Girish And The Chronicles
You Can’t Change My Nature

14.02.2024

One gloomy weekday morning last year, a workmate came by and started telling me with burning eyes about his recent discovery - a heavy metal band from… India. To be honest, I wasn't ready for this/ I decided to check out both of the videos of the band called Girish and the Chronicles that had been brought to my attention. And I liked them both musically and visually. But most of all I was impressed by the outstanding vocals of Girish Pradhan! As it turned out a little bit later, I wasn’t the only one who got impressed… Grammy -winning drummer Chris Adler (ex-Lamb Of God, ex-Megadeth) soon offered Girish the role of a vocalist in his new band Firstborne. Then George Lynch announced that Girish Pradhan would be singing on the new album of his band The End Machine. And just a little later it was made public guitarist Joel Hoekstra also recruited the same Girish to record vocals for the third album of his solo project. By that point, it was obvious that it couldn’t go on like that, and it was time to contact Girish and find out first-hand how he had come to living that kind of life!

Indian music and especially dancing are well known in Russia from movies, but until recently I could not have imagined that I would hear heavy metal from India! How popular is metal music in your country?

You could say we have had our own rock/metal scene since especially the late 80s. Bands have been putting out stuff for a long time. Perhaps it’s now finally reaching (the public outside India – ed.). But the scene is quite big and diverse, with hunrdeds of colleges hosting bands, both local, national and international, every year in all the parts of the country. And then there are commercial festivals too, with quite huge crowd gatherings. It’s a home grown scene but it was not really that easy for bands from our region which is the Northern Eastern part of India. Forget about internationally, bands from those parts have to work extra hard to get recognized in the Indian scene itself. GATC along with a handful of few other bands have broken the barriers and have shown that bands from India can get signed with international record labels and tour countries such as Europe, the U.S. and the likes. We have older bands such as Indus Creed (previously known as Rock Machine), Parikrama and many other bands from the 80s and 90s

I know that you discovered the rock music in teen years, when you heard Eagles and started dreaming of playing guitar. How did you eventually come to heavy metal? What bands influenced you at that time?

I think it was just a common thing at that time. “Hotel California” was like the intro song to every guitar enthusiast, and eventually we’d discover the mix tapes being exchanged among friends that would have a title like “Best of Rock/Heavy Metal”. Mostly pirated cassettes. Such compilations would have bands like UFO, Black Sabbath, Nazareth, Deep Purple etc. And that’s the story of a metalhead most of the times. We start looking for the heavier, faster stuff and end up discovering bands like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and eventually thrash, death and so on. But I was particularly fascinated by Iron Maiden after I had discovered them. Super fast solos, gallops and all that. Here’s the thing. Gangtok (Sikkim) was not exactly like the rest of India. It’s really far away from the big cities and all that. So we had a very limited access to the kind of music, bands we could discover at the stores. The other style of music that completely captivated me were the power ballads and that probably started with bands like Bon Jovi for me. As a singer I was really into the way Bruce Dickinson and Jon Bon Jovi sang. It all started with Eagles and particularly Don Henley but yeah, those were my first influences as a singer and a songwriter/composer.  

Many metalheads including me notice your outstanding vocals. When did you realize that you wanted to be a vocalist, which vocalists inspired you? How and where did you learn to sing?

The truth is, I knew I could sing a lot of songs by bands like Iron Maiden, Aerosmith, Guns N’ Roses, Bon Jovi but I had no one telling me, “Yes you’re doing it right”, except for of course my younger brother, Yogesh. There was this time when we had a band in school and we were actually looking for vocalists. I was actually playing bass. Upon not finding anyone suited for the job, I started singing in the jams and everyone just started telling me that we would not need a singer at all. After my first show I realized that there was no going back.
I think I always had a singer in me, as my mother is a singer as well. The same goes for Yogesh. But it was when I saw Yogesh learning guitars and singing from a cousin of ours, I got fascinated by it. It felt like magic to me and I wanted badly to follow in my little brother’s footsteps. Soon I started doing the same. Of course we were very young at that time. One of the first songs we tried on the guitars was actually a song named “Sleeping Child”, by a Danish band named Michael Learns to Rock.

So, in 2006 in Gangtok, Sikkim you formed the band Girish and the Chronicles. Tell me please in more detail how it happened. Was your family against the fact that you dropped out from engineering to focus on music?

Well it wasn’t really named Girish and The Chronicles at that time. By the time I had spent a few months in college, I was 100 percent sure that all I wanted to do was form a band and pursue music all the way. Also, the band I had with Yogesh was also doing great during my school days and that had already given me a lot of experience.
But yeah I had just dropped my college and there’s an interesting story before all of that happened. I think it was 2005. It was my first year in college. There was this “Intercollege band competition”. I was a part of it and one of the competing bands had Suraz on the guitars. The two of us met after the performances, totally blown away by each others’ performances. We kind of told each other that we should form a band at some point in time.
So when I actually left college, one of the first things I did was to call Suraz and talk about starting a new band. But there were a lot of breaks etc in between. Mainly because I went ahead and traveled for about two years, in different parts of India and Nepal. This had mostly to do with the fact that I had literally no one to guide me or the band on how to go forward. We were literally the first group of guys from our hometown to form a band and take steps like relocating, and such stuff. Those years were to explore and learn about how the whole thing works. And I think it paid off at the end of the day. So when I finally came back to India after staying in Nepal for a year, I met up with Yogesh and wrote, recorded and released my first ever single, which was “Angel”, in 2009. This is when I kind of regrouped etc and the band eventually became GATC.

Do a lot of guys in India play guitars and drums? Was it difficult to recruit musicians?

Well I don’t know that but yes, the region I grew up in did have a lot of enthusiasts and good players.

Did you have any thoughts of writing lyrics  in Indian, or did you decide to create in English from the very beginning?

Yes, I think getting addicted to these bands took me to a direction where my primary focus became writing in English. I have not tried releasing anything in my native tongue (which is Nepalese) or Hindi (which most of the people refer to as “Indian”).  Maybe someday in the future.

Your English sounds very good, how did you learn the language?

Well a lot of schools were/are English medium, and for a lot of us English has always been like a second/third language from the very start. But I guess my taste in music, movies etc also greatly contributed to it.

Was it difficult to start performing live? Is there a rock club circuit in India and how many people did your band draw on the first shows?

Yes there are many venues and festivals/concerts that happen annually. There has always been a great following for the band, right from the time we started. This is probably due to the fact that we took part in these college festivals all over India during our first few months in 2010.

At what point did you realize that everything was not in vain, and felt the first serious success of the band?

Actually right from the very start of 2009, when the guys started rejoining me, I had a very good feeling about the whole thing. Besides, even at a small level, my YouTube channel was doing quite good. It is the same channel that has now been renamed as “Girish and The Chronicles”. We were being invited to festivals, especially the college fests.

GATC released their first ever promotional demo single, "Angel", in 2009. But your debut album “Back On Earth” only came out in 2014. Why was this gap so long?

There were a lot of factors involved. First of all the region I came from was quite backward when it came to the music business; nobody was aware of stuff like iTunes. There was nothing like Spotify and stuff like that. The cassette era was over. Buying expensive CDs was a new concept and the only way to find new music or any music was to download it from pirated sites and torrents. Well there was YouTube, of course which kind of helped us reach the audience. It was also a time where I was only beginning to figure out how the music scene works. I simply had no idea about anything unlike a lot of bands and artists from bigger cities. Another big factor was, of course, surviving as a band and as musicians. I was also really busy looking for shows, participating in college festivals and competitions, to find a fan base and stuff like that. We used to do a lot of covers as well. I think basically we were only beginning to really find out as to how we would sync together as a team. We were trying to find our sound. We had some singles ready by 2011 but we were still in the process of finding stability. In 2012, we moved to Hong Kong for a year and performed in one of the biggest clubs out there as a house band. It was only when I came back to India in 2013 that we started really working on the album. It would be a compilation of some 5-6 singles that we already had, and some new songs. We did the first version of the album on Stratocaster and Telecaster guitars. It was around the end of 2013. We finally got a deal with Universal Music Group, India under the brand “contrabands”. This finally gave us the motivation we were looking for a full budget album distributed by a well-known record label. We re-did all the songs using Les Pauls. The rest like they say is history.

By the way, what was the story with work under a contract in Hong Kong?

Well, it was a job, literally. We were a house band in one of the biggest clubs in Hong Kong. We would do covers and stuff every night. It actually turned out to be great practice for us as a band. We were living together in an apartment and we were getting salaries. More than anything I remember us having a hell of a great time over there. However, we knew that we would eventually have to come back to India, if we were to become a touring band writing our own music and producing albums, which, of course, was the ultimate goal.

What does the songwriting process in Girish And The Chronicles look like? Who is the main composer or do you work all together? What about lyrics writing?

Well, initially, I guess it was mostly me specially, on the “Back On Earth” album. By our second album, titled “Rock the Highway” (2020), I wanted to make sure the album sounded more diverse with everyone’s ideas and inputs but I was still basically the major songwriter when it came to vocals, melodies and lyrics. But we had a lot of riffs from our past. For example, the main riff for “Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Here to Stay” was written by Yogesh years prior to the actual song being recorded, and I just ended up building up on that. The title track, “Rock the Highway”, was a song that Suraz wrote in his school days. I did write the majority of these songs but it was much more collaborative than before, with Yogesh and Suraz’s contribution and composition to songs like “The Distance Between”, “Tears of the Phoenix”, “Walking the Line” etc. This was also a major shift in our sound as we gravitated more towards the 80s hair metal/hard rock/heavy metal sound, as compared to the first album, which was more bluesy with classic rock/metal touch. Our latest album, “Hail to the Heroes” (2022), has a lot of variety from all the band members. I am greatly involved in the production side, along with Yogesh who is also the production engineer. I am involved in deciding on how long a song can go and how we could make the whole song more exciting and taking creative decisions like that, these days. Lyrics wise, I write most of the songs, but Yogesh is also greatly involved in writing the lyrics whenever I feel stuck.

GATC sounds very American. Have you had any thoughts about adding some Indian folk instruments or harmonies to the sound? Or is it “heavy metal or no metal at all”?

We do have plans of writing at least one album which would have elements from parts of India, where we come from. But it would be nothing like what people would expect, stereotyping “Indian music”.

Let’s talk about “Hail to the Heroes”. It seemed to me the most musically diverse and interesting in the band's discography. The title track is a real hit and the video for it is really impressive. How was the song created and where did you shoot the video?

We always carry a bank of riffs, lyrics and other ideas on our systems, phones, etc. so right before we started working on the album, we got together, and compiled all of our ideas, sorting out which ideas would fit the best for our album. One of those days when I was scouting through our ideas, I found this riff, which eventually became the main riff for the title track, “Hail to the Heroes”. We had almost forgotten about it, but we found out that it was Yogesh, who wrote that riff. I built the rest of the song revolving around that riff. As for the lyrics, it was one of those days when we were recording demos for this song, it came to me, and I immediately shared it with the guys, that the chorus had to be “Hail to the Heroes”, and I also sang it to them. We all agreed to it as it made perfect sense to us. This is one of those songs where I had to be really careful about the lyrics because the chorus line was already decided and I had to make sure everything else matched the vibe of what I had written for the chorus. Then we were struck with the worst news ever in rock‘n’roll, which was the passing away of the great Eddie Van Halen. I knew I wanted to pay tribute to his legacy and the whole lyrics revolved around that. It also represented the state of the world at that time during the height of the pandemic and all the Covid warriors sacrificing their lives for us, that really holds a deep special place in our hearts. We got a very positive response to the video of course, which was shot in some of the beautiful locations in the coastal city of Goa, India. This has its own story. We didn’t have much budget to do this, but we took a leap of faith and traveled to some of the famous locations in Goa. Thanks to some good friends and contacts in the region, we got access to cars, shipyards etc. All in all it was a combination of some awesome talents in videography, great fans and good hearted people, that made it so unique and memorable.

“Shamans of Time” in my opinion, is one of the most unusual songs of the band. Was it the result of an experiment or did it just happen by itself?

Yes indeed. The opening riff was something I wrote randomly as an idea about two years prior to this album. It had a very composition I knew I wanted to go in a completely different direction, then I remembered that Suraz used to play this plucking on his guitar, every time we would hang out. I knew it was a wild idea, but I knew it had to be something very different, so I asked Suraz to play that plucking composition of his, right after the intro riff that I had written. So that the base of the song was ready. After that point, we were literally brainstorming ideas and I just kept on throwing ideas at the guys and eventually we found a bluesy chorus. We were stuck for a couple of days after that. When we got back together again, we started working on a demo once again. That’s when it struck me that I put this random progressive riff on my Gibson Firebird, and immediately asked Yogesh to record it. It was not a calculated time signature or anything. It was just a random thing and we actually built the drums composition based on that riff and we knew we wanted to make it really weird and mind-bending, so yeah we just love whenever the song reaches to that point. I think we are really proud of what we’ve done there.

“Heaven's Crying” turned out to be one of your most beautiful songs, and at the same time it cannot be called “just another rock ballad”. This is a very atmospheric song, please tell us more about it. What was it inspired by?

I had been hearing Yogesh, singing and playing a snippet of an idea for the previous eight or 10 years or so. It was a really short idea where he would sing the phrase “The heaven’s crying”. We both knew that once completed, this song would be something really awesome, so I just asked him to do whatever he wanted to do with the song. There was zero interference from me or any other members. In a day or two, Yogesh finished the vocal melodies, the lyrics, the entire song arrangement, guitars, along with all the string orchestrations. I immediately fell in love with this song and tried my best to do justice to what he had written. The song, once again, talks about the darkness that overshadowed everything during the pandemic. It can also be interpreted as a metaphorical representation of helplessness.

A few years ago, when Chris Adler toured India he chose your band as musicians for his concerts. You said it was surreal to realize that you were playing with such a legend. What was it like later to receive an invitation from him to join his new band Firstborne?

It was completely out of the blue. Chris and I were in the green room after the gig. And he just passed me his phone and played me a demo that he had written with James Lomenzo and Myrone and I went like wow this sounds really cool. And he was like, “Would you like to try and sing on it”? I literally jumped and I was like “wow seriously”? That’s how it started. We have been working on some kick ass music ever since and we will continue to do so.

Is this a studio project only or do you plan live shows someday?

Unfortunately as soon as we started writing music, Covid happened. There was no way for us to plan a tour or anything. But last year I finally met the guys once again and we actually wrote some music together. It did rekindle our desire to do real tours. So yes, we can expect some stuff happening in the near future.

So you are not just the vocalist of the band, but also involved in the writing process, is that correct?

Instruments and music wise, yes, I was not much involved. However, I was recording ideas, demos, and sending it to the guys, and they would get back to me sharing some more ideas as to how we could make it better. So it has all been a very collaborative effort with Myrone as a power house, talented monster, and Chris as a pillar, without whom we would not get so much encouragement. Chris always knows where we can get much better. James was taking the songs to the next level with unexpected bass patterns and stuff. This time it was very different. We were literally sharing ideas and writing together, but at the same time respecting each others’ space, and not stepping too much on each other’s toes.

Going back to the “Hail to the Heroes” album I have to ask about “Rock n' Roll Fever”, which just blows my head off. How did it happen that the guys from Firstborne, Chris Adler and Myron, participated in this GATC song?

I just really wanted the guys to be a part of this. I consider Firstborne also to be like a family and not just a set of musicians or a “project”. I knew I wanted my friends in at least one of the songs. Of course, the former Dio guitarist, Rowan Robertson was also a part of the song. I also have a special relationship with him. We became good friends online, discussing music and stuff. We eventually went on to write a couple of cool songs which you can find under the name Custard Pie.

At the end of last year another legendary musician George Lynch announced you as lead vocalist for The End Machine’s next album. What can you say about it? How is the work on the album progressing on and when will we hear it approximately?

The response has been great. By the time I finished writing all the vocal melodies and started hearing the mix, we all knew that we had made a special album. “Silent Winter” has been garnering a lot of great reviews. We are days away from releasing our second single, which is another massive bomb of a track. All in all this is going to be a great album and a unique one at that.

GATC supported Guns N' Roses in Abu Dhabi on July 1, 2023, and I assume it was a dream come true, wasn’t it? How was it like?

It truly was a fulfillment of one of our dreams, yes. It feels like a dream actually. I remember it in a very vivid manner as if it happened in some other life. I just feel very proud that we could do that and I really hope we get to do more of such stuff.

What do your parents think about your music career now when you're playing in a band with a Grammy winner?

My parents have always been supportive of my music venture. Of course, they feel very proud that I work with some great names out there. In fact, I got my singing genes from my mother, who is also a classical/folk singer in the Nepali language. And my dad always encouraged me to go on stage ever since I was a kid and in fact, he even organized shows for my band in school. This whole confidence of going up on stage and performing comes from a great deal of support behind me.

I know Sikkim has recently faced a very powerful flash flood. What exactly happened and is everything all right with your families and homes?

Just like any other place in that region near the Himalayas, Sikkim is prone to earthquakes and cloud bursts. History has shown that it is always a risky matter to build dams and stuff in such areas. It was really sad because there was a lot of destruction of property and many lives were lost. But the residents of Sikkim were very supportive and very dedicated in trying to overcome the crisis. I still remember back in 2011 there was this massive earthquake that hit Sikkim and destroyed a lot of lives and almost felt like it was all repeating. We’re glad that everything is slowly getting back on track. Fortunately it was far off from the areas where I live, but I pray for the souls that were lost and we have been trying our best to collect whatever funds we can through our shows so that we can help the state in our own small way.

What do you like besides music — movies, books, maybe cooking — if there is still time for something else of course?

Well, it’s me and my two dogs. Of course, movies, books; I love those. I am also very very passionate about photography and videography. Funny enough, I love laying down and sleeping a lot. Helps me recover my voice after a long tour. It’s also really exciting when my wife’s in town. We travel a lot and explore new places. It's just super fun to be around her for a slow moving guy like me.

And in conclusion, what can you say to people who say that heavy metal of the 80s is outdated and not relevant in our time?

I have nothing to say. I live by the philosophy that a person needs to do whatever makes them happy. At the end of the day, to me, music is something that gives me a lot of joy. And if it’s the 80s hard rock/heavy metal music giving me that joy, it is what it is! You can’t just come to me and say “Hey, that is wrong”. You can’t change my nature, you can’t change what I feel. So there’s no point in faking it. And it’s the same for me as well. I won’t go to a person and impose my style of music on them. I will, of course, share what I love, but I will not look down upon their choice of music. But if you think about it, it’s also a matter of the media. Why did some of the 80s songs become so popular because of a modern show like “Stranger Things”? It is obvious that it is all about what the mainstream media controls at the end of the day. Any form of music, if marketed massively, is accepted as “current”. So yeah people need to get out of that illusion.

Girish And The Chronicles on the Internet: https://www.girishandthechronicles.com/

Special thanks to Martina Palermo (Motion Agency) for arranging this interview

Interview by Vyacheslav “Slash” Kupriyanov
Photos courtesy of Girish Pradhan
February 7, 2024
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