INTERVIEW: Exalter from Bangladesh

Scouring the internet for quality information about Asian punk, hardcore and metal bands is quite rightfully a full-time job. There are just so many phenomenal bands on this great continent of ours but many of them lay in obscurity with little exposure making them impossible to find. Luckily for myself and other fans of Asian musical happenings, there is a dude named Hassan Dozakhi out of Pakistan who for the past few years has already been combing the net conducting interviews, reviews and posting up features about scenes/bands from all over Asia! To make UniteAsia.org a site with the best of content, why conduct my own interviews when I can just have him come on board? He already has a vast database of interviews archived on his own site Eternal Abhorrence – which you all NEED to check out – it’s got a whole WEALTH of Asian music information. Not only that…but he has the gift of writing with incredible eloquence so that’s always a personal pleasure for me.

Here is a great interview with an outstanding thrash metal band from Bangladesh called Exalter. The band has just put up one of the songs from their upcoming EP entitled Democrasodomy that is being put out by Swedish record label Salute Records. The song is called Thrash Resurgence and as soon as you press play, sit back and let that smile crawl across that jaded face of yours…thrash from Bangladesh! Killin’ it!

More info on Exalter can be found on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/ExalterBD

Without further ado – here’s Hassan’s interview with Exalter:

– Hey guys, hails from Pakistan. How are you doing?

Hello war brothers, hails from the land of Bengal. We are doing fine here. Jamming, shows and recording taking up a lot of our schedule but can’t complain at all.

– Thrash Metal has become quite a thing in Bangladesh in recent years, with a lot of bands popping up to play old school thrash metal music. What was Exalter’s inspiration to play this sort of music?

Indeed thrash metal is coming back with all it’s power and might, proving the doubters wrong that thrash was dead! Here in the land of Bengal the thrash revolution is well and truly powerful. Lots of bands in the thrash horde. For us, our inspiration to create a thrash metal band was to show people how fucking heavy, raw and fast metal can get as well as to show the world what Bangladesh has to offer in terms of metal music. We see so many unrests, political shit and torture all around the globe, we just wanted to rebel against that through our music. If you read our lyrics, you can see how enraged we are to see what we see every day. That made us wanted to crush everything and vent our frustration. That’s when thrash came in with all it’s glory to offer us a way! Our music is our weapon against the clueless politicians of Bangladesh or Zionist fuckers of Israel alike.

– If I’m not mistaken, Exalter is a 3-piece. Does it remain so on the live front or is another guitarist added? I’ve heard your song “White Phosphorus Shell” on youtube and I’m interested in how the dynamics change on the live front, considering thrash metal’s intricate tendencies tend to favor bands with 2 guitarists.

You’ve heard right. We are indeed a trio. Basically three ardent thrashers met and here is the dream project. We just didn’t want anyone in our circle and definitely didn’t need anyone to crush and desecrate the ears and stereo boxes of other thrasher! We play as a trio on stage, nobody else joins in since we want to replicate the same noise live as we do in studio. Other bands may prefer two guitarists but for us the bass and drums pounding in under one powerful lead guitar works. And we won’t change it. On stage we dont miss another guitar frankly speaking. From the begining of EXALTER we jammed our songs and prepared ourselves like that.

– Coming towards your upcoming EP – You guys announced “Democrasodomy” a few days ago, can you shed some light on it? How many tracks, when will it be available, etc?

We announced our debut EP, ‘’Democrasodomy’’ recently and we are quite excited about the release. It’s the culmination of hard works we’ve put in for a year. The name itself gives you a hint about our political view. It’ll contain 4 original songs. It’ll come out on two formats, tape and CD. CDs will be out on local label ‘Metal Monger Records’’ and tapes will be out from Thailand on ‘Hellhouse’ records. We are expecting it to be out on early to mid September!

– What can we expect from the EP in terms of musical content?

In terms of content, expect some grindingly heavy music coupled with relentlessly fast drums and tormented vocals. We had an idea about how we wanted our EP to sound and we’ve done that with the rawness and tormented vibe of our music. The lyrics are all about social injustice, resurgence of thrash, ramifications of politics and the punishment that the war brings us to. We condemn Zionists and our debut track ‘White Phosphorus Shell’ was for our Palestinian brothers. All we can say is this EP will give you a massive shot of thrash madness. The goriness of the lyrics and the darkness of our thoughts just makes it better.

– There have been quite a lot of metal gigs in Dhaka this year, with that in mind, can you talk a bit about the metal scene in Bangladesh? What’s your take on it and where do you think it’ll be a few years from now?

The extreme metal scene in Bangladesh is a tightknit brotherhood albeit small but packed with talented people that are passionate about metal as we are. We have black metal people here, death metal people, thrashers, heavy metallers, even a good bunch of metalcore people too. We not necessarily listen to all the genres but we sure appreciate the brotherhood and the close relationship we all share. All metal subgenres here coexist side by side and is appreciated. The music quality is rising along with the facilities, the gigs are getting better with more and more internationally renowned names touring here, The mighty Impiety will be the latest name to tour this holy land. Bangladeshi metal scene has some world class bands and the list is growing everyday. With names as inspiring as Orator, Severe Dementia,Nafarmaan,Abominable Carnivore in our ranks we are very proud. Lots of good contemporary bands in our ranks too like Dissector, Nuclear Winter, Morbidity and Burial dust. Lots of bands are coming that are equally as good so we can indeed say that the future is bright and we have brilliant enough music to make the world sit up and take note of our scene.

– Any plans of touring and playing in other places in the South Asian subcontinent?

We do have plans to tour other countries, we had a tour planned in our neighboring country India this year but the worthless embassy officials managed to fuck up the visa and we missed the gig. But rest assured we have some surprises packed for the future! We might as well play a gig in Pakistan for you in the future! Make sure to invite us!

– Thanks for your time, good luck for the EP and hope to see you guys play some day!

Thanks for having us, it was brilliant to have a chat with warbrothers from Pakistan. Hope to see more of you in the future and hearing more and more of Brilliant Pakistani bands coming out. Best wishes for the zine and the scene. Make sure you buy our EP to support and keep the spirit of thrash metal growing! Hails!