It was three years ago that Shawn Vivian teamed up with Sagar Iyer, Richard Francis, Stephen Rahul and Aaron Paul to start their rock band, Beyond Vengeance.
It started out as young college guys from St Joseph’s College in Hyderabad, with just a handful of instruments.
The only place they had to rehearse was Aaron’s tiny room at his Secunderabad residence. Aaron is a student at Aurora Degree College.
Now, their band is over 12 shows old and there’s no looking back for these music patrons, who experiment with the thrash metal genre, a lesser-heard form of music in Hyderabad.
“We feel that the city and its people have not been completely open to heavy metal music. And also, the level of support we have been shown is not much. The major problem our band faces is mostly with finding venues which can actively accept heavy metal nights/shows/events. There is a real dearth of such venues,” says Shawn Vivian, guitarist.
The idea behind Beyond Vengeance is not just to create music but to address important global issues through their work. “Our lyrics are based on issues like terrorism, global warming, corruption, etc,” states Sagar Iyer, vocalist.
The band’s mantra is to practise hard, week in and week out, to become better musicians. They believe that they need to put in extra effort and come up with more entertaining ways to draw people’s attention to the genre.
“We have made it a habit to practise once a week with the zeal to compose music that stands out. Although some of us have been finding it difficult to practise on our individual instruments, we make sure that we practise as a band every Saturday for at least two hours. Given a chance, as a band we can practise for six hours at a stretch; it’s the rigorous practice that improves our performance on stage,” says Aaron Paul, drummer.
When the youngsters started out, their greatest challenge was creating awareness about their music, since thrash metal isn’t really popular.
“In the beginning, it was a struggle to get the audience to understand our music, but in time we got people to understand our genre.
There are quite a few death metal bands in Hyderabad and we believe that the future of metal music here is not dead yet. Recently, we played at Club Republic after a five-month break for intense practice,” added Richard Francis, guitarist.
Reach Out: facebook.com/BeyondVengeance