Listening to the 43-minute self-titled new album from post-metal, doom, sludge masters Dirge is like going on an epic journey of sorrow, loss and hope. The album and its stellar cover art takes you back to the days of Swedish and Norwegian metal heavyweights that released concept albums with their own mythos and intrigue. All the songs run much longer than the usual 4-5 minute length we have come to expect today. The four-track album is getting rave reviews from international webzines like The Sleeping Shaman, GBHBL, Echoes And Dust. The melancholic Hollow, and the atmospheric music video accompanying it are eerily cinematic, to say the least.
This quintet comprises Ashish Dharkar and Varun Patil on guitars, Harshad Bhagwat on bass, Tabish Khidir on vocals and Aryaman Chatterji on drums. In the midst of their six-city India tour, Dirge will be doing an audio-visual set at Immersive Sounds Vol. 1 where The Earth Below and Gutslit are also playing. Says Varun, “Mumbai is a hometown show, so we are really glad to be sharing the stage with the finest, Gutslit & The Earth Below from the city.” They have already completed the Chennai, Bangalore and Hyderabad leg.
On Sunday, Dirge will be joined for an audio-visual spectacle by their producer Apurv Agrawal on the synths, so you can expect this one to be a really heavy night. Adds Tabish, “We are really looking forward to Gutslit’s first show as a five-piece act in 15 years in the city and The Earth Below’s debut Mumbai show. We hope everyone who turns up has a great time and have just as much fun as we will have on stage performing for them.”
Says Ashish, “We had a lot of fun sharing the stage with our friends from The Earth Below (where I'm also on guitar), Maneating Orchid, Moral Putrefaction and Megadrone. Apart from the Mumbai show on 16th April (Antisocial), we’re playing Delhi on 21st April (Comely – Green Park) followed by Pune on 30th April (FREQ Superclub, Koregaon Park).”
In the past, they have played with metal acts Bevar Sea, Megadrone and Djinn & Miskatonic at Spectral Decay, the Bangalore Open Air pre-party along with DJinn & Miskatonic, The Grim Mage, and Witchdoctor, Delhi Antisocial as a part of Domination Deathfest with Primitiv, Shepherd, Wintergate & Fragarak which was “the most memorable” show for the members.
Their music is often described as a blend of different metal sub-genres: doom, sludge, post-metal. Ask them how they make it work, and Harshad says, “Honestly, there's no such formula or a fixed approach when it comes to composing or combining genres when we write. It's always been a very natural process for us and that's how we have always liked it. All our influences have played a huge part in our songwriting, consciously or unconsciously and we would love to keep it the same.”
The group sat down with FPJ and broke down the idea behind each track:
1. Condemned
The frustration of being helpless forms the foundation of this song. We are surrounded by agents of hate, regression or oppression, always trying to reap benefit from suffering. The unwritten laws of today’s society have been designed to wring the innocence out of humankind. To transcend and evolve out of this situation seems like an impossibility. The song speaks about this feeling of hopelessness that haunts us. It takes the listener on an introspective journey through “the rings of crises” by accepting the futility of hope.
2. Malignant
Deep within our mind, is a part of our personality which is evil in nature. It is an amalgamation of a survival instinct and malicious greed. This malignant trait makes one capable of hurting anyone. Once it is triggered a sense of pure malice takes over, dissolving guilt in itself. This song is an embodiment of this hidden trait, that all of us possess. Pathological lies spoken for selfish reasons are a prime example of this malignant trait. A pathological liar will weave a web of lies which in turn will end up entangling him/herself. The criminality of the lies may vary for each person, but it’s the same instinct that makes anyone lie. On accepting the futility of hope in the first layer, the listener is reconciled with their inner malignancy in this second song/layer of “the rings of crises”.
3. Grief
This song talks about losing someone extremely close to you, someone you can't imagine a life without. It leads to a deep wound which never heals and makes you feel entirely numb and shatters you from within. The sorrow we experience in such times is endlessly vast like an ocean. Like Nick Cave said, “Grief occupies the core of our being and extends through our fingers to the limits of the universe. If we love, we grieve.”
4. Hollow
As the last song, Hollow ties the entire album together. The first half of the song speaks about situations that are deeply terrifying. It talks about a state of mind in which one is completely drowning in fear. The second half of the song is a catharsis. It is the actualisation of the fact that fear is nothing but a tool that shapes us. It makes the listener realise that without the negative agents in our life, it would be impossible to realise the positive. Hollow ends with a feeling of relief.
The music video for Hollow is a black-and-white visual treat. It's uncommon to see such elaborate videos by Indian metal bands today.
Glad you liked it! Since the time we were writing this album, we wanted to make a music video for the song Hollow. Filmmaker Smriti Thakur who's a close friend of ours, worked on it. It was such an incredible experience overall. The video was a total DIY process right from the beginning (getting the costume ready, scouting for locations and working with limited production funds). Smriti single-handedly shot the entire video and the person you see in the video (in the indoor sections) are Ashish and Varun themselves.
The entire video has been shot in Mumbai and Pune. We covered a lot of abandoned areas in and around the city with old ruins and water bodies, with the beach sections shot in Mumbai. The whole idea was to make the most with the resources we have and capture the essence of the number without any compromises. We are satisfied with how it all came together in the end
Dirge album cover art |
How did the cover art by artist Gaurav Basu aka Acid Toad develop from the concept?
We have been working with Gaurav Basu since the time we started planning pre-production for our first album back in 2017. Working with him so closely on Ah Puch (2018 album named after a Mayan god) made it much easier for us to share this concept in-depth and come up with the ideas and the artwork.
We went ahead with the same process as the first album, discussed and started working on the initial rough sketch right from the time the songs were being worked on. All of this turned out to be exactly the way we had envisioned. It's a real pleasure to have someone understand the concept behind the album so well. Seeing Gaurav bring our vision to life with such dedication and precision was a great experience, to say the least.
What are some of the members' main musical influences, both within and outside of the metal genre?
It's given that we listen to a lot of heavy music as a band and individuals but all of us have a very varied taste when it comes to music outside of metal. But to put it in brief, most of our tastes and influences range within shoegaze, hardcore, alternative metal, progressive rock, darkwave, synthwave, indian classical, world music and a lot of motion picture soundtracks.
