album pretty soon. We're working on another concept album and we have a few songs already. But it's still in the preproduction stage where we plot out the concept to every last detail and then start working on the songs. We're pretty excited about it. It's quite a mindfuck, haha!
The end of the interview lays here. Got any final words?
Yes! If you're reading this and you run a label, SIGN US UP! Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to listen to our album. And lots of love to Gerardo and everyone here at Industialzed Metal.
Interview by: Gerardo, answered by Deepak - December 2008
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