A conversation with Prerna Venkataramanan and Aditya Rajaram, the duo behind the track Metal Mohana, feels less like an interview and more like catching up with old friends. Their enthusiasm is infectious, spilling into every story they tell about their music and creative process.
It takes just one listen to the instrumental track to see why they speak about it with such conviction. The instrumental track opens with the serene strains of Mohanam, a Carnatic raga rendered on the flute and violin. Then, without warning, the ground shifts. Distorted guitars and drums crash into the mix, while guttural vocal growls cut through the arrangement. One moment, you’re immersed in the meditative beauty of a classical performance. Next, you’re instinctively headbanging to the beat.
The track initially found life on Aditya’s gaming laptop. The 26-year-old flautist from Udupi, now based in Bengaluru, began his musical journey as a vocalist before gravitating towards the flute. With a classical foundation and a love for all things rock, the inspiration behind Metal Mohana feels almost inevitable.
For Aditya, sharing his work with the world was the first hurdle. “The idea sounded right to me, but I never really had the courage to show it to anyone. The first time I shared it with Prerna, seeing her reaction made me realise that we could actually do something with it,” he says.
What began as an experiment quickly took on a life of its own. “It was only about two months ago that we posted it on Instagram and the reel blew up,” Prerna recalls with a laugh. “That’s when we thought, maybe we should take this a little more seriously,” she adds, having joined the project almost immediately after Aditya shared an early draft of the track, making Metal Mohana their first release as a duo.
For Prerna, however, the track is about more than combining disparate musical influences. “We don’t call it fusion because it doesn’t strictly follow the rules of Carnatic music,” she explains. Raised in the UK before moving to India, the 23-year-old violinist is trained in both Western classical and Carnatic music. “We prefer the term neoclassical because it borrows certain motifs and embellishments from Carnatic music and places them in a context people wouldn’t normally expect,” she adds.
According to the duo, the heart of the project is a desire to challenge perceptions of what Carnatic-inspired music can sound like. “People tend to think of Carnatic fusion in a very specific way,” Prerna explains. “That’s something we want to change, especially for younger listeners who might find it intimidating. We’re trying to make the music feel more accessible.”
While their musical influences differ, the duo's Carnatic foundation ties their work together. Their creative process is largely collaborative, with each artiste developing sections independently before bringing them together and refining the final piece. “Prerna brings a lot of her Western classical and orchestral influences into the tracks, while I try to bring in rock inspirations. Carnatic music is the common ground between us, both in terms of what we listen to and how we create our music,” says Aditya.
After performing Metal Mohana live for the first time in Bengaluru, they also addressed one of the questions heard most often from their audience: why not add lyrics? “As lead instrumentalists, we have a message we want to convey, and we feel that no lyrics would do justice to it,” they explain.
As for the impact they hope to make, Prerna sums it up beautifully: “Our hearts are in India, and our eyes are on the world.” For them, the goal is not just to make music but to spark curiosity. “We want to invite global listeners to know more about India and learn more about its cultures,” she says.
There’s a constant overlap in conversation as the two finish each other’s sentences and jump in when a thought needs expanding. As in sync in conversation as they are in their music, Prerna and Aditya make it clear that their work is the product of a shared curiosity, a deep respect for their roots, and a desire to reimagine them in a way that feels accessible, contemporary and, above all, undeniably cool.
Metal Mohana is currently streaming on all major music platforms.
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