Interview (Part I): Scribe

Mumbai hardcore act Scribe’s sophomore full-length effort Mark of Teja is already a contender for our album of the year. The fictional story of a 17th century industrialist is told via the most compelling set of metal arrangements we’ve heard all year. We spend some quality time with the band, tearing the album apart piece-by-piece and figuring out what makes India’s most ingenious metal act tick. This is part one of a two part interview.

The band is practicing their song ‘I Love You Pav Bhaji’, which is mostly about how to make pav bhaji, and I’m sitting next to an amp on the verge of death-by-distortion, and somehow, this is far superior to a concert experience. We’re in a compact, carpeted jam room in Andheri, with what looks like ‘WICKED’ graffitied onto purple walls, and a winding spiral staircase that’s tightly packed into the building. Right outside, there’s a few customary friends/groupies/band-aides enjoying some mountain cabbage, with a constant light haze above them. Scribe had just released their second full-length album Mark Of Teja (check out our review).

Frontman Vishwesh Krishnamoorthy fills us in about the story behind their concept album, Street Fighter, eyeballs, and more (so stay tuned for part two).

“The story on the other hand, is a whole other idea, that is part of the album. An album is more than just the music, it’s also like a whole package that you put out. So it’s kind of, taking more creative liberty instead of putting lyrics and images that are seemingly meaningful or seemingly meaningless or whatever. Instead of that we did a little more creative work – Pra (Prashant Shah, guitarist) is a graphic artist, I’m a writer, Vaas (Srinivas Sunderrajan, bassist) is a film maker, Akshay is (Akshay Raj, guitarist) a background score artist and we’re all heavily inspired by cinema. So we just attempted this as something different we wanted to do, there is a story.”

Tell us the story.
In the 17th century, there used to be an entrepreneur who owned most of the world and its inhabitants. His name was Singhania. His company was called Singhania and Singhania industries. They were at the forefront of everything from rat-traps to biological weaponry. He named his company Singhania and Singhania industries because as a human, you have the repertoire to create anything – therefore, industry. But what is the pinnacle of that? The pinnacle of that is when you are able to manufacture a human being out of a machine. So he named his company that to remind him of his ultimate goal. He finds a way of doing this, he finds an equation for a cloning engine, but there were a lot of things that were flawed with it.

The idea of the story is that none of this is documented anywhere, because he made it a myth. He was most aware of the flaws, but he knew that he had to do this because this is what his purpose is in life. That’s why he did this, but he knew a lot of things could go wrong, that all of this could collapse. For doing this, he needed the help of four other industrialists – Jindal, Jaitley, Chopra and Malhotra. And all of these characters are – we are reincarnations of these people. The whole faction that worked on the experiment mysteriously disappeared. You don’t know what happened after that. There was chaos in the world because the experiment had three major problems – a) you can’t shut it down because it’s a self multiplying code, b) each clone is just a clone, it’s not born with any intent or conscience. So it will have a purpose, it will procure it one way or another, whether it leads to killing, or stealing or whatever.

The whole world was in chaos, we had to reboot everything. Meanwhile there was Colonel Hones – our producer, he’s in the story too. Col Hones was the head of security for Singhania & Singhania Industries. He was closely associated with the project even though he didn’t have as much detail as the rest of them. He had led the resistance against the clones. He used to dress up as a vigilante. He would be out in the streets, sneaking in the shadows capturing the clones and extracting their eyeballs. And over time, he couldn’t make out the difference between a human being and a clone. So he became a mass murderer, he had psychopathic tendencies and he would just relentlessly kill people. He’s been contained at Singhania Memorial Infirmary ever since, and he writes accounts of Teja, but all in a language known only to him. Teja is the lack of conscience, the evil, the source of evil.

And the Andaaz Apna Apna reference?
He used to dress up as a vigilante, and he would extract eyeballs – so he was Crime Master Gogo. Aankhen nikaalke gotiyan khelunga. So we’re taking Teja as a concept, as an idea forward, as storytellers as well. Because we’re musicians and also storytellers.

Your songs have really interesting titles. What’s the story behind them?
Each song has its own story behind it. Pick your favorite one, or pick one at random. I like ‘Street Archana v/s Vice Versha’. It’s like a homage to gaming, to Street Fighter. We’ve been playing that since we were kids. The reason we used chick players is because there are at least four female fans that Scribe has. So this is kind of like a tribute to them, not a tribute but like, we acknowledge them. There are like four girls for sure we know, who really like Scribe, and know our lyrics, like really ardent fans. So we just conjured two Street Fighter players – Street Archana and Vice Versha.

And ‘I Love You Pav Bhaji’ is because you all love pav bhaji?
This is something Prashant came up with. He really likes pav bhaji. There was a time when he was really hungry and that’s all he wanted to have, so we drove – and took a long time to get there. He knew what he was gonna order so he went to the menu and he looked at it and he found it and he said ‘I love you pav bhaji’. We asked him if you were granted one wish, anything at all, what would you ask for? He said he wished it would rain pav bhaji, and then he could eat it like this <mouth open, grabbing at the air>.

Every title was something that happened.

What about ‘Kamla’s Back’?
‘Kamla’s Back’ is a – I’d better check with Prashant, he was very upset when we named it that.

Prashant: It’s about a cat, a cat called Kamla, and it came back. For the first time, I actually remember some of the lyrics of the song, it was a very big feat on his (VK’s) part because normally his lyrics are very indecipherable and abstract – which we like – but this time there is stuff that I can stick onto, I can latch on to and recall it. There’s a whole other reason why they called the cat Kamla, let’s not get into that right now.

Vishwesh: No no see, what is a Kamla? Kamla is a domestic name. They are the people who hold your life together. The peons, the people who deliver stuff, the courier guy, these guys are really running your life. One of these guys stop working then what do you do? Like, the cabbies. So Kamla is not a person, but an idea. There’s also the cat’s significance in the Singhania story, you’ll see it in the forthcoming story.

Album three, how is that going?
We are sitting on some new material. We’re letting it bake. It’s baking. While we’re eating this one.

In part two of the interview, Scribe talk about their songwriting process, the fashioning of a fabulous chair, opening for Lamb Of God, getting flashed, and growing up on a lot of Bollywood.