A monster victory

Degaruda get heavy

By: Tatat Bunnag, photo by Dave Crimaldi

Headbanging rock fans had better get ready as Degaruda, the champion band of the local underground scene, has just unleashed the album Monstrous Victorious.

For metal fans, Degaruda’s self-titled debut album was a high point of 2014. It combined raw, aggressive rock with catchy melodies and brought fresh sounds to Thai metal scene. With the release of this second album, the band — singer and lead guitarist Top Tarasin, rhythm guitarist and singer Dino Tarasin, drummer Itiporn Lakarnchua (Van) and recently recruited bassist Chinnawat Chutimachalothorn (Chinn) — is planning shows locally and overseas.

Student Weekly caught up with Dino after their show at Soy Sauce Factory to talk about the making of Monstrous Victorious.

Student Weekly: What does Degaruda mean?

Dino: Back in 2013 we’d written a few songs and decided we should have a band name. We were trying to find a word that sounded unique and reflected the music. One of them was Garuda, which was cool because it represented who we are — a Southeast Asian mixture of different musical creatures. But Garuda sounded weird, so we added the "De" in front, and then everything made sense.

Student Weekly: Why did you change the band line-up?

Dino: Our first bassist was Phil, the keyboard player in Japanese/Thai math-rock band Aire. We've known Phil for years and have all played in bands with him, so he was the obvious choice to play bass in Degaruda. But things change and we recruited Chinn last year. There was no drama, though. We're still good friends with Phil and hang out at shows.

Student Weekly: How would you describe your sound?

Dino: That's difficult. We never go into a song with any idea of what it we want it to sound like. We just arrange and rearrange it until it sounds right to our ears. We all have different influences, but we definitely lean towards the harder style of rock like hardcore and metal. But at the same time we try to incorporate pop elements into the aggressive stuff to make it listenable.

Student Weekly: Is the music on Monstrous Victorious different to your first album?

Dino: It’s more of a change in the process rather than the music. With the first album, we were just excited to get all the cool parts into the songs and it became a mishmash of styles. With Monstrous Victorious, the songwriting process was more focused.

Student Weekly: Your new album was produced by Suchai Chucherd (Chai) of Brand New Sunset, and mixed by J. Robbins of American rock band Jawbox. How did these collaborations come about?

Dino: We've been friends with Chai for a long time and he has similar taste to ours in terms of loud, thundering guitars. So when he told us he had a recording studio, we jumped at the chance to work there. And since we're all big fans of the hardcore scene in Washington DC, we thought we’d ask the guy who's produced a bunch of DC bands to mix our album. We sent him an email but we weren't expecting a response because we're just an unknown band from Thailand. But a week later he replied with a very positive response to the songs and said that he’d be honoured to be a part of it, which blew us away.

Student Weekly: How would you describe a Degaruda performance for anybody who hasn’t seen you live?

Dino: Lots of people jumping and smiling! The band only does half the work. The rest comes from the crowd. There’ve been a few times when I was on stage and felt that the crowd was performing for us. We love it when our shows are interactive and everybody can have fun, participate and contribute to the overall experience.

Student Weekly: Do you have any exciting events coming up?

Dino: We're doing a small Malaysian tour in April. We're really excited about it because we'll be touring with two of our favourite Malaysian bands — Dirgahayu and Man Under Zero Effort. I’d pay good money just to see a show with those two bands, and now we're actually going to do a couple of shows with them in Penang and Kuala Lumpur. We're really looking forward to it!

 

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