interview med RECTIFIED SPIRIT
What is the name of your band? RECTIFIED SPIRIT
Name of the band-members?
Rainjong Lepcha
Samudragupta Dutta
Dishankan Baruah
Himangshu Borah
Nishant Hagjer
Where did you grow up? Everyone Grew up in our Hometown Guwahati, that is the Capital City of the State of Assam, India
How old are you? The Band is almost 8 years old
When did you start your band? We started the Band in the Year 2005
Who started the band? The band’s founder member and guitarist Samudragupta Dutta started the band. Formed in August 2005, the band started performing in various gigs of the active metal circuit of their hometown. However, after a few years of being active in the circuit, some of the band members left the band due to various individual engagements, from 2009 onwards. Thereafter, founder member and Guitarist Samudragupta Dutta and long term bassist Himangshu Borah reformed the band again in the year 2011 with guitarist and long term friend of both, Imtiyaz Alam. With newly associated vocalist Rainjong Lepcha and drummer Nishant Hagjer, the band started performing again in the active metal circuit of their hometown. But due to sudden departure of their friend Imtiyaz Alam, the band was on a search for their 2nd Guitarist. However, due to the work in respect of their Debut Album, which was in progress and the inability to immediately find a replacement for the 2nd Guitarist’s slot, the Band decided to record its Debut Album as a 4 piece outfit. However, upon completion of the Album, the Band embarked on a super quick recruiting spree for its 2nd Guitarist and finally recruited Guitarist Dishankan Barua and with this new line up, the band released their Debut Album
Where have you played 2012/2013? We released their Debut Album with an Album Launch Gig on 28th December, 2012, where we played Brand New Tracks from our Debut Album and was able to sell of tons of CDs on a single night. Recently we did a gig on 23rd June at the Rolling Stone Metal Awards, 2013 held in Blue Frog, Mumbai where we were nominated in 3 categories of the Awards namely Best Vocals, Best Bassist and Best Drummer. We had the blast of our lives playing at the Awards… Though a little sorry to disappoint our fans for not winning....But the crowd was mind-blowing !! Being made to play along side biggies like Scribe and Devoid was just amazing....Greatest feeling of the Night: When the Mumbai Crowd got into a Crazy Circle Pit while grooving to songs from this pretty Obscure band called Rectified Spirit they had'nt heard before !! We have nothing else to say except A big thanks To Mumbai and to our lovely Hometown Guwahati for believing in us all this while
Where can people see you? People can have a look at the band and listen to its songs, videos and other materials in the Following Sites INCLUDING FULL ALBUM STREAMING at BANDCAMP
https://www.facebook.com/Rectified.Spirit.Official
https://soundcloud.com/rectified-spirit
http://rectifiedspiritofficial.bandcamp.com/
Do you have a web-site? We don’t have website at the moment.. but will be having one very shortly, till then people can refer to the PAGES mentioned above
What is the name of your best song? We would not like to term any one of our songs as the best song…as all of them are special to us for one reason or the other… But there is one song that is kind of Representative of all the Myriad of influences that the band has had over the years… that kind of represents the band’s over all style of Approach towards music making. People can have a look at the video of the song here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl--q4ohEEg
Who plays what?
Rainjong Lepcha - Vocals
Samudragupta Dutta - Guitars
Dishankan Baruah - Guitars
Himangshu Borah – Bass Guitars
Nishant Hagjer - Drums
What kind of music are you into? The band takes influences from all the different genres of heavy metal and is in the perennial cycle of evolving their individual style with an absolutely liberal approach and without any genre restrictions. Band Influences rage from :
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Black Deep Purple, Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Saxon, Metallica, Megadeth, Pantera, Testament, Annihilator, Kreator, Dream Theater, Symphony X, Inflames, Periphery, Born of Osiris, Slipknot, Protest The Hero, Circus Maximus, Messhuggah, Necrophagist
There is one Primary Idea associated with the band’s approach towards music making that we want to form part of the perception about us … To kind of simplify this whole idea in order to understand it better…let’s say that, if we have been influenced by a varied kind of METAL music styles…we would not deliberately and hypocritically stop ourselves from getting inspired by all of them. We would definitely let all those styles flow into our creative consciousnesses, no matter how different they may be from each other.. and won’t say things like “how can we play this Riff coz we are not Death Metal!! How can we play this beat as we are Technical Thrash Metal that, how do we do that groove coz we are Metalcore this, how do we growl as we are neo-classical What??” The idea is to create without any restrictions and without having pre-determined identities decided for ourselves...The amalgamation of all these myriad influences should create something Unique, Nice, Beautiful, Valuable, Sensible, Meaningful, Worthwhile and most importantly COHERENT and the only criteria for us is that a track should sound right and perfect to us.. and THAT’S IT!! And ya, get LIBERATED from all preconceived, predetermined and pre-decided identities!! The bottom line is that we don’t want to stick to one fixed and particular form, genre or style rigidly... We would like to call it, or rather this attitude, as LIBERO METAL... and it would signify for us the idea of being liberated from all pre-existing forms of styles and specific and stereotypical habits of generic consciousness.. |
Have you been on tour this summer? Do you have a planed tour anytime soon? Not Yet, But it is on the Cards…And we hope to be on the road pretty soonfrom Aug/Sept
Who came up with the band name? The idea for the band name came at a peculiarly strange place. The band’s founder member and guitarist Samudragupta Dutta had taken his mother to the hospital for treatment of a chronic ailment which she had been suffering from and while attending his mother in the hospital cabin, his attention was drawn to a bottle of Rectified Spirit (a certain chemical composition that’s used in hospitals and dispensaries). The chemical’s name somewhat fascinated his mind basically in terms of the resonance it creates, when one hears that word. He discussed the name with the other members of the band and finally decided to keep it as the band name as the band had remained unnamed till then. Later, strangely his mother started recovering from the ailment she was suffering from and today she is completely cured from it. The incident has instilled an unshakable belief in the mind of RECTIFIED SPIRIT’s founder member that the name brings an extra-ordinary amount of blessing and everlasting goodwill from his mother. Therefore, in spite of several line up changes and many hiccups within the band, the band’s name has remained unchanged till date.
Who writes the songs? Well the thing is until 2011, when the band was reformed by Samudragupta Dutta and Himangshu Borah, there were no other composers in the band except its Founder Guitarist Samudragupta... and from 2005 to 2009 he had an array of tracks composed for RS’s Debut Album...Large part of the compositional process had already started and also partly done with for songs like There is No Tomorrow, Until We Expire, Where The Ashes Fell, The Magician’s Birthday, Rectified Spirit and Vengeance which were later worked on with Vocalist Rainjong Lepcha to a great extent during lengthy sittings... all the other Tracks Bloodrush, Paradigm Lost, To Hold a Sabre and Mother were Composed as Brand New Tracks for the album with other band members Himangshu Borah and Nishant Hagjer and a few ex-members Imtiyaz Alam and Gitartha Goswami.... The band’s guitarist Samudragupta Dutta writes the lyrics for the band. The lyrics are generally introspective in nature which tend to bring out the deeper and more pent up emotions felt by a human individual. The lyrics often try to take an inside view of the Human mind in terms of its actions and reflections towards its own emotive existence although few of the songs also deal with different issues, which are more of a reflection towards the outside world. However, majority of the tracks deal with all the intense pent up emotions that a human individual stores within itself and the deeper and more unreachable recesses of the mind .
The album contains 10 tracks and each track is inspired by/based on different themes
To Hold a Sabre: Is In the revered memory of Xenapoti (General) Lachit Borphukon,
The Hero of our Race, whose historic resistance of the Mughal Aggression and consequent win at the Battle of Xoraighat in 1671, had failed all attempts by the Mughals to enter South East Asia for all times to come ; whose Soul rages in agonising pain today, to hear the footsteps from the foreign land at the Gate of his Tomb
Bloodrush: Specially deals with guilt. Many times people do despicable things and commit sins under a rush of blood to their heads when they surrender to their more primitive animalistic instincts. But just when it’s done, only then does one realise that the guilt that follows will have to be borne only by the human being inside. That’s what bloodrush does to us. It is the time when the sinner prefers redemption rather than forgiveness and the thing that is common between the sinner and the sinned is that none of their souls can rest in peace. That is the dichotomy or paradox of Bloodrush.
Paradigm Lost: Based on the silent crusade of IROM SHARMILA, “The Iron Lady” of Manipur.....who has been on a fast until death for the last 11 years with her appeal for striking down the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958.....which gives the Men of the Armed Forces absolutely Draconian Powers...an actual license to kill any person, having the authority of Law, merely based on suspicion... The song is inspired by the Award Winning Documentary by Borun Thokchom titled “The Silent Poet”...
The Magician's Birthday: Is about the loss of innocence and the sense of wonder that we lose when we step into adulthood and the gradual mechanisation of human emotions brought about by the modern concrete world
Rectified Spirit: The song centres around the theme of re-incarnation and sort of tries to convey an idea that the human soul is in the perennial cycle of evolving and rectifying itself and each human birth that it takes, is only a stage in that never-ending process wherein, the soul puts into effect the lessons learnt from all its previous births and becomes a RECTIFIED SPIRIT.
There Is No Tomorrow: Deals with conquering of one’s inner fears
Where The Ashes Fell: Is a take on the failure of the state administration to prevent the October 30th 2008 serial blasts throughout Assam, even though there were repeated and recurring information from all the informers of the police department that certain number of militants had entered the state at a particular time, which had leakages to the press also. But surprisingly, no follow up was taken pursuant to that.
Vengeance: The song deals with the justifiability of the idea of revenge told through the eyes of introspection
Until We Expire: Talks about the life on the road for a band which creates a mixed sense of exhaustion and addiction in the mind
Mother: Is about the inherent virtue of sacrifice that motherhood is endowed with, which is also our first lesson in sacrifice that we learn in our lives.
What songs do you play the most?
These are the songs that pretty much constitute our set list and are also our Live favorites
To Hold a Sabre
Bloodrush:
Paradigm Lost
Rectified Spirit
Where The Ashes Fell
Vengeance
Until We Expire
Do you play the same songs each performance? As we have released our Debut Album in December ,2012 ; the tracks from the album constitute the core of our Live Set list which are close to an Hour’s Material for Live Shows.
Have you realesed an album or single? We have just released our debut Album that is Eponymously Titled as “RECTIFIED SPIRIT”
Are you working on any new songs? Presently we are working on the Follow up to our Debut Album that we plan to release in the 1sthalf of 2014… The writing process is speeding up pretty fast and we are almost 3 songs down at the moment… Interesting thing about this album is that it would be a concept album centered around a unified theme presented through different storylines
Long live Rectified Spirit! \m/