City-based Distortion Culture has fused sounds to create a genre for itself and plans to get the audience hooked, cover by cover

City-based Distortion Culture has fused sounds to create a genre for itself and plans to get the audience hooked, cover by cover

They take their music seriously and are still barely out of college. These six young men call themselves Distortion Culture, a city-based band they created in the year 2009 and no they are not distorting any cultures. The band plans to bring to their concert tomorrow, music that is a wee different.

"The show will be a mix of high energy numbers and slow ballads, of pace and emotion. Expect Dream Theatre and Stratovarius covers," says Mohammed. The current line-up includes Vivek and Arjun on guitars, Shakti on the drums, Kailash on bass, Varun on the keyboard and Mohammed on vocals.

Vivek and Kailash first started the band in their college days with a common interest in music and similar influences. "It was just for fun initially, later things started becoming serious and an actual band was formed with other members in 2009.

I was roped in mid 2010 after they saw me perform a solo act at Saarang (annual cultural festival of IIT Madras)," says Mohammed. The band with their varied influences owing to the increasing number of members was looking for a genre of its own, something progressive rock and metal and psychedelic at the same time. "We now define the genre of our music as progressive psychedelic rock," Mohammed says.

Tired of the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of culture and with a sense of breaking free they decided to call themselves Distortion Culture. " We wanted to make a point. Every time we did something we were pointed out at and told this is Indian culture. We were of the view that if that is culture then what we are doing is Distortion Culture," Mohammed explains.

The band has released three original compositions, an instrumental version of the prayer Maha Ganpatam that implements their sound and two others- (Unforeseen Truth) and (The Prayer And The Answer), also a prayer asking God why life was so unfair.

The band plays covers of Indian bands like Mother Jane and Avial, International ones like Opeth and Led Zeppelin along with those of soft rock band Porcupine Tree. The band has performed at various city venues and atu00a0 festivalls like Six at Pondy in Pondicherry a few times. Amongst the newer bands in town, Distortion Culture plans to release an EP with two songs by mid 2011.