silverguide.site –

Whether wielded as shock tactic or part of a considered philosophical stance, mockery and distrust of religion have been baked into punk rock’s DNA from the get-go. The Damned, Crass, the Germs and the Dead Kennedys all proffered early potshots and takedowns, and if Bad Brains received a grudging pass for their Rastafari leanings, in general, songs kowtowing to gods or masters were about as likely to win you scene cred as praise for Reagan, cops or nuclear war.

As the 80s ticked into the 90s, however, something curious began to happen: a clutch of bands emerged who were wise to the hardcore classicism of Minor Threat and SSD but also looked east to Krishna consciousness. Leading the way was Ray “Raghunath” Cappo who, barely into his 20s, had already broken down walls as frontman for Youth of Today, a New York band who combined a straight-edge philosophy with animal-rights advocacy and a sense of full-throated positivity. He and guitarist John Porcelly had “witnessed enough young people screwing up their lives that we thought, as simple as it is, it’s a positive message. Let’s rally behind it,” he says. “And it became big, bigger than we expected.”

While the band grew in popularity and influence, Cappo was conflicted. His father had been in a long-term coma, and, when he died in 1988, the singer found himself at a turning point. Having explored various schools of religious thought – Christianity, Buddhism and Krishna consciousness – he travelled to India to become a monk. “It was like a rug being pulled out from underneath me,” says Cappo of his father’s death. “It made me question what I wanted to do with this life.”

The time in India was illuminating and restorative, but Cappo found this new sense of balance tested upon his return. “I hadn’t really integrated spirituality into my life,” he says. “I compartmentalised. On the one hand I was this punk, hardcore guy, and on the other I was the spiritual monk. I hadn’t figured out how those could walk in the same body.” Cappo found his answer in the Hindu scripture of the Bhagavad Gita, drawing inspiration from the story of Arjuna, a warrior who overcame his doubts and was guided toward his true duty by Krishna. “I realised I was professing to be a follower of this book but that I was running from the battlefield,” he says. “The Bhagavad Gita is about integrating your spiritual cause with what you love to do. It’s about pursuing it in a way that connects you to your own enlightenment and the enlightenment of others.”

Cappo put these ideals into practice with Shelter, a band originally conceived as a solo project and a farewell to the material world of punk rock. He released a first record in 1990, the same year as Youth of Today’s swansong. An album soon followed, this time by a full band of “celibate monks and Krishna devotees” whose music combined punk rock heft with Hare Krishna chants, Hindu iconography and lyrics espousing the Gita’s teachings. Dubbed – in some quarters derisively – “Krishnacore”, the band released a steady stream of records throughout the 90s, with their influence ranging from a trend for tulasi beads in the mosh pit to the sparking of genuine spiritual awakenings. The band signed to heavy metal powerhouse Roadrunner Records for their 1995 album Mantra, which led to them sharing festival stages with Slayer, Venon and the reformed Sex Pistols. They also paved the way for a clutch of similarly minded bands in Prema, Baby Gopal and most, notably, 108.

Formed by singer Vic DiCara (AKA Vraja Kishor), 108 presented a far more intense, glowering proposition to the irrepressibly positive Shelter. “Our thing was like ‘killer of the soul! Only a demon dines on the flesh of the dead!’” says Kate Reddy (AKA Keli Lalita), who played guitar on the band’s second album, Songs of Separation. “For me, spiritual life was this very intense and sometimes painful process of unraveling my anarthas – my negative tendencies – and stripping away ego. I think people have a misinterpretation of what spiritual process looks like. It’s not this smooth, beautiful, effulgent thing where you get touched by the fairy wand and gallop into the sunset. It’s a lot of hard work, dedication and self discipline. 108 was very honest about that.”

Both punk rock and eastern thought had been part of Reddy’s life from an early age. The two worlds coalesced as she became immersed in the New York hardcore scene and the melting pot of the city’s pre-gentrification Lower East Side, where rubbing shoulders with gang members, drug users, artists and Hare Krishna monks was par for the course. “There were some older Krishna people that were super benevolently loving to us,” she says. “Where most adults thought we were fuck-ups, they were like the teachers that you dream of having.”

Reddy’s journey led her to life in the Philadelphia Temple with DiCara and other young punks. While she speaks warmly of temple life, she’s also frank in terms of its realities. “The Temple was so patriarchal,” she says. “I was like, what am I doing here? I’m a feminist studies major! But I wanted the other parts of what the temple gave me, so I thought I’d hang out there and try to change it. That was my plan: I was gonna take the patriarchy down. So far, we’ve made some dents, but it hasn’t completely happened.”

Drummer Chris Daly also played on 108’s Songs of Separation and toured the country with the band alongside Shelter. “That tour was a travelling Krishna fest,” he says with a smile. “We had a retired school bus that was converted into a kind of travelling temple. As they were rolling down the highways they’d be having Krishna programmes on the bus. It was wild, and probably the closest thing to the hardcore version of being a Deadhead: the self-sufficient cooking, setting up in parking lots, passing out pamphlets and talking to people.”

Despite the buzz of playing music with people he loved in front of thousands, the experience wasn’t without its negatives. “108 were a very militant band,” Daly says. “There were brawls at our shows between the band and people who came to pass out flyers comparing Krishna consciousness to Nazi indoctrination.”

As the 1993 stint with Shelter drew to a close, so did Daly’s time with 108, but the tour opened up new avenues alongside Shelter guitarist Norman Brannon. “That planted the seed for doing a band together,” he says. “We both loved 10,000 Maniacs and Ride and all this weird shit.” In 1994, alongside bassist Scott Winegard, the trio formed Texas Is the Reason – which Daly jokes “might have been only Krishna emo band”, though the members’ relationships to the movement varied wildly – and found kinship with other bands playing melodic, alt-rock edged emo such as the Promise Ring, Sense Field and Jimmy Eat World.

It might not have achieved the same cut-through as other punk subgenres emo, crust or metalcore, but Krishnacore acts spread across the world to Australia, Russia and the Philippines. And while Swear Down, a new, self-proclaimed “Hindu beatdown” act from Kent, pursue a different school of thought (frontman Martin Grimwood follows Shaivism, rather than Krishna consciousness) they are nevertheless informed by the likes of Shelter and 108. “I became a practising Hindu in 2017 and I’ve always believed, musically, in that ‘write what you know’ ethos,” Grimwood says. “I can talk about being working-class, and I’ll normally end up mentioning Shiva. That’s like me doing my prayer.”

Today, Cappo and Reddy teach yoga and remain immersed in spiritual life. Daly, meanwhile, describes himself as a believer rather than a devotee or disciple, dividing his time between parenthood, cutting hair, his stripped-down rock band Ravens and touring with the re-formed Texas Is the Reason. “It’s still in my life,” he says of Krishna consciousness. “I hope I live for a long time and get to see my kids do wonderful things, but the cycle of birth and death doesn’t scare me as much any more. I’ve dealt with an incredible amount of personal loss and I’ve spent a lot of time in my head trying to make sense of it. The idea of the body being a vessel and a vehicle for the soul, that just makes sense to me.”

• The 30th anniversary edition of Texas Is the Reason’s Do You Know Who You Are is out now via Revelation Records. Ray Cappo will front both Youth of Today and Shelter on 18/19 November at the Dome, London.