excerpt :: Raju KP, the KP stands for Kuzhiparambil Prasad
works: IT professsional
lives: Kochi, India
age: 23
languages: English, Malayalam and Hindi
instruments: Guitar, Bass guitar, Piano and yeah, little bit of drums
influences: Metallica, Joe Satriani, Jason Becker, Steve Vai, Pink Floyd, Iron Maiden, Dream Theater and a hell lot of other European metal bands.
“Well, the rock music scene in Kerala is not as big as other major cities in India like Bangalore, Mumbai, Chennai. Indian music scene is confined to movies and majority of people in here are into movie songs. Rock music followers are a minority, so the exposure for local bands and musicians is less.
Talking about local bands, there are many especially in schools and colleges. Very few are genuinely good. Most of them try to play extreme metal and start with covering metalcore bands like Lamb of God and Slipknot. Maybe just to show off their skills. Drummers concentrate on playing double pedals as fast as they can, guitarists on shreding, etc. like that. Most follow the same style, metal-core that is. Very few experiment with classic rock, blues, heavy metal etc. A problem I’ve seen with the local bands is the vocals. Most of them sing in English and the accent is horrible, not to mention the so-called growls and screams. I mean the instrumentation would be good but as the vocals start, it ruins whatever they’d played so far.
There are really good bands too and of course they go professional. Very few bands sing in the native language. Avial is are the only band in Kerala who sings in Malayalam. Their music is awesome and their guitarist Rex Vijayan was sought out by Gibson, USA for a deal to play their guitars. Motherjane is another famous band in India and they are from Cochin. Their guitarist has incorporated metal with Indian carnatic style slides in guitar. Local bands do not get much platform for performance other than yearly competitions held in college art festivals
The rock scene is on its development stage in and there are people working to organize shows. There had been efforts, but ended up in failure. “










