Gutslit in 2023 – (from left to right) Aditya Swaminathan, Aaron Pinto, Aditya Barve, Ishar Hariharan and Gurdip Singh Narang
Gutslit bassist and founder Gurdip Singh Narang still has a decade-old record of the messages and mails exchanged with promoters in Australia from when he was trying to get the Mumbai-based brutal death metal band a spot at Down Under.
Now, they’re finally making their way to Australia for the first time for a six-city run as part of their International Khiladi tour. During the initial discussions for this tour, one of the local promoters reached out and asked if Narang remembered him. The bassist says, “I was like, ‘No, sorry.’ He said, ‘We had spoken to each other way back in 2012 via email, and you had sent me a few CDs across. I’ve been following Gutslit since then.’ It’s been great to build that bond with people over the years.”
This time, the network they’ve built over years of touring across Europe with other extreme metal bands seems to have helped, with Czech goregrind band Gutalax’s vocalist, Maty, also connecting Gutslit to Australian media and event company Grindhead Productions. Narang says, “It was a very good favor from a very good friend, getting the introduction done.” Drummer and visual artist Pinto adds, “They [Grindhead Productions] set it up. They know which cities we should hit, and they also got the support band Gosika. On our end, we just had to figure out the visas and the promos.”
With Australia, Gutslit have now traveled to 25 countries in their 18-year career, making it a record among Indian metal bands. While New Delhi folk-metallers Bloodywood are well on their way to equaling or surpassing the record in due time, Gutslit have been regulars on the European circuit for just over a decade now and hit Japan for the first time in October 2024 to support metal greats Nile.
Prior to the Australia shows that start on Aug. 22, Gutslit’s International Khiladi Tour (whose poster Pinto made with a wink to the 1999 Akshay Kumar-starrer of the same name) will also head to Europe for a festival run from Aug. 1 to Aug. 13, including a return to Brutal Assault festival in Czechia after a decade. “You can see the logo getting bigger, you can see the logo rising up on the [festival] flyer,” Narang says about the change they’ve seen over the years,
For Pinto, to go from “a boy in Andheri” to metal festivals like Obscene Extreme a few times over is a big thing. The drummer adds, “Every day you get up and you try to fit into perspective.” Narang, meanwhile, seriously states he has a “note or two or coins” from every country they’ve visited.
Gutslit are reaping the rewards of persistence. Narang says he used to reach out to people in every country through “all different mediums possible.” He says, “So it started off with Orkut, then Facebook came to the rescue, and now it’s Instagram. Obviously emails on the official sites for festivals, but it’s like a mix and match for everything.” Pinto says it was a lot of “cold calling and figuring out” to line up enough festivals in the year.
It’s also about committing, no matter what, especially with band members juggling professional commitments alongside touring endeavors. For this tour, Gutslit have two different lineups traveling. While Narang and Pinto are constants on both tours, guitarist Aditya Swaminathan and vocalist Aditya Barve are coming to Europe, while Hyderabad vocalist Sagar Iyer (from metal band Hostilian) is filling in for Barve for the Australia leg, joined by permanent guitarist Ishwar Hariharan. Narang gets a detail mixed up at one point, so Pinto gently comes in to correct him. Narang nods, saying, “We’ve actually made two different groups and have two sets of jams.”
The decision to bring in Iyer came after watching him level up over the years with Hostilian, who have shared the stage with Gutslit in the past. Pinto says, “When I saw Sagar again, after all those years since COVID, his voice had just really matured. And he had the gutturals and pig squeals really locked in. It was another, like, level he had unlocked, to be honest.”
The setlist includes material from all their albums, including the recent full-length Carnal, plus a new song that Narang says they’ve recently recorded and are ready to road-test. “I think by the time we are back, it should be out in a month or two, depending on our schedules,” the bassist adds.
Pinto likens this tour to a finale to the Carnal era. He adds, “After that, we move on to new things and change up the entire setlist and everything.”
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