Bodisartha looks for revolution
The band offers free downloads of its entire album.
Published Oct. 17, 2006
Bodisartha isn't a band you'll read about in popular print or Internet publications.
In fact, unless you're looking for the band specifically, chances are you won't find it at all.
For those not familiar with the band or its material, the band's name stems from Bodisartha's front man Josh Thomas's interest in Eastern religion.
"I've always been into Eastern religion and Hermann Hesse," Thomas said. "It's a mixture of 'Siddhartha' by Hermann Hesse and Bodhisattva,a character in Hinduism."
The connotations of peace and serenity usually associated with Eastern religion do not bode well with the screams and metal riffs of Find Yourself Getting Lost.
One listen through the band's first album is guaranteed to generate some puzzled faces as to the nature of the name.
The album, released earlier this year, was promoted in a way entirely unheard of in the music community: for download free of charge in its entirety.
"This was more of a promotional thing," Thomas said. "We decided instead of milking every single dollar out of the CD, we'd rather have more people listen to it in the hopes that they would come out to a lot of our shows and when we put out another CD, they'll buy that one."
Despite whatever generosity that might be apparent from its promotion, at times, the band is ridiculously hard to take seriously.
Its news release has spread through every facet of the media and the entirety of the Internet's twisted mass of information.
The release opens with the statement, "It's hard to say if the members of Bodisartha even care about 'being successful' in the music industry anymore ... practice? What's that? No need to kill the spontaneity of the moment by playing in hiding, save it for the stage."
If the band isn't going to take its music seriously, then the precedent has been set. This is just for fun.
"We play music, but we're not expecting the million-dollar record deal or anything anytime soon," Thomas said. "We've been around long enough to get over that."
Thomas continued to spout messages rife with images of the apocalypse and corporate corruption.
"I think that right now it's an important time of history for there to be lots and lots of people who are trying to put out things with differing opinions from the popular," Thomas said. "There is definitely a need right now for revolutionary stories and people to (be) willing to stand up to governments and things like that."
On the next album, Thomas said that such themes will appear and that the style would change radically.
"I really did get tired of everyone comparing us to Nirvana ... the new stuff is going to sound a lot different," Thomas said. "It'll be more textured."