“A missive to all you metal bands, the world is totally over the rock thing. Rock is deader than it’s ever been.” – Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins.
When a rock show is going on, A major part of our society raise the question that why are they screaming? But They will never know that the sound is coming from soul. The loudness and the amplified distortion is the outcome of accumulated emotion. Though they are often criticized, the genre is very much acceptable to the young generation. In India Nicotine is one of the top band who bears the responsibility. They are the Pioneers of Metal music in Central India. They have the current line-up consists of Digvijay Bhonsale on Lead Vocals/Guitars, Anniruddha Gokhale on Lead Guitars/Backing Vocals, Anuj Malkapurkar on Bass, and Shaleen Vyas on Drums.
We want to share their success story. Here is the extract of the interview with Nicotine.
Why is it called Nicotine?
No strong reason, but the credit goes to Aniruddha for this, he really liked the name.
Motivation and Challenges to form your band?
When we started out in December 2016 and played our first gig there were a lot of people associated with the band. There were different rhythm guitarists, backing vocalists and drummers in the initial gigs, but the 4 piece band that we are now, always felt right, and the band played most of its gigs with this lineup – Digvijay Bhonsale as the Lead Vocals, Rhythm Guitarist and Lyricist, Aniruddha as the Lead Guitarist and the Backing Vocalist, Anuj as the bass player and Shaleen as the Drummer. The 4 of us together played for the very first time at Campus Rock Idols in 2007, and ever since 2008, the line-up has been the same, except for the times when one or the other members were unavailable. The chemistry between all of us never made it feel like a struggle.
Is it a Indian version of the Tokyo based band Nicotine founded in 1993?
No, not at all. We’re a Metal band, and they’re Punk. When we named the band, we weren’t aware of this, but we later found out that there’s also a Punk Rock band from Japan named Nicotine.
How was your experience to introduce Metal music to Central India?
When we initially started playing, there wasn’t what you would call a ‘Rock or a Metal scene’ in Indore. The good thing was that we were all in different colleges, and there were a lot of college competitions in Indore, Bhopal, Nagpur, Jabalpur etc. We would go and participate in these, and play all sorts of stuff, from Punk Rock, Classic Rock, Hard Rock, and Metal. So when we started playing more of our originals they had a distinctive Metal sound, and we were tagged as a Metal band, and our setlist also included cover songs of bands like Metallica, Megadeth, Rage Against The Machine, Iron Maiden, Pantera, etc. We also used to go out of the state, we played gigs in Jaipur, Nagpur, Chandigarh etc. But when we were the runners up at the Campus Rock Idols’ 5th Edition (Central Zone), and played at Pune, we gained a lot of attention in the National Rock/Metal scene because of the region from where we came.
According to you which one is your best production?
In 2010, we released 2 of our original songs as demos – ‘Odium’ & ‘Rein of Fire’ both topped the local Indian Rock and Metal charts on Myspace.com. The best is yet to come.
How will you describe your competition with Zero Gravity?
They’re like family. We have seen them grow. They have opened many gigs for us a lot of times. Our bass player ‘Anuj’ founded and plays for Zero Gravity. We wish them all the best. There’s no competition between us. We’ve played a lot of gigs together, and we’ll continue to do that in the future.
Any inspirational guideline for upcoming Rock/Metal bands?
Just play, find people who are interested in playing music that you like. Stick with them, go out and play as many gigs and competitions as you can.
There’s no harm in playing covers, it’s actually good fun but make your own original songs is very important, that is what really counts and it will set you apart from the rest.
What about the next Project ?
We’re currently planning to record and release a 5-Track EP, as soon as we can.
It will include or original songs – ‘Odium’, ‘Rein of Fire’, ‘Blood Rain’, ‘Lucid Lies’, and one more original song that we are currently working on. We just hope that it gets done before we turn 10 in December ’16.
Your favourite inspirational one-liner?
No one liners, but one thing we all should to do is just keep going, not quit, and try to make ourselves better with time. That’s what we as a band stand for.
You can check out their latest songs. Better you drop yourself at their next live performance and get high. Believe us, this ‘Nicotine’ is not at all injurious to health.
