Entertainment
Space Is All We Have with Shashank Bhatnagar. Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Bengaluru band Space Is All We Have move well beyond their space-rock and ambient roots with “Undertow,” enlisting New Delhi throat-shredder Shashank Bhatnagar (from Bengaluru metallers Inner Sanctum) for a molten riff-fest.
Part of their upcoming second album that’s slated to drop next month, Space Is All We Have offer rap, djent and nu-metal styles on “Undertow,” their first single of the year. It follows similarly heavy singles like “Broken,” featuring vocalist Munz TDT (from folk-metal band The Down Troddence). Songwriter, producer and guitarist Krishna M. Sujith (who now doubles up on guitar for rap star Hanumankind) says they were finishing up “Undertow” when they performed in New Delhi in 2024 and thought about bringing on Bhatnagar to fill in on growling duties for Munz on “Broken.” Krishna adds, “But then later it hit me that he could do a full blown feature on another song on the album itself and we decided to go ahead with ‘Undertow.’ I sent Shashank the song and he loved the idea and was more than excited to feature.”
Bhatnagar, for his part, says he hadn’t heard about Space Is All We Have before, but went on Inner Sanctum drummer Ujjwal K.S.’s word about a band that the Bengaluru sticksman had counted among his peers. Bhatnagar adds, “I heard it the song and I loved it. The vocalist [Shiyasz Abdul] was a great rapper and the words were quite interesting. I was supposed to just scream here and there.” He went on to add clean vocal melodies as well over Abdul’s rap, which he says “came about randomly and sounded nice. “I like doing what the song requires and whatever comes out, it does,” Bhatnagar adds.
Lyrically, Abdul notes that there’s an introspective edge to the track, but it’s “nothing profound.” He adds, “The lyrics came from a mix of anger, self-reflection, and humor—the kind of headspace everyone finds themselves in at some point. Sometimes the expectations we put on ourselves collapse, sometimes we trip over our own flaws, but underneath it all there’s still that drive to stay aware and awake, making that darkness conscious.”
Like the frantic energy of the song, the band’s guitarist and composer Shashank Akella managed, conceptualized and executed the music video for “Undertow,” filming in a warehouse-type building with all the members moshing, raging and jumping along with Bhatnagar. Krishna says, “All throughout he [Akella] knew exactly what he wanted us to do and we just followed, it was exhausting by the end of the day but we had a lot of fun. The video was shot at our friends Mohan and Freeman’s workshop. Funnily, they were working there while the shoot was going on that day.” Bhatnagar recalls being called to a remote industrial block in a village with very little phone network but once things got rolling, he was in on the fun. He says, “We clicked really fast, I love all the guys. The song has grown on us like crazy, so we thought, ‘Let’s have some fun.’”
Space Is All We Have’s next album—the follow-up to 2020’s Thank You, Universe!—has 11 tracks, including their recent singles from 2024 and “Undertow.” There’s also a drum and bass remix of a song, an experiment they also carried out on the first with DJ-producer Synths Back taking on their live staple “She’s From Venus.” Krishna adds, “An electronic remix is something we like to put in each of our record as we like to showcase some of the local talent outside of out soundscape on our record.”