Guitarist John Simon Fallon: This wonderful experience in India may find its way in our songs

Canadian black/death metal band, The Order Of Chaos performed on the very first day of Alcheringa - IIT Guwahati's college cultural fest, easily the biggest of its kind in the North East. The National Herald sat down with John Simon Fallon, the founder-lead guitarist of the band to know about his maiden India tour.

Q. This is your very first tour of India . How is the Indian experience?

A. Amazing. Warm, polite, welcoming hospitality and so are the people. First we landed in Mumbai after 30 hours of continuous travel and rested there for two days. Then we moved on to Calcutta and proceeded to IIT Kharagpur in the first week of January for our first show. Our gig in IIT Guwahati was scheduled on February 1. So we went to Goa - Vagator - just go Belly up for a week. We wanted to go there for better air quality and made a beach holiday out of it as well.

Q. What prompted you to accept this gig?

A. Our bass player, Barrett, had played here at IIT Guwahati two years back as part of 'All Else Failed'. It was he who suggested the core festival committee to get our band over here and so here we are.

Q. The Order Of Chaos sounds interesting, how did you settle on the name?

A. I was studying at the University of Concordia in Edmonton. There I had to attend three compulsory religious classes. One of them was Christian stuff that I didn't believe in. During, Tiamat versus Marduk, which dwelled on organised Chaos and stuff, though I was not paying much attention but I remember hearing about order and chaos and a phrase popped in my head which became the name of the band.

Q. Have you experienced Indian music and or culture first hand before this?

A. Not really no. We are not really exposed to too much of it. We do have a lot of cultural activities in Edmonton but sadly we did not get exposed to Indian culture or music first hand.

Q. Now that you have experienced a bit of Indian music and culture, would you be open to any collab or maybe incorporate Indian music in your reportoire?

A. Yes sure.....some of the scales that are fundamental to the Indian music - if that can be harnessed to create a kickass song, then we are very much up for it.

At the minimum, this wonderful experience may find its way in one of our songs.

Q. One thing that really stood out in this tour?

A. Its probably how friendly and polite the people are here. The food has really been great specially the street chai.

Q. What about one thing you disliked?

A. It definitely has to be the air quality I am sorry to say. That is the only complain I have. But to be fair we think we are spoilt in a way from where we come. The air is refresh the but of course there is a price today really really very cold.

Apart from air quality issues it has been really great and yeah well mosquitoes as well....(pointing to several red spots on the sheen and the calf)....We do have mosquitoes there but this ones are really big and tenacious.

Q. You did experience snatches of the rock competition, Rock-O-Phonix at Alcheringa, what do you think about the quality....

A. Truly speaking, I experienced some great musicianship....... truly some good craftsmanship on drumming and guitars.

Q. You debuted three songs only for India.....

A. Yes these three songs that we did live for the very first time and it happened to be in India. We did them here and at Kharagpur as well. They are : 'Believe In The Dream' - about trusting your instincts; 'Silerlining' - about a feeling after making some line-up changes. The third one is no named yet - we are calling it 'John 1' because it's written by our bassist. You will find this song in our next yet untitled album that we are going to release towards the end of this year.