Not many bands manage to keep you hooked on to their originals. But if the band manages to do so, then they mean business. Same is the story of this 6 member black/goth metal band Spiked Crib from Bombay.  With influences ranging from gothic poetry to fictonal characters, their theme includes pain, sorrow, suffering and evil, but they still mean no harm… we had a chat about the same with their vocalist Gareth aka Crudus

read on …

Hey Gareth Thanks for the interview, How did you all come up with the name Spiked Crib? Could you give us a brief history of the band? Please introduce the current line up
Hi Santosh, it’s a pleasure! Let’s start with the name. Spiked Crib is all about extreme human emotions, the decisions that these influence and the consequences that follow. The name of the band is a metaphor in itself. The crib stands for everything a person goes through, from his cradle to his casket. The spikes symbolise the tribulations that follow us through the journey.

The story behind the formation of Spiked Crib dates back to 2006, when I was a regular at Prakalp’s jam ups. Vincent Pereira became a close friend of mine since we both were die hard Iron Maiden and Manowar fans. We later got into this whole fad of covering popular Black Metal bands like Dimmu Borgir and Cradle of Filth. I used to maintain a poetry blog in my young days that Chetan (Dead Foetus) from Cosmic Infusion read and liked. He asked me if I would like to do vocals for one of Cosmic Infusion’s songs, that happened to be Mourning Palace by Dimmu Borgir. I learnt it but strangely, I never had the chance to play it with them. One fine day Vincy came over and we had this little liquor party where we jammed to the same song and Vince liked my vocals and said we should go ahead with the band. At a gig called Distortion in Marine Center we met up with Chetan who introduced us to Abhimanue (Xaphan) who plays leads for us now. We asked Vineet and Gavril (both from Prakalp) to join in on drums and keys respectively, and Aurko took over the rhythm guitar. We narrowed down our choice of songs to a rather ambitious number by Dimmu called Kings of the Carnival Creation. We also worked on Coffin Fodder by Cradle of Filth and a couple of originals. All of this started from July 2007. Our main aim was to open with SIES Powerchords 2007 that was to happen in December. Vince took up the responsibility of being the bands manager and all seemed to be going well.

Tragedy had its ways with us and Vince passed away on October 22nd, barely over a month before we took stage. Somehow we managed to keep the act together and Bruce (Atmosfear) was kind enough to help us with Bass. Gavril had to quit the band (and rejoined after a year) and things started going haywire. We had rhythm guitarists and bass guitarists joining and leaving every now and then. Bruce now plays rhythms. However, we stuck together. Now we’re pretty stable and find it hard to believe that all this happened and we’re still making music. We even have Khyati on female backing vocals for a couple of tracks.

Vocals:  Crudus (Gareth M)

Guitars: Xaphan (Abhimanue Gautam)

Guitars: Bruce McKoy

Keyboards: Kronox (Gavril M)

Bass: Aditya Bhatnagar

Drums: Vineet Nair

Female vocals: Hecate (Khyati Bhatia)

Usually Black Metal bands are mostly lyrically antichrist themed, how do you differentiate Spiked crib from such bands? cause we have heard that the band isn’t antichrist and you guys consider your music to be between goth and black.

We aren’t a Black Metal band. Though our sound is heavily influenced by popular Black Metal bands, we are quite open to experimenting with all subgenres. However, as far as lyrics are concerned, we write on everything from criminal mindsets, infidelity, suicide, sexuality, abortion and we even have a song based on Lord Voldermort (from the Harry Potter fables). All of these amplify the horrors of negative emotions that all of us harbor. We’re more about extreme emotions and situations. The style of writing is highly influenced by Goth fantasy and lifestyle. However, musically, our roots were and will always be inspiration from Symphonic Black Metal.

Which are your favorite bands from the indian scene that you guys look up to, and international ones as well.

Bands like Lux Occulta, Kalmah, Dimmu Borgir, Cradle of Filth, Darkwoods My Bethroted, Iron Maiden and so on have always influenced us. In the local scene we have looked up to one of India’s best Black Metal acts to have existed, Cosmic Infusion. They inspired most of the guys in the band t ocreate such music in the first place. We have also drawn a lot of inspiration from Infernal Wrath, Demonic Resurrection, Devoid and scores of other bands.

Walk us through the songs, tell us about Bloody baby, and Russet dawn. Also can you tell us what inspires you to write such songs ? We know that your new song “The Dark Lord” is about Lord Voldemort from Harry potter, what is that song all about.

‘Bloody Baby‘ was written by me when I saw this video somewhere, of an abortion taking place. It showed how the limbs of an infant are plucked out one by one so as to cause minimal pain to the mother. I couldn’t help but pen down this experience in this manner. ‘Russet Dawn, Inane Days‘ was written when I heard the tale of a friend who had been betrayed by a woman he loved. As far as ‘The Dark Lord’ is concerned, it was completely out of context for us. I had penned this one down after reading the Harry Potter books that describe Lord Voldemort as a hateful and vengeful being, who had the power and the intelligence to do well but yet collapsed. His childhood narration by Rowling is simply spine chilling. However, we picked the scene of his rebirth after the Triwizard tournament in ‘Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire’ as the theme of this track. Our other tracks detail teen suicide (Smiling Suicide), rape (The Butcher’s Prayer) and we also have a special track for Vincy (The Lament of the Beast).

Any album or EP in offing? What are the plans in the coming year for Spiked crib?

If all goes well, we plan to go to the studios with a track list that’s hefty enough to brim a decent album. We are still working on tightening our live act for now since that can come in handy in generating the funds for recording. If this is made possible we will go in for an album, sometime in the beginning of 2011.

As an extreme metal band from Mumbai, what difficulties are you guys facing.

Distance and travel are the biggest hurdles for us. We have members living in Panvel, Vasai, Mira Road, Powai and Borivali. We jam up at Bhandup most of the time. So travelling is pretty much a problem. Besides this, we have another major issue, that’s live sound. It’s not easy having two guitars, a bass and a keyboard and come out with a great sound at a college gig. We need someone reliable to help us with our sound soon. Also, our genre hasn’t got the acceptance in the metal scene itself. It’s totally off popular metal choices like Death and Thrash metal hence it’s quite a task connecting with the crowd sometime.

Final shout outs, Thank You note, famous words?

Well, I thank you for giving us a chance to share our views and every thing about the Crib. We would like to thank the men who caused us to be here, late Vincent Pereira and Chetan! I would also like to thank Xaphan, Vineet, Kronox, Hecate, Bruce and Adi for sticking by my side as superb bandmates. Our friends Noel, Satya, Ashwin Sharma, Aurko, Siddharth (Zygnema), Mayank (Atmosfear/Zygnema), Ritesh, Riju, Sahil, JP, Afaque and all of Devoid for helping us in every way. Surely I missed out a hell lotta names but you know who you are. Thanks!

Rest in Spikes… Eternally!

DOWNLOAD : (Right Click & Save)

Spiked Crib – Russet Dawn, Inane Days.

Spiked Crib – Bloody Baby .

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