Interview With Purple Blood

They're one of the country's most talented bunch of musicians, and their win at Saarang 2010 has only opened up doors to the next level. Headbangers India catches up with Purple Blood, an upcoming band from Trivandrum, in this exclusive interview.

HB: Congratulations on your win at Saarang 2010. How do you feel? Did you expect it?
PB: Awesome! We all are pretty excited after this win and hope there’s lot more to come. It was really difficult to prove ourselves with just 6-7 minutes on stage. Once we got through to the finals we had a positive feeling that something big is coming our way....

HB: We noticed that you were having some technical issues on stage. What exactly happened up there?
PB: Well nothing much to say about it… Hehehe. The other guitarist got so high with the music that the guitar chords came out from the processor and he was not sure what actually was the problem but soon everything got fine! The preparation time given to us was really short. Everything was done in a hurry. There was not enough time given to us to do the sound check. We had planned for something more exciting on stage that day but let’s keep it for some other day.

HB: Now that you have another big win on your side, what are the band's plans for the next few months? Any recordings, tours?
PB: The band’s immediate plan would be to settle down and make new songs and would probably try to get to the studios as soon as possible and  we are very much interested in releasing an EP soon. Considering the tours part, we have to come in contact with more of the scene in India. I mean towards the northern side of India, haven’t been to places like Mumbai or Delhi.

HB: Tell us a little about how the band started off. What are your biggest musical influences?
PB: You have put in two questions together for which we have very long answers :D
Well, the band was started 2 years back. It was Ashwin and Arvind who came out with the idea of forming a band...Then they met rest of us at college and we started off playing punk music and shifted to hard rock and then finally to this genre. And talking about the influences, everyone’s got their own taste. Ashwin listens to punk, metalcore. Arvind is totally influenced by blues and classic rock. The bassie listens to only Opeth, PT, DT. Drummer is heavily influenced by thrash, old school and Vivek listens to Trivium, Slayer. Somewhere in between all of us developed a liking towards stuff from BFMV, AILD, All that remains…

HB: As a band that's still to get to get to the pro-level, what kind of obstacles do you face most commonly?
PB: Well the most common problem is the lack of gigs in our hometown. If you compare Trivandrum with other cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai... The rock scene out here is pathetic! We always have to travel to these cities to get more exposure. Hope the scene gets better in the near future.

HB: How is the audience in your hometown? Is there a big metal following? Do you think there's enough encouragement for the band there?
PB: Yeah we do have a pretty good audience. The metal followers are much less when compared to other cities and the people here don’t realize the art of noise… there’s no encouragement for our kind of music. Only a few colleges and organizers have provided the platform for the rock bands out here.

HB: Wishing you luck for what seems like a great future. Any words to fans and metalheads out there?
PB: Thanks a lot for the interview. This has been a memorable journey for us. The support from our fellow bands and fans has helped us all the way through. We owe them a lot. Horns up all the way for every single metalhead and do support all the Indian bands.
Check out our music @ www.myspace.com/purplebloodindia