Even at their most relaxed and outgoing, the guys in Indian are still pretty fucking intimidating. When I walk into their practice space for our interview, they invite me to help myself to a Heineken from the well-stocked mini fridge by the door, but then guitarist Dylan O’Toole and bassist Ron Defries each sit down in a corner at the other end of the room, backed up against a head-high black wall of amplifiers. They point me to a chair in front of the trap kit, about as far as it’s possible to be from either of them given all the gear in the room. Drummer Bill Bumgardner is sitting behind the kit, poking around in a dugout box with a one-hitter and apparently uninterested in the proceedings. It’s hard to remember what question I wanted to ask first. Without plucking a string or even standing up, Indian can give off the kind of menacing vibe most metal bands achieve only in the deepest moments of their sets.
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I know I’m projecting a bit because I’ve seen Indian’s live show, a five-alarm hellstorm of doom that’s made fans out of Minsk, Raise the Red Lantern, Yakuza, Sweet Cobra, and pretty much every other notable heavy band in town. And their new second album—the vinyl-only Slights and Abuse, on the local metal label Seventh Rule—is so deeply, irresistibly evil that it’s made me a slave to its incomprehensible wickedness, like some creeping horror out of a Lovecraft story. Even if they were the warmest of dudes in person, I’m sure I’d still be a little on edge.
According to O’Toole the album is a condemnation of mindless submission and service, specifically the “comatose way in religion of thinking toward doing something faith based, certainly in a sense where there aren’t really tangible reasons behind the dedication or sacrifice.” I suggest that listeners might have a hard time teasing this theme out of the songs, given that there’s no lyric sheet and O’Toole sings in an inhuman death-metal shriek—his words aren’t exactly, you know, intelligible. “They aren’t to the untrained ear,” he answers levelly.
sharp darts
Sat 12/8, 9 PM, Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, 773-227-4433 or 866-468-3401, $8.
