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Enter the Man-Eating Orchid

The metal scene in Bangalore is massive and bands are trying to find their niche through myriad interesting routes. Orchid is a four piece act that’s currently making a bold statement by pushing the boundaries of metal in unusual ways. After a few years run trying out different guitarists and styles, they have finally settled on a mix of Avant-Garde and Technical metal. With unorthodox time signatures, yet killer grooves, the band has found a dynamic that is taking them higher in the music scene.

The band describes themselves as ‘things you probably don’t like’, they like to keep it simple and just play music, unlike many newly spawned metal bands around the city. Originally called Blood Orchid,   with a different guitarist line-up, they used to play Progressive metal, but now have completely reinvented their sound into something far more radical and unique, incorporating ideas from pop to jazz into it too. With influences from Animals As Leaders to The Arusha Acccord, from Hidden Orchestra to The Mercury Program, these guys started winning competitions at an alarming rate and have been on the rise since. With song titles like ‘The Observer’ and ‘Gaian Hypothesis’ their out-the-the-box thinking is quite evident.

Started when the members were in college, they have progressed together, and are now tighter as a result, following the recent trend of college bands that stick together after college. After successfully winning a Yamaha rock competition in 2011, the band has gone on to play some pretty whacky shows, chilling with Tesseract at their IIT Kharagpur show, and meeting the guys from Dead Letter Circus during their performance at SeaRock, Goa. The international response to their music has also been quite phenomenal, especially for a semi-pro band, and shows much scope in the future of their music.

The band consists of Mayur Nanda on drums, electronic and samples, who also does the artwork for the band and has provided artwork for fests such as Strawberry Fields too. Rahil Ahmed is on bass with a mean Warwick 5-string, and Vinay Prasad is the guitarist, with inspirations ranging from Mastoodon to Dave Mathews’ Band. On vocals is Kaushal L.S, who is already noted for his crazy growls on stage.

Here are some links to their work: https://www.facebook.com/OrchidIn?fref=ts, https://soundcloud.com/man-eating-orchid and https://vimeo.com/54133649

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