Bassic Wisdom

Interview With Greg Howe

2011-01-18T10:39:00.003+05:30

To say that meeting guitar legend Greg Howe was among the greatest moments of my life would be an understatement. To say that interviewing above mentioned legend was an honour would be another understatement. I caught up with guitar virtuoso Greg Howe on the eve of his debut gig in India and apart from speaking about India’s weather and the traffic regulations here, we also spoke about Michael Jackson, Planet X and VSTs. Read on for more…

HB: Hi Greg, I’m Madhav from Headbangers India and we’re the online partners for your India tour.
GH: Great!

HB: Is this your first time in India? How do you like the place?
GH: Yeah, this is our first time here. Everything’s been great, I’m looking forward to seeing more of the place as the tour goes on.

HB: We’ll start with a basic question. What music do you listen to?
GH: Hmm, I listen to everything but surprisingly, I listen to a lot of mainstream music that can be considered pop. Top 40 stuff. I’ve done so much listening to so much complex music over the years that I really welcome music that’s relatable to a lot of people. And I actually enjoy a lot of the stuff. I like the ‘hook’ element that a lot of the music has. But honestly, I listen to everything. Jazz, rock and metal, country, hip-hop; you name it, I listen to it.

HB: So does this also answer the questions about why you’ve played with *NSync and Justin Timberlake as well as Jordan Rudess and Jason Becker?
GH: Yes, I just play music that I like. It’s not about genre. Like I said, I listen to everything. When people ask me what music I like, my answer is, “I like music that’s good,” and that comes in a lot of different styles.

HB: For you as a guitarist, what’s the difference between you between playing your solo Greg Howe music and playing for say, Justin Timberlake?
GH: Well, difference between playing for a pop band like that is the role I take; I play the role of a supporting musician. In those scenarios, I don’t really have a say in the creative process. So my job is just to re-enact whatever is recorded and to bring to life the vision of the artist. And that’s a different type of challenge. Sometimes, it gets very challenging; there are so many different tones, some of the rhythm playing is pretty impressive actually. Playing with a band, that way, is a very different thing.

HB: In another online interview of yours, you’ve mentioned that you decided to make a career in music when you were 15 years old. Now, looking back at that decision, do you feel you were too young to have made such a life changing judgment?
GH: Ah, yeah I’m glad I decided at such a young age that I knew what I wanted to do, because sometimes people don’t figure out what they want to be until you’re older, and you can still be successful then but it’s nice to get a good head start, right.

HB: Your debut solo album ‘Greg Howe’ was ranked in the All-Time Top 10 List of Shred Albums in 2009 alongside legendary albums such as Cacophony’s ‘Speed Metal Symphony’, Joe Satriani’s ‘Surfing With The Alien’, Yngwie Malmsteen’s ‘Rising Force’ etc. At the time of release, did you ever expect the album to have such a global, far reaching effect?
GH: No, not really. I don’t think so. I was just so happy to have a record contract; I was so pleased to know that the album would be in the stores

HB: Back in 1988…
GH: Yeah, cause I was pretty young then. I just thought, “Wow, I have a record deal,” I didn’t think it was going to have the impact that it did. It was great that it did, though.

HB: And you still play stuff from that album?
GH: I think I should, ‘cause that album sold very well and there are still a lot of bands from that era. My music has changed so much over the years that there are different people that like different things. A lot of guys from a lot of bands tell me, “I don’t like your earlier stuff, I love your newer stuff,” and a lot of guys say, “I wish you go back to your early stuff.” So I really try to mix it up and give everybody what they like.

HB: In 1997, you played guitar for Michael Jackson across Europe and Asia as part of the HIS-tory tour, and you were still pretty young then. Tell us about the entire experience as well as being a part of one of the most popular and influential concert tours in musical history.
GH: Well, I was actually just filling in for Jennifer Batten. I was on the road for only 5 weeks, so I didn’t do the whole tour. It was amazing. I had never played to an audience anywhere near that much. I mean, the largest audience I’d played to prior to that was probably 1200, maybe 1500 people and I was immediately thrown into playing in front of 65,000 people, and that was pretty crazy. At first, there was a lot of anxiety. You get nervous, a little. But fun nervous.

HB: It was a big deal…
GH: Yeah, it was a big deal. The tour was amazing. We were treated in the highest fashion. We had a private jet just for the band, you know. Best food, top of the line in that sense. And, oh just being able to watch Michael Jackson up close. You don’t know how brilliant he really is until you see him. It’s really amazing. I’ve worked with a lot of big time musicians but I’ve never had the experience where someone had that much presence that you can almost physically feel on stage. As soon as you walk on to the stage, you could feel it. And he was very humble, and always aware of what was going on. He was the type of person that, in the middle of all that dancing and performing, he would come up to you after the show sometimes and say, “sounds great, just, third song, second verse, there was a part that you played, just try to fix it, work on it.”

HB: He actually knew everything that was going on?
GH: He was hearing everything! He was just, just on another level. Really amazing. Sometimes, I’d get mesmerized watching him, sometimes forget what I was supposed to be playing.

HB: Sounds fantastic. Must’ve been a great experience! Ok, Greg, you also play for another band, Howe II. Have you ever felt that you’d be able to do ‘more’ with your music if you were in a band rather than playing solo? I’m thinking along the terms of maybe Paul Gilbert who was big, very big and he did achieve a lot of fame and recognition with his solo music but Mr. Big, with Billy Sheehan and Eric Martin is really phenomenonally huge, bigger than the solo guitarist Paul Gilbert…
GH: Yeah, whenever you’re doing music that’s more mainstream and appeals to people that are not necessarily in a niche market, then obviously, your chances of success are much bigger. And that’s one of the reasons, I mean, I’m not looking for anything, I feel very successful but I’m not pursuing this thing for success, I’m pursuing for the same reason that a lot of my albums change from time to time, because I always like to get into territory I haven’t explored. I like to do things that keep me inspired. And I’ve done a lot of instruments and I’ve been in that world for a long time and I’m really looking forward to doing things that are very much more relatable and you know, jumping of the drum riser, smiling at people, not concentrating on every note you’re playing…

HB: Just having fun…
GH: Yeah, and I think that’s a good question, perhaps, the answer is yes.

HB: The ‘Greg Howe sound’ is a very unique one. Was it a conscious effort on your part to make music like no one else or did it just happen?
GH: Thank you. I think its something that just happened. I mean, my influences were of such a wide range. I’m literally the kind of person who’d listen to George Benson, then take that CD out and put in Yngwie Malmsteen, take that CD out and put in Van Halen or you know, Stevie Ray Vaughn. All of them were equally enjoyable for me, and I would always hear things from different artists and think, “wouldn’t it be great if that guy did more of this,” or “wouldn’t it be great if that guy had more of that.” So I always liked to take things from all these guys that I liked and put it in a pot and stir it up, and I think that’s where my sound comes from.

HB: Of all the albums and projects and albums you’ve worked on, which one would you say is your favourite or most enjoyable album?
GH: Oh, the most enjoyable album was the most recent one, ‘Sound Proof.’ That was a lot of fun; there wasn’t a lot of preparing for it, just went to the studio, got some riffs, got some ideas, decided to jam it out and see what happens. It was a lot of fun, very relaxing and I think that the album feels very spontaneous, light-hearted, and not very serious. Some of them feel more serious cause I was more serious then, and I wanted to capture something that reflects where I am in my life, and right now, things are going really, really good. Life’s fun and I wanted that in my album.

HB: ‘Sound Proof’ was the first Greg Howe album to get on to iTunes and I think the previous albums are slowly getting there as well. Does this shift from CDs to digital media make a difference for you? In the age of music piracy, do illegal downloads really affect the income and profits you make?
GH: Well, I’ll try to answer the question in a way that doesn’t get into too many things that are not very important. The reality is that the record labels are much more affected by this than the artist, and that’s why in the industry, they always tell artists, “If you’re going to get an advance, get the biggest advance you can.” You want to get the biggest amount up front as possible. Without trying to get into weird territory, record labels have the tendency of getting a little…

HB: Yeah, it is their money at the end.
GH: Right, so I think what’s happening is good for the industry. Every time there’s a transition, things get uncomfortable for a while, so everyone takes a hit but ultimately, it’s good, cause it puts a lot more of the creative control back on the artist. The internet allows the artist to have opportunities without being at the mercy of the record labels. So I think what’s happening is that slowly, record labels are losing the control; creativity, money, everything. So yeah, maybe my record sales are affected by it but the monetary issue is not affected.

HB: And downloading has its benefits too. In a place like India, we don’t have access to the newest releases or anything other than mainstream music. If it weren’t for the internet and illegal downloading, we probably never would’ve heard of Greg Howe!
GH: Yeah, that’s right! The same thing happened in Russia. I had no idea people even knew me there. We have no distribution in Russia. But we went there, and we had all these fans! For me, what happens now is that because people know my music, they want me to come and play live and that’s great. I have no problem with that. It’s just that it’s reversed. Record labels want to promote the artist so that they can sell CDs. I’d rather promote the record to sell the artist.

HB: Alright. This next question is a very personal one. A friend of mine, a very good guitarist, recently started composing a lot of music using virtual instruments and VSTs. His argument was that ‘when you play the guitar, you are limited by your own abilities and the instruments at your disposal but when you program music using software, you are limited only by your own creativity.’ Does this statement relate to you in any way?
GH: Well, that is personal but it is a very subjective idea. I mean, I understand his point and I would never judge that but personally, I have to know that what I do on my records I can do live. For me, creativity is very important but I want to be sure that I’m creating things that are not realistic for me to reproduce live. ‘Cause, I can do that. I can create music that is unbelievable, but I don’t do that because I want my music to reflect honestly what I’m doing. But, that might change. That doesn’t mean I’m always going to feel that way. Someday, I might decide that I just want to create something; create something that I don’t even want to play live. Someday, I just might do that. But as of now, I want to make sure that I’m doing in the studio is a reflection what I want to be doing live.

HB: There were some rumours about you joining and playing guitar for the prog metal band Planet X. What’s the update on that, is that really happening?
GH: No… What happened is that when I first moved to California in 2005, Tony MacAlpine had just left the band, so Derek Sherinan had contacted me about the idea of me joining them. They also had a tour in Australia that was coming up pretty quickly, so they were pretty desperate. So I met with them. At that time, music was very comfortable for me and the thought of doing math on stage, and the amount of time I had to prepare for the Australian tour just wasn’t enough. And as much as I respect that kind of music, it’s not my favourite music to play. I tend to lead more towards funky, improv kind of stuff. That stuff (Planet X) is very calculative, fast, metal stuff. So at the last minute, I decided against it. I respect them very much. We just left to do our own thing.

HB: You were endorsed with the world famous ESP guitars and you recently shifted to the relatively unknown Laguna guitars? Why?
GH: Um, yeah there are some reasons that happened that I shouldn’t discuss publically but yeah, ESP is a great company, they’re still a great company. The people I was dealing with directly are still friends of mine. The issues that came up are issues that are best left not brought up to the public. It was nothing really bad, but, just…

HB: So why Laguna? Why not Fender or Gibson or any other guitar manufacturer?
GH: Ah, Laguna. They’re also a very good brand. Well, I’d got to a point where I thought to myself, “I’ve had some bad experiences.” Now here’s the problem with endorsement deals. A lot of people want endorsements, because they want free gear. That’s it. My thing with an endorsement deal is, I really just want to have a relationship that is mutually beneficial; I’m helping them, they’re happy about me and my artistry, they’re helping me by providing gear. It’s important that we have a dialogue going; discuss game plans etc. That’s the kind of relationship I want. And the truth of the matter is, any company out there can make a nice guitar, a beautiful guitar. So then it comes down to your preferences, and relationships. If you’ve got a company that’s a bunch of nice guys but their product isn’t cool, that’s not going to work and vice versa. There has to be a balance between the product that I like and people I like working with. And I can settle for a compromise; a product that’s not particularly great but works for me, and people I like to have a relationship with. The thing with Laguna is, they actually approached me. I’d decided that I’m going to go back to what I used to do; assembling my own guitars. I’m not going to deal with this any more. Sometimes, there’s just too much political stuff. They (Laguna) approached me with a guitar that I wasn’t particularly crazy about. I told them, “Thank you very much. It’s a nice guitar but not what I’m looking for.” So then, I didn’t hear from there for almost a year. Then, they came back and said, “We’d really like you to come on board with us.” So I told them that I’d tried out their guitar, it just wasn’t my thing, and then they asked what it would take for me to use their guitar. So I just started naming them. “I need this, I need that, I need this…” and they said, "cool." So they basically let me design my own guitar. That was great, and they’ve been great.

HB: The relationship is very important…
GH: Yeah, it is! And a lot of them are guitar players themselves and they understand…

HB: Laguna’s motto is “By the guitarists, for the guitarists…”
GH: Yeah! The company is really great to work with, the people are very cool and they’re interested in having the dialogue, creating plans. They offer ideas, I listen to it and vice versa. It’s a really fun thing, it’s great.

HB: Ok, this is out last question. Having played so many shows, toured the world so many times and played with so many great musicians, I’m sure you have loads of tips and advice for upcoming guitarists and musicians. Care to share any with us?
GH: My advice is that you have to make sure that this is what you want to do. You have to absolutely love music. The problem that I see with a lot of young, up-and-coming musicians is that they want the cheque, they want the success. And when that’s not happening, they start to get discouraged. You have to really love it. Now for me, there was no other choice. I believe that the music chose me, I didn’t choose it, and presumed it would be just as much fun reaching the goal. When you have that much passion, your chances of success are so much better, and when you really don’t ‘need’ the success, it doesn’t matter any more. If success is all you desire, then there’s a part of you that’s in it for the wrong reasons. You have to make sure you’re very passionate about the music. That would be my advice.

HB: Thank you for your time, Greg, it’s been great talking to you. Best of luck for the rest of your tour!
GH: Thank you!

Album Review: Demonic Resurrection - The Return To Darkness (2010)

2010-11-05T11:46:00.002+05:30

Many years ago, a young man (in his teens, perhaps) named Sahil Makhija picked up a guitar and started playing basic chords and scales. Ok, so there’s nothing great about that, we’ve all been there, done that. Sahil took it one step further, added distortion and started riffing, playing songs by Metallica and Iron Maiden (he may deny it but I’m sure he did). Over the years, he found a bunch of other guys that included another guitarist, a bass player, a drummer and a keyboardist, and he formed a band. Ok, nothing great about that too, most of us did that too. But what this young man from Mumbai has done since then is probably more than what any of us could hope to achieve in a life time. Guitarist and vocalist of India’s biggest metal band Demonic Resurrection, drummer of the brutal death metal Reptilian Death, owner of Demonstealer Records, producer of some of India’s biggest metal releases, I could go on with this list. From being something of a practical joke among the so called Indian elitist metalheads, he has become a cornerstone upon which Indian metal has been built and the proof of that is in Demonic Resurrection’s 2010 release, ‘The Return To Darkness’. This album marks the end of the Warrior’s trilogy, which began with ‘Beyond The Darkness’, passed through ‘A Darkness Descends’ and finally, ended at ‘Return To Darkness’

The moment you put the CD in, you hear the strains of ‘Between Infinity And Oblivion,’ the instrumental intro to the album. The entire feel and atmosphere of the music takes you into Middle Earth, and if you close your eyes, you can almost see the Warrior (think along the lines of Aragorn from LOTR) riding towards the dark, misty mountains, where evil dwells behind every bend. The music almost sounds ‘impatient’, if I could say that, as if to warn the listener about the impending horror. And as the next track ‘Where Dreams And Darkness Unite’ begins, you know that this is what you’ve been waiting for. What hits you over the next hour or so is a sonic boom, a flurry of brutal riffing, intense drumming and ‘epic’ keyboards.

Epic. That’s the word I would associate with the album on so many levels. One: The theme behind the music. As I mentioned above, there’s a very fantasy world sort of theme in the music, and although the riffs are straight out brutal, I can practically hear bloody swords and shields clash against each other, and the air echoing with the screams of the wounded. Even the front album artwork bears similarities to Isengard, laid to waste by the Ents. The word ‘epic’ undoubtedly fits into the entire scenario. Two: The keyboards. Choral highs and vast expanses of synth that come crashing down in your head, definitely ‘epic’. Three: The length of the songs and the musical segments and variations within the songs. Ok, it can probably be attributed to the keyboards again but the entire composition and the positioning of the riffs with respect to each other definitely make it worthy of the ‘epic’ tag. Four: The grand scale of production of the album, the artwork, marketing, the box-set all makes up for another ‘epic’ moment.

Some tracks on the album really stand out. Lord Of Pestilence, for one. There’s a very ‘Opeth’ feel to the song, with some clean bits and some destructive parts spread over 11 long minutes. ‘Dismembering The Fallen’ is probably the most brutal track on the album. Splendid basslines and good guitar and keyboard harmonies, but its all nothing compared to the magnus-opus, the final track on the album ‘Omega.’ Chuggy riffs, a killer bass-tapping bit, awesome guitar solos and loads of progressive elements, all rolled into a 14 minute long package. When you listen to this song, you’ll realize how fitting the word ‘epic’ is. The album production is fantastic, the guitars sound rich and crunchy but I must say that I would’ve enjoyed the albums more had the keyboards been less prominent and vocals been a little less processed and more ‘raw’. The over-slick sound doesn’t entirely capture the brutality that the band exudes when they play live; although good production can’t really be a flaw, can it? I also felt that the clean vocals seemed weak at parts, although none of this can be taking as a reason to not pick up the album. It’s a master class, probably one of the best Indian albums I have and will listen to for a long time. A thoroughly professional release from one of India’s finest metal bands. Honestly, I didn’t expect anything less.

Interview With Vishal J Singh/Amogh Symphony

2010-11-05T11:36:00.003+05:30

HB: Hi Vishal, good to have you here. Tell us more about yourself.

VS: Hello, it’s great to be here. I’m Vishal J Singh, the one man member of Amogh Symphony, a progressive death/experimental project based in Mumbai. I’m a guitarist, drummer and keyboardist, and in the recent past, I’ve worked/am still working with artists such as Noesis from Chicago, Sleep Terror from Seattle, the Japanese Chapman Stick player/music producer Daisuke, Korean electro-percussionist/multi-instrumentalist Chung Reeh for Project Cyberasia (Tokyo) and groove maestro drummer Jim Richman (Washington). Apart from the metal that I play, I also do jingles for TV ads such as the theme for Delhi Daredevils and Complan, among others.

HB: Amogh Symphony is as different a band name as I’ve heard in ages. What does it mean?

VS: Amogh stands for ‘perfection’ or ‘accuracy’. My father, the late Jitendra Singh had kept this name. I added the ‘Symphony’ because of my influences from western classical and orchestral music. When I started this project, I had a concept of ‘fusing the symphony orchestration concept with progressive death metal’, and that is what this is.

HB: Who are the musicians that recorded your EP and releases to date? Have you found anyone for your live gigs? I heard you were looking…

VS: I recorded everything in the EP and in my debut album ‘Abolishing The Obsolete System’ by myself. My close buddy/brother Sunny D’Souza collaborated some guitar solos with me in the 2005 released EP ‘Ashwamedh’. Composer, Singer and Guitarist Prashant Vadhyar, and Ramki of Chicago, USA based death metal band ‘Noesis’ collaborated with guest vocals in ‘Abolishing The Obsolete System’.

About these guys, Sunny is a session guitarist and guitar teacher. We parted ways after ‘Ashwamedh’ to form a guitar instrumental project named ‘Project X’ for fans of shredding. However, due to our hectic schedules, we could not continue with the project and so it’s pretty much dead now. Prashant and I compose and produce music for TV commercials, short films, etc. Ramki is a death metal vocalist whom I know from the past 4 years.

I have not been very active in the Mumbai extreme metal live scene since 2005. Once again, I am trying to make a line-up of musicians to perform live with Amogh Symphony. It’s very hard to find musicians for such music because of two reasons. Firstly, lots of patience and time is required to play such music. For me, it’s easy to play and not to get tired of it because I spent five years with this project until now. Convincing other members to follow your writing and expecting them to read your mind to understand everything is one of the toughest things to do. I think that’s why great new musicians like Misha (Bulb), Keith Merrow and Ben (Cloudkicker) are doing everything alone but they are still trying to make full line-ups. Secondly, there is no money in progressive music. Indian music industry is a peculiar one and many great session players and music composers are living a financially weak life. I have to make sure that doesn’t matter if I get returns from the shows or not but at least these guys should be paid well. Keeping all these things in mind, once again I am auditioning musicians for the line-up. I have received demo audios from many musicians around the globe showing interest for sessions. If I can’t find the right musicians, least all I can do is that I will continue with my Guitars, Gear / Set-up with Laptops, Synths and other digital + analog toys. Apart from Amogh Symphony, I am working on a bunch of projects with musicians from United States, Brazil and Japan. I will keep you all updated with these on MySpace.

HB: Oh, that sounds very interesting! You’re now working on a project with Luke Jaeger (Sleep Terror) which is cool. Is this just a musical collaboration or are you working on something bigger?

VS: Luke is an excellent musician who never limits himself to metal. He wanted to experiment with some new tracks. After collaborating in a dual guitar jam track, we discovered that we have lots of similarities with understanding. Technical death is definitely not what we were thinking about this time. Our concept of writing is to execute metal riffs with sampling and synth programming in a soundtrack manner i.e. songs which you can place with a visual of a fiction. We are trying to get this music out in American and Indian Film Industry for complete background music score work for Sci-Fi and experimental movies. At the moment, we are trying to explore more. Can’t say if it’s going to be a stable project or just a collaboration because I live in India and Luke lives in Washington, USA. We both are broke musicians, ha-ha. Fingers crossed for everything though.

HB: You brought out your second EP ‘Abolishing The Obsolete System’ a few months back, which is still gaining loads of critical acclaim. Your comments on this?

VS: Thanks for the support. Initially, I was upset when my album got uploaded for download right after 7 days of the album release. But when I think of worldwide fans, I am happy that at least somehow they have the full album now. For an unsigned artist like me, producing 3000 – 5000 CDs for fans around the globe wasn’t possible. Fund returns are always important for independent musicians like us but it our first priority that the maximum number of fans get the album, no matter how. Thanks to pirates for making my job easier.

HB: What are the themes behind your music?

VS: ‘Abolishing The Obsolete System’ is a concept album based on one of my science fiction film-scripts which I wrote last year (Apart from playing and composing music, I also study Film-making/Direction, Scriptwriting And Editing.) As you can see, all the seven songs are linked with each other. This album is basically a soundtrack/background music score representation of that script in a progressive music manner. I won’t go in detailed description of the script because that will be too long and boring. The theme is about Cyborgs and Sub-Human Sapiens reading and learning Human’s corrupted mind and making replicas. It’s also about the gruesome future of earth’s climate and the result of Ozone layer’s damage. More importantly, the gruesome result of spreading terrorism and political war and racial discrimination. In this album, I tried my best to execute the script as close as I can without lyrical interpretation and vocals. It was important to execute the song ‘Swallowing The Infected Sun’ with lyrics and vocals because the vocal signifies the third person i.e. ‘Time’. On the other hand, Prashant’s vocal appearance in ‘Cyborg Activation’ and ‘Greenhouse Effect’ signifies Humanity.

Conceptually, according to the script, the album inlay and artwork signifies Rahu in the form of a giant Cyborg who is swallowing the sun to save Earth from the high wavelengths of ultra-violet rays. Basically, it’s like a folklore representation of advanced solar layering in the place of Ozone layer that works like a magnifying glass to sunrays. Some Hindu priests believe that Rahu (who was a negative character in Hindu mythology, the Giant Cyborg on the cover symbolizing him) takes the form of the anti-magnifying layer which the modern humans think as an invention by the Sub-Sapien (Post-Cyborg prototypes ) leaders. It covers the magnifying layer made by the Cyborg Main Frame around the Sun to burn Earth. It signifies the ‘Analog Meets digital’ concept of instrumentation.

HB: Damn, that’s really intense. I would love to watch the movie if it actually got released! Ok, your first EP released in 2005 was titled ‘Ashwamedh’. From this to ATOS to your new upcoming album, how do you feel you have grown as a musician and a songwriter?

VS: Everything was a great experience. ‘Ashwamedh’ was a demo of four tracks that was released for limited distributed in the year 2005 by Kollosal (UK). It was recorded on a full analog recording set up with no metronome and no MIDI at all, everything in real time. It was more or less like a mixture of Progressive Metal with 40% death metal and lots of fusion of Indian elements. I learned many things from the honest feedback from lots of senior musicians and critic listeners. Initially, fusing jazz and classical music with progressive tech death was the idea. I dropped the idea of using the seven-string guitar after ‘Ashwamedh’ because it wasn’t matching at all. I worked on a new guitar tone which is more or less like a hybrid between Seattle Grunge and Old School British Heavy Metal. Finally I learned that there are much better things than sweep picking, harmonic minor, diminished tapping, mindless shredding and relentless double bass pedaling. I still have to discover a lot though.

HB: What can fans of your previous work expect from your new EP ‘Scared Execution’?

VS: Oh, there is a hell of a lotta confusion, it seems. It was ‘Sacred Execution,’ not ‘Scared’! ‘Sacred Execution’ is an unreleased EP which I made after ‘Ashwamedh’. I decided not to release the EP because I wasn’t happy with the same old ‘Meshuggah-ish grooves’ and ‘tech death breakdowns’ ideas. So I uploaded the tracks ‘Concrete Of Lies’ and ‘My Third Eye’ from that EP for download on MySpace just to get the right feedback from senior musicians and critics. Critics liked those tracks but that’s just because people’s minds were already attached with the kind of style which bands like The Faceless and Necrophagist were making. Every band started following the same style. I refused to do the same and decided not to release ‘Sacred Execution’.

About the next album, the making of the plan-chart is on. Things will be easier for me if I find a good record label. Money/fund return is not the main priority because I am already working hard on several music projects and learning quite a lot at the same time. But atleast, more people should be able to get the CD. I really want to play this project live but that is still a second priority to me. I have loads of work to do in the music industry and here my attempt is to make things a little better. Experimental and Metal musicians abuse the mainstream, considering it ‘rotten and dirty sell out stuff’. I personally don’t think in that direction. I am trying to fuse modern cinema’s new experimental ideas with Amogh Symphony’s concept of post-progressive/math/tech death metal music. I am studying filmmaking and I hope may be 4 or 5 years later I will be able to execute properly. So yeah, the world is going to see something new and experimental which really makes some sense. That’s all I can at this moment. Feedback from fans are always welcome. I have an exciting news for all the fans which is yet to be announced. Please do keep your eyes on the blog section.

HB: A few years back, ‘Ashwamedh’ was signed on by Kolossal Productions, UK. Evidently, that didn’t work out, right? So are you looking for a new Indian or International label to sign you up?

VS: Oh yes, that would be great. But I hope there won’t be legal issues related to keeping copyrights, Nowadays, hardly any good artist get royalties until and unless they are as hot and talented as crooners like Christina Aguilera.

HB: A lot of people seem to remember you as the drummer of Infinite Ashes, a Pune based nu-metal band. What happened to that project?

VS: That band is dead. Vedant joined IIIrd Sovereign and I continued with my career. Guitarist DG has settled in Chennai with his wife. Uday reformed Infinite Ashes in Mumbai with new members. Though I am still in touch with Vedant and Uday, the teenage days of useless anger and so called ‘brootality’ is gone. It’s just another ‘Rock On’ story now. Ha-ha.

HB: How can people who haven’t heard your music yet get hold of it?

VS: Unfortunately, all the CDs I printed were sold 2 months back. I am planning to make some more prints. I will post the details on Amogh Symphony’s official MySpace page.

HB: Any words of advice to our readers and your fans out there?

VS: Thanks a lot for your love and support. And a big thanks to Headbangers India for this interview. I am honored.

Album Review: Bhayanak Maut - Untitled (2009)

2010-11-05T11:10:00.004+05:30

Alright. Let’s get the facts straight first. The first time I watched Bhayanak Maut play live was way back at JRO 2004 in Chennai. A few years later, (2005. Or was it 2006?) I watched them play live, this time at Madras Christian College, Chennai. Both times, they were a 4 piece act, playing covers by Ill Nino, Poison The Well and Lamb Of God. System Of A Down too, if I’m not mistaken! I distinctly remember enjoying both the gigs thoroughly, although I was disappointed with their original compositions (save for Dead Parasite, which was an awesome song).

A few years later, I heard the band’s 4 track EP ‘Malignant’. Impressive, but still carried too many influences of a lot of major gateway metal bands, which put me off. I figured this band would play for a long time, peak in India and stay there but never really do anything else.

I was wrong.

2009. Present day. I’ve been in constant touch with the music scene in India. I knew that BM added a second guitarist and a second vocalist and their music had now changed from groove based metal-core to straight out death-core but not having watched them live since MCC, I had no idea of what the music sounded like. I read gig reviews and heard people rave about the band, not trusting any of them. An album launch came, I didn’t buy the album. Then, as fate would have it, the album found its way into my hands as a result of a music trade. I decided to give it a spin. What comes next, was chaos.

BOOM! From the first track ‘Habemus Papam,’ right until the closing strains of ‘You’re Perfect. Now Change,’ the album is a massive metal juggernaut, with the sole intention of blowing out your brains. 11 tracks of pure destructive mayhem that caused me to repent not having trusted any of the reviews I had read previously. Top notch drumming armed with fierce twin vocal salvos, monstrous riffs with plenty of aggression to boot, this album was like nothing I had heard in a long time. The songs, albeit named with hint of humor, are simply crushing! ‘Tit For Twat’ and ‘Ranti Nasha’ got repeated plays for me, as well as ‘Blasted Beyond Belief.’ The pun behind ‘MNS Messenger’ was pretty obvious, with the Marathi swear words at the intro before the song bursts into riff. ‘Violate’ and ‘Ungentle’ were just pieces of the puzzle, the grand design shrewdly crafted by the band to reduce the population of India to blubbering idiots. The drumming, as I’ve mentioned before, is fantastic and the vocals are outstanding. A lot of bands would think twice about getting a second vocalist but with BM, it just works. The album’s production is also not of the crummy standards that we Indians repeatedly achieve, but closer to world class standards, with the music recorded partly at Blue Frog and at Anupam Roy’s porta-studio in Mumbai!

A special mention has to be made regarding the artwork on the album. Firstly, the album had no name (I should’ve mentioned that earlier). The front artwork simply features an inkblot based on the Rorschach test. The viewer’s interpretation of the album is apparently also the name of the album. I saw a fat, evil-looking baby with wild, wispy hair. Wonder what the other listeners and the actual band saw in it! The graphics on the inside is far out. Everything from the popular board game Monopoly to the breakup of the parts of an assault rifle has been used to display the lyrics. I think, it will do you good to see this for yourself rather than read what I have to say.

However, over repeated spins, the songs do get to you. The tones, although rich and crunchy on individual songs, sounds repetitive over the length of the album. I remember the bass guitarist to be quite accomplished when I last saw them and being a bassist myself, it was a bit of a letdown to not be able to hear the bass over the growling guitars.

But don’t take this as a reason to NOT buy the album. It’s a must have for all Indian music fans, metalheads and others alike. It serves as a testimony to the new standards we’ve achieved and the barriers we’ve broken. I say ‘We’, because I too am an Indian and despite having negligible faith in the band (until now) and absolutely no connection with any of the members or label, I would like to share in the success that they bask in. They’ve raised the bar for every other band in India and I wait for the day, when I will see them live in concert again. Not in India, but in Europe or America, headlining fests and laying waste to cities as they rise.

Album Review: Skrat - Design (2010)

2010-03-13T07:55:00.003+05:30

For any of you who have read my previous gig and album reviews, you’ll know that I usually focus only on metal and its variations. So, why am now I writing an album review for Skrat, a funk rock band from Chennai? Right. Let me tell you.

Let’s go back in time for this. A few years ago, I’d gone to the Unwind Center (the only hub for live music in Chennai) for a show headlined by Chennai’s progressive metal stalwarts, NerveRek. The band that opened for NerveRek consisted of a bunch of school/college kids was playing their first show ever, in the tightly packed Unwind Center Performance Theater. If my memory serves me right, they played a couple of originals and ended off with a cover of Creed’s ‘What If’. And like every band starting out, they had their ups, and their downs. Not too many people remembered them ‘cause, of course, the mighty NerveRek was up next but I clearly remember thinking, ‘this band will go far...’ This was many years ago. 2006, maybe?

Over the years, the band practiced and they practiced hard. Blood, sweat, time and money, all spent on an impossible cause, or so they would want you believe. Band members came and went, but TT Sriram (guitars/vocals), Satish (bass guitar) and Tapass (drums/backing vocals), the 3 members who formed the essential core of the band remained and stuck it out. Along the way, they found a new guitarist in the form of Abhinav ‘Booby’ Krishnaswamy and while the band was exceptionally good even without him, it would be fitting to say that he has made all the difference.

Present Day: It’s been about 4 years since I first watched Skrat play. I’m holding in my hands, a neat little box consisting of a CD, which contains a culmination of years of hard work, experiences and influences. I put the CD in and I listen. Am I impressed? Hell yes I am! That is why I write this review; to pay my respects to a band that has stuck together through the thick and thin, and have slowly but steadily worked their way to become of the biggest and most popular rock bands in South India. Two guitarists, a bassist and a drummer, who took in their stride every bit of criticism that I’ve been slinging on their faces over the years and learnt from it to finally release an album that’s worthy of their musical prowess.

On the band’s voyage through the vast ocean of music, they’ve observed and learnt from some of the best musicians in India. The Skrat jam room has been used and abused by no less than 15 assorted bands, including the afore-mentioned NerveRek, Delhi based band Superfuzz, the short lived super-group Afterburn, Easy Street and many more. When I hear the music, I hear, not the recordings of 4 college-students-turned-musicians, but a heady aural brew of some of India’s best talent (and as you know, we’ve got loads of it).

The album starts off with ‘Soon Before I Am Dead,’ an up-tempo track with a long, extended intro. The megaphone effect on the vocals at the start is classic, and as the song burst into the chorus, you can feel the backing guitar work slowly lifting you off the ground and pushing you into an ‘arena high’, something vaguely along the lines of U2. A fantastic start to the album. After the modern and intelligently composed ‘Soon Before I Am Dead’ comes ‘Adrenaline,’ the type of song that makes you just want to let down your hair, dance and sing along to! With groovy guitar licks and a chorus that goes ‘Pump It Up, Pump It Up,’ this song displays the ‘fun’ element behind Skrat’s music. R.I.D (Robots In Disguise), song number 3 is about the Transformers. Yes, the animated-TV-series-turned-into-the-action-block-buster-movie Transformers. Not too many bands have songs based about awesomely cool killer robots, but Skrat does. The track however doesn’t live up to the awesomeness of the Autobots with the vocals being a big let down, especially at the start. The music is good and very catchy but the vocals jus don’t cut it out for me. I’d love to hear this song live to make a better judgment but from a first listen, I was kinda disappointed. After all, how can a song about the Autobots fighting in the sky and ‘shifting to another profile’ NOT be awesome?! R.I.D leads into ‘Stay Wild,’ my pick for best song off the album. This one is your typical high energy song that makes you want to pump your fist into the air and scream, Stay! Wild! every time the chorus comes along. I had to stop myself from repeatedly spinning this track so that I could go on to the rest of the album! Definitely a winner. At this point of time, ‘How’d You Do It’ comes as a very pleasant change. The well composed parts on this track reflect the maturity of the band and the changes over the years. The vocal lines are very well written, with a nice melody that lingers in your head even after the song’s finished. ‘Black Hammer Man’ passes along in the same vein as the rest of the album and gives us the title track ‘Design’. Another one of my favourites from the album. Infectious bass lines, bluesy guitar licks and good lyrics, together a winning combination! It’s got a very singsong yet serious feel to it, something I can’t really explain with words. You’ve gotta listen to appreciate it. The last track, ‘Gun Slinger’ is the only song on the album that sounds like it shouldn’t be there. That’s not to say it’s a bad song, no, not at all. The song reminds of an 80’s classic rock power ballad (think Skid Row and Guns N Roses) with a very Wild West twang to it. And you can almost never go wrong with classic rock. The experimental guitar work on this track is very well done and at almost seven-and-a-half minutes, this is the longest track on the album. The song ends in a crescendo and as the music fades away, you can see the horizon, where the land and sky meet, like the old Westerns of yore.

A special mention about the rhythm section. It’s everything you‘d want in a band; an invisible bond between the bass guitarist and the drummer that you can ‘hear’, which differentiates the amateurs from the professionals. The drumming by itself is above par and sounds exceptionally good, as is the bass playing. The guitar solos are very well composed too, making effective use of the Wah pedal, both in the traditional Hendrix style and as a RATM-esque tool to build up energy before exploding into the guitar solo.

Now, if the Skrat boys are reading this, they’ll know that I usually keep my criticism for the last. And I’m always full of it. Right, so here goes. While the recording quality is pretty good and all instruments seem to fall into their rightful places in the mix, the vocals seem a little ‘disconnected’ from the rest of the sound. Rather than blending in and actually being a part of the music, it sounds like a completely different element, a layer that doesn’t quite agree with the rest of the instruments. Not through the whole album of course. There are parts where it fits in perfectly, but there are also parts where it could’ve been much better. I also would have liked a little more variations in the vocal lines (something effective backing vocals might solve) because as the CD plays on, in the back of my head, I’m trying to figure out if the same vocal lines were repeated a couple of songs back!

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable album and comes highly recommend from me. Its not every day that a fun(k) rock band re-arranges my distorted world. Check out this band, they’re worth your time...

Gig Review: Hammerfall Live At IITM Saarang 2010

2010-01-29T07:31:00.006+05:30

Every December brings about the start of the rumours of which band would headline IITM Saarang’s annual Rock Show in January. The rumours consist of the most absurd and unlikely of bands, and the word around town this time around was that Wolfmother or possibly even Lamb Of God would rock our worlds, and after Opeth last year, anything was possible.

When IIT finally did confirm Swedish power metal band Hammerfall, I was filled with a rush of nostalgia. Many years back, when I’d just discovered metal and was still heavily into Iron Maiden, I started searching around the internet for other similar sounding bands, to broaden my perspective and to basically look ‘cool’ around the other kids. On my quest, I found Hammerfall, quietly nested between Queensryche and Scorpions, buried under a layer of Judas Priest. These 4 bands, along with UFO and a host of other 80s heavy metal bands have changed my life and have defined who I am today. But as time flew past, I discovered Slayer, Testament and Napalm Death, and Hammerfall slowly fell into the far reaches of my mind, jus like the One Ring Of Power. But every metalhead has his calling, and when I heard that Hammerfall was coming to town, I knew I had to be there.

The show was on a Monday night, which meant I would have to escape from work a few minutes early. I got to the venue just as the opening band Blood And Iron started playing and found my way to the first row. Much to my disappointment, the crowds were abysmal and although they increased as the show went on, it still wasn’t all that much.

Blood And Iron played a set of tracks from their second album Dynamite World, starting off with the title track. I have always believed that this is a band, capable of so much have always been let down by their sound. The guitar patches gave quite a earbleed and apart from the drums and vocals, all I could hear was a wall of fuzz drowned in synth. I could see Ashish and Vikram’s fingers flying all over the frets but everything was lost in the mix. Their 20 minute set finished soon enough and Purple Blood took the stage.

Winners at IITM Powerchords 2010, these guys were tight and had pretty good tones but the music wasn’t exactly the kind I enjoy any more. As individual musicians, they were all pretty good, and they had great energy on stage but the strong Lamb Of God influences and guitar melodies that almost every upcoming metal band seems to adopt nowadays didn’t impress me much. This is just my opinion though. They did have a sizable fan following and most of the metalheads seemed to enjoy the music. The band looked pretty young and if their performance was any indication, they’ve got a long and successful future ahead of them.

Apart from Hammerfall, the only other band I was really looking forward to was Escher’s Knot. As Purple Blood finished, I could see Anushman armed with his Ibanez and Line 6 Pod XT Pro, and the rest of the band behind him, waiting to get on. As they stepped on to play, the professionalism was evident. They knew exactly what they were doing. ‘Plug in and destroy’ must’ve been the motto for the band, who like those before them were on a tight schedule. No un-necessary time wasting, no random soundcheck. A dark atmospheric theme played in the background and as the intro came to a halt, the band kicked into ‘Up For Nothing.’ I braced myself for an intense session of brutal, heavy as hell and in-your-f**king-face metal. Did I mention heavy?? I just can’t say heavy enough! This band had the chops, the energy and most importantly, the music, all in one neat, efficient package. They played the same set list from the Decibels finals on the 23rd, adding only an extra song, titled ‘This Page Has Been Left Intentionally Blank’ (A full review of Escher's Knot at IITM Saarang Decibels will be up soon on www.headbangers.in)

Hurricane Bells from USA was always going to be a hit-or-miss. An indie band that had a song on the Twilight ‘New Moon’ soundtrack, playing for a crowd consisting primarily of metalheads stoked to see a power metal act wasn’t such a good idea. Essentially a 3 piece band with an additional female vocalist, their entire set consisted of light, easy listening songs (save the occasional screeching guitar solo) and some groovy bass segments. On another day, I might’ve listened to them and maybe even enjoyed the music but after Escher’s Knot and before Hammerfall, I just didn’t have the patience. Although I must point out that while I was in a state of boredom bordering on impatience, the rest of the crowds seemed to be enjoying the music pretty fine. They had a quite a long set list and I heaved a sign of relief as they stepped off.

Hammerfall was next. The last band, the one everybody had been waiting for. The tension in the air was palpable. The crowds had built up by now, and we waited expectantly for the band to start. We waited, and we waited a little longer. No sign of the band. The chants of Ham-Mer-Fall started, still no band on stage. Then, as the sound of thunder emanated from the PA system, a lone figure sat behind the drum set. When the music stopped, he started playing, and as the guitars started, everybody roared. They knew that this is what they’d been waiting for. Pontus Norgren and Fredrik Dronjak walked on to the stage, riffing the intro to ‘Punish And Enslave’. The bassist got on, and then, right there, that I knew this was going to be one of the most awesome shows I’d ever watched live. Synchronised headbanging, good ol’ fashioned power chord riffing and crystal clear tones. My childhood came rushing back to me and in a flash, I could see all my years of bedroom headbanging and bathroom singing, dreaming about one day, watching this band live. They were 10 years late but finally, they were here, right in front of me! The vocalist Joacim Cans sounded just as good live as he did on the recordings, hitting the high notes with relative ease. More than anything, I was astounded by the backing vocals. Both the guitarists and bassist sang together, with perfect harmony and in pitch, and from where I was, it sounded so heavy and full, Just like the overbearing guitars in a doom metal track, the vocals were all around you and inside your head. The first time they sang together, I remember staring in awe, thinking, ‘This is awesome!’ Both the guitarists were extremely good, typical of the genre. ‘Punish And Enslave’ gave way to ‘Renegade’, which is perhaps my favourite Hammerfall song. The coordinated movements were a treat to watch, with both the guitarists finding each other out and headbanging together in perfect harmony. It might sound corny and probably is jus a fanboi’s blind faith in the band, but it was great and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I screamed myself hoarse from the first row, shouting for all the classics and the band answered. Right from ‘Templars Of Steel’ to ‘Glory To The Brave’, ‘Legacy Of Kings’ to ‘Riders On The Storm’, they played all their classics, including a few from their latest 2009 release ‘No Sacrifice, No Victory’. As the band launched into the final song ‘Hearts On Fire,’ I felt a feeling of satisfaction from within. This isn’t even my favourite band any more. I’ve barely listened to them in ages. But watching them live on Monday night was an experience and a much needed trip into my past.

IIT, you’ve done it again. I was awestruck after Opeth last year and here I am again. I’ll be there next year, and the year after that, every year as long as I can make it. Thanks for the experience and for giving me a chance to relive my glory days!

A lot of people told me that they didn’t like the music, which is why they didn’t come for the show. All I can tell them are the same 3 words I tell people who weren’t there for the Opeth or Textures/Amon Amarth gig last year.

“You missed it.”

Album Review: Blind Image - Psychobabble (2007)

2009-11-03T11:01:00.003+05:30

I got hold of Blind Image’s debut album Psychobabble just a few weeks back directly from Krishna, the drummer of the band and at the time, I really didn’t know what to expect. I’d heard a version of “Skin” that was making its rounds around the internet and I liked what I heard but that was about it. In any case, nothing could’ve warned me about what I was to hear next.

“Skin”, which is the first song on the album starts with a crisp guitar riff, followed by a gut-wrenching scream as the band kicks in. This one gets you up, and you start paying attention to what follows. Groovy guitar riffs over classic metal beats and a face melting solo, with a good, strong rhythm section to boot. Eric Cartman makes an appearance too, with his Quotable Quote Of The Day.

Song #2 “Shit Happens” has a few country moments at the start before it moves into classic thrash metal. The vocals on this song are particularly good, with some nice frequency changes along the way. “Mob Anthem (Bomb In The Cake)” is your quintessential, back to the roots, old school thrash metal song to relive the good ol’ days from the SF Bay Area. A special mention about the bass line on this song. Simple, follows the guitar note-to-note, yet delivers a solid, heavy blow.

After the first 3 songs on the album, I honestly did not expect a song like “Effigy”. Reminiscent of Testament’s “Return To Serenity”, this is almost completely an acoustic song, save the soulful solo at the end. It tells the tale of a man at the gallows, facing certain death. The vocals tend to sound a bit ‘emo’ at times but all in all, a very beautiful song. A word I normally would never use with a metal band but it fits so perfectly here.

“Psychobabble”, the title track which gets on next is again back to the band’s speed metal roots. Fast drumming and even faster riffing define this song. The end of the song is a big turn off, with lazy drawls and extremely slowed down riffs, but it probably fits the theme of the song. A corrupt politician goes through the grind, day after day.

“Say No More” has no real place in the album. I think it was intended to be a filler but it’s ended up as a blot on an otherwise classic album. It’s a 2 minute song, with muddy acoustic guitars. It’s hard to say whether that was the desired effect, but it ended up completely shifting the mood of the album, in an extremely unpleasant way.

“Read My Lips” features Christopher (from Chennai based funk rock band Public Issue) on vocals alongside David. It took me a couple of listens to actually appreciate this song. The twin vocals are well executed, although this wasn’t among my favourites on the album.

The last song “Kiss Of Anarchy”, is without a doubt, the pick of the album. And when you’ve heard the entire album, you’ll know how hard a decision that was to make. Extremely catchy guitar licks, nifty footwork on the drums and flashy basslines, this song has it all. I’ve heard Blind Image play the song live several times but on the recording, it’s just something else. A perfect way to end an almost perfect album.

You’ve gotta love Prashant Matthias’s guitar work on the album. He’s yet proved again why he’s one of India’s best guitarist and why he proudly plays a PRS guitar, given to him to Mikael Akerfeldt of Opeth. The bass lines too are extremely good and sounds punchy, not what you’d usually associate with e metal band but it works well for Blind Image. The music production is great and the recording quality has a very old school touch to it, which adds to listening experience. Highly recommended for any metal fan.

Album Review: Dethklok - The Dethalbum II (2010)

2009-11-02T15:22:00.004+05:30

How often does a virtual death metal band release an album that debuts as the highest charted death metal album in the history of the Billboard Top 200, and then release a sequel to the album that beats that too!? Dethklok did that just that with ‘The Dethalbum II’.

Dethklok’ a 5 piece death metal band that forms the 7th largest economy in the world. With a host of crazed fans that would readily give their lives for the band, Dethklok probably would be called the ‘Heavy Metal Taliban’ if they existed in real life. Fortunately for us, they exist only in the fictional world of Metalocalypse. Unfortunately for us, we miss out on watching Nathan Explosion, William Murderface and the rest of this brutal act spew out murderous albums and brutal gigs, laying waste to cities and obliterating venues as they pass.

The Dethalbum II is suitably named. A sequel to The Dethalbum I ensures that the music is heavier, faster and packs a stronger punch than its predecessor. Each track on this album is epic. By epic, I mean incredible.

‘Bloodlines,’ the first track starts the slow face-melting process that lasts almost 50 mins, the length of the entire album. ‘The Gears’ that follows next would probably be among the top tracks on the album (It’s impossible to pick just one) The hooks and licks grabs you by the collar and then proceeds to knock you out with a sledgehammer, just for good measure. ‘Burn The Earth’, ‘Laser Cannon Deth Sentence’ and ‘Deth Support’ pretty much follow the same trend, with fast relentless drumming and crushing metal riffs that never seem to grow old.

The name of the 8th song, 'I Tamper With The Evidence At The Murder Site Of Odin' pretty much says a lot about the state of affairs at the Dethklok camp. A chief Norse God murdered (presumably by the band) and Nathan Explosion singing a song about the evidence at the site. I mean, that’s just wicked!

Murmaider was my favourite song on ‘The Dethalbum I’ and Murmaider II: The Water God picks up where the song left off. Recorded deep underwater in a nuclear power submarine, the song, without a doubt, has one of the most bad-ass metal riffs ever. Simple yet heavy, powerful, guitar and drum triplets form the background over which the essential song lies. It’s not easy staying in focus after such a well orchestrated attack on your senses, but yet, you do. You want to. You have to.. Even after the final strains of the last 3 songs, ‘Comet Song’, ‘Symmetry’ and ‘Volcano’ finally pass, the hooks, riffs and inexorable double bass drumming that assaulted your senses stays in your head. A testimony to Brendon Small’s song writing skills.

Fans of Dethklok’s first album will immediately notice the technical and musical expansions that ‘The Dethalbum II’ offers. The humourous element that made up a large part of the debut album has been almost completely replaced with a serious, in-your-face front and the band’s sound is way more refined. The vocals that sounded monotonous in the first album have a lot more variety and yet still sounds murderous. Gene Hoglan’s drumming never fails and the recording is sharp, clear and leaves nothing to imagination.

To sum it up, all I can say is,
“Go forth,
Buy the album,
or go forth and die..”

Interview With Shoi Sengupta (De Profundis)

2009-10-30T17:00:00.013+05:30

Feb 2009. Rock In India, Bangalore. Ok, so what we were really waiting for was to hear Bruce Dickinson and the rest of the English heavy metal giants hit the stage and blow us away. But until that happened, we were entertained by a host of bands, Indian and International. One of the bands that played that day, De Profundis caught our eye and here I am today, presenting to you an interview with Shoi Sengupta, the guitarist of De Profundis.

HB: Tell us more about De Profundis. How long has the band been around, and how did the band get together?
SH: The band has been around since 2005, Craig (Vocals) and Roman (Guitars) got together in a pub after replying to an online add. The meeting didn’t last long because Roman was underage at the time, so had a curfew to get home. But they discussed the essence of the band quick and then set on getting a line up together and start jamming. By the time I joined in 2006 we had a pretty solid line up that went to record the first album. So we got things moving pretty quickly. No point in sitting around for years to records your first album. We decided we would only go out gigging only once we had an album in our hands.

HB: What’s going on with the band right now?
SH: A lot actually. As you know, we have a second album ready for release and are currently finalizing release plans for February. We are also exploring different touring options at present including a return to India. So we are very busy behind the scene. I’d rather be busy performing but I guess the business side has to be looked after as well. We do have some good gigs coming up shortly, including a trip to Paris at the end of October.

HB: Sounds interesting! Ok, the ‘Beyond Redemption’ LP received loads of rave reviews online. Metal Review called it an ‘effective, mature, fine-sounding debut album ‘. Your comments about that?
SH: That is a very nice way of describing our debut album. We were really pleased about how the album was received because we didn’t have any expectations, as you commonly don’t with your first album. You dream that it will have some success but in our case we got so many good reviews, especially for a self release. We followed that through with very good live performance and I think that really helped us in establishing ourselves quickly. Within 4 months of the album being released, we ended on the top 10 list of unsigned bands by readers of UK’s Terrorizer Magazine!

HB: In Feb 2009, De Profundis played alongside heavy metal giants Iron Maiden, right here in India. What was going through your head before the show? What did you feel about the response from the crowds?
SH: A little bit nervous, actually. For me, that was proudest moment of my life. I am of Indian origin, so playing in India was always a dream. Then to top it up supporting Iron Maiden, that was the band that got me into metal many a moon ago! I had a tape with ‘Somewhere in Time’ on one side and Van Halen’s ‘1984’ on the other, and I used to listen to Maiden non stop! So to get to support them was like a childhood dream. Then to play in front of that many people (around 15,000 when we played) was pure bliss. The crowd went crazy, it really took us all by surprise. We didn’t expect a mosh pit of that size, and some really hot chicks digging our music at the front!
HB: What are your expectations from your second album, ‘A Bleak Reflections’? What can fans of ‘Beyond Redemption’ expect from this venture?
SH: We have a lot of expectation for “A Bleak Reflection”, we have worked very hard over the last 2 years on the live front and also on these songs. I think the leap between the first and second album is huge. So far people who have heard it have been really impressed by it, we have just signed with Kolony Records here in Europe and Sony will continue working with us in India. I think people who have liked ‘Beyond Redemption’ will like this one and appreciate the progression. I also think that this album is probably more accessible than the first one and therefore should open us to a larger audience.

HB: Tell us more about the song writing process on the albums. What are the centrals themes (if any) behind the music?
SH: We have a very organic way of writing. For ‘A Bleak Reflection,’ either myself or Roman would come up with a riff, we would then jam it together as band, and see if it works. The greatest thing this time has been the input of Nick on drums. He was like a new toy for us, you know. We played a riff and told him can you do that and he would do it, so that made the writing process a real joy. I am very happy personally because I had a lot more input on the second album than on the first. The good as well in our writing is Craig’s input during the entire process. He doesn’t play any instrument but has a very good for what would sound good and arrangements. Sometime he’ll just let us play a riff for a while and not say anything. Then he’ll say what he doesn’t like and ask us to tweak this or that and funnily, 9 out of 10 times, he is right! One song on the new album came about like, we were trying this riff that I had which sounded a bit like old school thrash. Craig didn’t say anything the entire rehearsal but you could see he didn’t like it. So I dug my heels and we carried on playing it. The next rehearsal he said he didn’t like that riff. But I said ‘OK, perhaps if I play it this way’ (more black metal) and he loved it, and funnily that is his favourite song on the album. Craig writes the lyrics, which is also on an ongoing process, often when we are busy working on some riffs in the rehearsal studio he’ll be sitting there writing lyrics. Our themes generally revolves around the idea that existence is futile, that everything is dust and effectively humans are just an insignificant part of the universe.
I am really looking forward to writing for the next album because now that we have Arran on bass, it will introduce another dimension in our music. He joined the band a month prior to recording and within that space of time, he assimilated all the songs and put in his own flavour into it which has been awesome. Writing a full album with our new rhythm section will open our possibilities immensely, so I am really psyched about it.

HB: From what I hear, Fernando Pereira, who produced French metal band Misanthrope’s latest album IrremeDIABLE, is the mastermind behind the production of your second album. Tell us more about the experience of working with a world class producer.
SH: I am a big fan of Misanthrope and their last album is really fantastic and that was largely due to Fernando’s work. Fernando was very good at capturing the right sound for them and we wanted someone who could do the same for us. Actually SAS De L’argiliere (Misanthrope’s singer) is a good friend of mine and he introduced us to Fernando. Fernando came all the way from France to meet us some 9 months before the records to discuss the album. We thought that was an awesome sign of commitment. What was really amazing about him his how much he embraced the music and really took this project personally. He was fantastic in bringing his idea and also taking ours on board. We also drove him mad during the mixing period but he always kept his calm. It was during the mix that he heard his nickname “The Terminator” as he never sleeps! During 4 days of mixing, I think we saw him sleep for a total of 4 hours!!

HB: What equipment did the band use on the second album?
SH: I played on my ESPs with EMG pickups, and Roman on PRS and Gibson Les Paul. For amps, we basically used 2 heads , for me, a Peavey Triple X and for Roman, a vintage Mesa Boogie. We mic up to 1 4x12 cab and one 1x12 Engel cab so the sound of guitars is very thick! Arran played most of the album on his fretless Ibanez and Nick uses Tama drums. For the acoustic parts we used my friend’s Larrive acoustic guitar, it has a beautiful & warm sound. I am hoping to get myself one soon.

HB: Sounds like a dream setup! I wait to hear how this all on the album! Ok, Shoi, so what are you listening to nowadays? Any Indian bands that have caught your attention recently?
SH: I listen to a lot of varied stuff. Currently listening to the new Muse and Megadeth album. Planning to buy the new Rammstein album as well. But I have my iPod on shuffle and therefore have a lot of death metal like Unleashed playing. Been listening to ‘Dusk And Her Embrace’ (Cradle Of Filth) a lot as well lately for some reason. We like Kryptos a lot and I checked out Bhayanak Maut too. It’s pretty awesome.

HB: Where do you see yourself and De Profundis in 5 years from now?
SH: Well, our plan is to become a full time touring band, so five years from now I am hoping that we will be on our 3rd or 4th album and touring a lot, hopefully as a headlining act!

HB: Well, we hope you dome down to India again, this time, as a headlining act! Right, we’re coming to the end of the interview. Any words of wisdom to your fans in India?
SH: I am really impressed with Indian metalheads and especially their knowledge and appreciation of the underground scene. It’s really phenomenal. So, a word of wisdom would be to support metal and more importantly support your local bands. We need an Indian metal band to make it big internationally. Taiwan have just managed with Chthonic, so no reasons why India can’t produce a massive international metal band!

HB: We hope for that too. We’ve got the talent and we know it will pay off soon. Thank you for your time Shoi, we wish you and the band all the best for all your future endeavors.
SH: Thanks man, we appreciate your interest in De Profundis!

Album Review: Chimaira - The Infection (2009)

2009-09-08T14:24:00.004+05:30

There comes a time in your life when everything around you starts looking stale and musty, you lose all hope for change and the world around you seems to have gone astray. So when you get a fresh blast of metal comes your way, what do you do? You’d get up, let down your hair and swirl your head around in a crazed frenzy, right? Chimaira’s new album ‘The Infection’ is a that fresh blast of metal and it’s like nothing you’ve heard for a long time. You’d better start headbanging.

The first thing you’ll realize about ‘The Infection’ is that its slower than Chimaira’s previous albums. That’s not to say it’s as slow as sleep, but the songs are pretty down tempo, save a few rapid break-downs and riffs. The songs have a hint of an oncoming storm, sounding darker and more sinister than any of their previous records. The anger is still there though, and some of the riffs are pretty damn brutal. Mark Hunter sounds like a Panzer on meth and the guitarists Rob Arnold and Matt DeVries have come up with some pretty crushing riffs that makes this album stand out from the rest of the pack.

‘The Venom Inside,’ which is the first song on the album starts with soft guitars leading into a blast from Hunter’s vocals. There’s a strong bass presence (which is non-existent on the other tracks) and sets the tone for the album to come. The next track, ‘Frozen In Time’ rates as probably one of the best on the album. Massive riffs, menacing keyboards and blistering drums make this very powerful, and being only the second song on the album, you just know how much better it’s going to get. ‘Coming Alive’ leads into ‘Secrets of The Dead,’ which is a tribute to some of the best metal grooves I’ve heard in a long time. There’s a vague ‘underwater’ sorta atmosphere, courtesy Chris Spicuzza on the keyboards and you gotta headbang or at least bob your head up and down to this. ‘The Disappearing Sun’ with its knifed breakdowns and ‘Impending Doom’ with its clean yet creepy vocals just go show the levels of variation in this album. Every song carries a signature Chimaira sound, and yet they all sound so different from each other. ‘Destroy To Dominate,’ which comes after another classic song ‘On Broken Glass’ has some nice, beautiful keyboards that lead in to heavy distortion. I cannot imply enough the drumming on the songs and the synchronization between the band members. ‘Try To Survive’ moves on pretty quickly and we’re finally face to face with ‘The Heart Of It All,’ is the last song on the album. This is pretty much a showcase for the band’s instrumentalists, with keyboardist Spicuzza holding his fort against the onslaught of the twin guitars. 14 minutes is a bit too long for an instrumental and I lost interest half way through the song but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a kickass end to a kickass album.

It’s always interesting to hear electronic elements on a metal track, especially when it’s done as well as on this album. The keyboards act as a backdrop to the music, setting the mood and tone in a way that a guitar never can. Every member of the band stands out in their own way, each of them contributing their bit towards bringing out this album. Among their peers, Chimaira have set the bar and it’s now time to see which band will step up to the challenge…

Album Review: Blood And Iron - Dynamite World (2009)

2009-08-29T15:57:00.011+05:30

Winners at Kingfisher Kerala Rocks, Winners at IITC Armageddon, finalists at NLS Strawberry Fields 2008 and IIT Saarang 2009, the list of laurels go on and on. With 2 albums to their name and several massive gigs across India in just 4 years of their existence, it’s easy to see why Blood And Iron is one of India’s premier metal bands today. Dynamite World is the band’s second album after their 2007 self-titled debut album and it doesn’t disappoint. 6 solid, heavy metal songs spread over a little more than half an hour, attacking concepts such as politics, dark fantasies and human impulses all sounds like a delicious treat for the listener.

“Promised Land”, the first song on the album begins with Arabic verses sung like a holy prayer, taking the listener to a desolate desert with nomadic tribes roaming the sand dunes around them. Mark’s vocals are powerful, executed to perfection and the guitar solo is impressive.

A little more than 6 minutes after the opening strains of “Promised Land” comes “In Darkness.” This song, without a doubt gets my pick as the best song on the album. Starting with an acoustic intro, leading into distorted guitars and chord-heavy keyboards, the song defines the band’s music in the best way possible. The vocal melodies gets you hooked on in an instant, and the heavy riffs backed with crazy drumming gives you a great heavy metal song, right up there with the best.

The next song, “The Altar” is one I have seen Blood And Iron play live so many times before. Played live, the song sounds heavy, energetic and packs a powerful punch but on the album, it was probably the weakest song. The recording quality especially towards the end of the song was scratchy and the power, energy and passion that I’ve come to associate with the song was completely lacking, making it sound too mechanical and emotionless.

One of the defining characteristics of Blood And Iron are the heavy use of keyboards and the next song, “Unleash The Beast” is a testimony to that. The song starts with strains of thunder in the foreground as the soft, melodic keyboard intro filters through. Mark’s vocals sound very “eighties”, which by no means is a bad thing but over distorted, aggressive riffs, it doesn’t quite find it’s right place. Still, a very good song, ending on a high note with the entire band taking the song to a mighty crescendo.

Street noises and mob screams introduce “Anarchy,” the next track on the album. This is another song I’ve watched live several times at B&I gigs. Clocking at 6:32mins, this is a straight-out, no strings attached heavy metal track, with the drummer stealing the show.

The intro of the title track “Dynamite World,” also the last song of the album sends a message out every India metal fan out there. A message that is expressed not with words, but in the form of heavy, aggressive riffs. It says, “We are here, start listening.” Reminiscent of the great thrash metal bands of yesteryear, the intro proceeds to wallop you on the stomach and blow your brains out for safe measure. The song is fast, heavy and has all the elements of a classic heavy metal song. The chorus has you singing along and as the song ends, you feel the need for more.. The keyboard solos sound folksy at times but it doesn’t hamper the music in any way.

Having said all this, the album does have its fair share of turn-offs too. Although the music is great, the recording quality is a big letdown. The guitar tones sound extremely compressed and some of the lead guitars licks are lost in the mix. The vocals are drowned out in parts with the lyrics being terribly unclear, and the drumming is but a shadow of how they sound on stage. The keyboards seems to be the center of the mix, which is not a bad thing but it is far too pronounced, taking the emphasis off from the rest of the band. I’d have expected a band of B&I’s caliber to dedicate a little more (or maybe a little less) time on mastering and production the album. Nevertheless, a good effort by a good band. If you like good, solid heavy metal, B&I is your best bet.

Saluting Les Paul

2009-08-29T12:52:00.002+05:30

Les Paul. The name immediately conjures up images of legendary musicians such as David Gilmour, Jimmy Page, Brian May, Tony Iommi, Zakk Wylde, Joe Perry etc, all remarkable guitarists who have changed the course of music and the way we look at it. The music, of course, may be immortal but sadly, the man, Lester William Polsfuss, the master musician and brilliant inventor of the Les Paul guitar, was not. He passed away on August 13th, 2009, at the ripe age of 94, having lived through 2 World Wars, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Flower Power Revolution and all the other great historic events of our time.

For those born after the 60’s, the Les Paul brought to mind infamous role models of bad behavior. Ace Frehley strutted around the stage with Kiss, dressed as the Spaceman with a Les Paul in his hand and Slash was always found with a cigarette in his mouth, a bottle in his hand and a Les Paul around his neck. But the man, Lester Williams was anything but that. One half of the music duo Les Paul & Mary Ford, a true entertainer and an honest and humble man, Les Paul was almost completely responsible for changing the music industry as we know it. Right from inventing layering and overdubbing to delay pedals and so much more, he changed the world of music as we know at, and influenced a million young musicians while he was at it.

Given below are excerpts from interviews and blogs by Alex Skolnick (Testament, ex Savatage) and Slash (Velvet Revolver, ex Guns N Roses) about the passing of this legend.

Alex Skolnick

“I had the fortune of hearing Les four times in my life. Two of those times, I waited in line to meet Les, after a show. The first time, I had him sign my Les Paul CD box set and the second time, I had him sign the 'gold top,' which had been recently acquired. He wasn't aware of who I was but I didn't care. I was happy just to be a fan. Like the main character in Erica Jong's novel 'Fanny' who says 'Persons of superior character treat everyone with similar good humor,' Les treated everyone with equal respect. Good humor was a large part of who he was.

On stage and in the autograph line, he would talk about his playing and inventions like comedy stories, never losing his good will and sense of humor. Yet these creations, which he talked about as if he'd come up with a new trash can lid, included multitracking, delay, reverb and the solid body guitar, totally changing the fields of audio and music as we know it.

Les put the concept of 'retirement' to shame, proving that if you love what you do, there is no need for it. He saw retirement as premature death and stayed fully alive until it was truly time to go. We should all look to Les as an example, not just as someone who maximized his talents and creativity but someone who lived life to the fullest as well. While it is always sad to see a life lost, in Les' case, it is truly a life worth celebrating.”

Slash

Erin Broadley of L.A. Weekly spoke to Slash about the passing of guitar legend Les Paul. An excerpt follows below.

“I just had a gig with him at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame a few months ago, a tribute to Les Paul, where a dozen guitar players all got together and jammed and then Les played at the end of the show. It was really one of those special events where some phenomenal guitar players got together and each one of them did their own little show, including myself... It was another humbling experience... And when all that was done, Les got up there. And this is only a few months ago, so at 94 years old he gets up there and makes jokes into the microphone and has his whole band with him and fuckin' plays phenomenally. For the last 60 years he's had this major influence on guitar playing and the recording industry. So there he is, this little guy, so fuckin' full of life and vibrant and doesn't seem 94 years old, jamming out to this huge audience. It was really a special moment... It's hard for me to verbally explain it. Les was the kind of guy that anytime you were in his presence, he was always very upbeat, always cracking jokes, always making comments about the women present...

The fact that he took a liking to me and took me under his wing was a huge honor. We always talked on the phone and that kind of stuff. It was special. It's important for kids to know who Les was because when I first started playing, I thought Les Paul was the name of a guitar. I didn't know it was a real person until I learned from guys like Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Obviously from that point on I researched and then finally got to meet him. Kids nowadays don't even really know that kind of history but it's important to have an understanding of that delay pedal that you're using and where the original concept came from. Whenever you hear guitar harmonies recorded, like Brian May used to record harmonies on all of Queen's records, that was all Les Paul stuff. He invented the technique where you could layer guitars. Before that people just had to play live and that was it.”

Gig Review: JRO (June Rock Out) Chennai 2009

2009-07-22T11:10:00.013+05:30

Ok here's my "short" review about a few bands at the gig. I was out of the show for as long as I was in and so, missed a few of the bands.

I don't judge bands. I jus write it is as I see it.

Day 1 of JRO 2009 started off with Christian grindcore band Blood Covenant hitting the stage. This band goes back a really long time. Eddie, the vocalist of BC used to sing for Chennai's first ever grindcore band Bonesaw way back in 1992! They played a short, intense set and a pretty damn good one too but I've seen better from them. Hurricane was pounding away at 240bpm and Wolf's fingers were a blur on the guitar but the band lacked the energy to get the crowds going.. Crowds were jus trickling when BC hit the stage and only a handful of dedicated metalheads stood in front and headbanged. Covers included Priests Of The Underground (Mortification) and Reject (Living Sacrifice) among others.

The next band Realms from Hyderabad were pretty good. Not really metal, more like 80's hard rock, reminiscent of early Scorpions I'd say. They had a good guitarist. Nice techniques, extremely clean playing but no real feel in the solos. The vocalist was pretty good but like most overconfident guys with a mic in their hands, he got pretty annoying towards the end. I remember a song called Escape From The Abyss, nothing else really.

Dark Horizon from Assam was a band like I've never heard before. They sounded like blues, funk, reggae and even jazz, all rolled up into a neat package, served with great vocals and wonderful guitaring. I didn't watch this band live but I heard their music from outside the hall and was very impressed by them. I hear that the singer of the band won the best vocalist award at IIT Kanpur, which by no means is an easy feat. I'd love to watch them again if I could, chilling on a nice chair with a beer in my hand..

Chennai's very own Null Friction were making a comeback after a year abroad, and they did not disappoint. Playing songs from their new album Madras, they had the music, the crowds and a whole lotta energy to boot. Ansh's drumming punched hard and Shreyans was all over the place, However, my opinion of their gig was that their music seemed very repetitive, with the essential 'sound' of the band staying the same for the whole gig. I really like the songs these guys come up with. Good ol' hard rock with no strings attached but being riff based songs, these guys really need something different in the music to keep people interested. Still, a very good band and a good show.

The only other metal band on Day 1 was Heretic, from Cochin. I signed them onto my label based only on their recordings, their previous laurels and response from people who've watched their show before. And I did not regret my decision. What an explosive act!! Fingers flying all over the place and you could feel the energy pulsating from the band. Akhil the vocalist had the crowds on the palm of his hand and they swayed with the music, screaming for more. Chennai usually isn't too kind to metal bands but evidently, Heretic made an exception. Setlist was: Reprise, Bleed To Heal, Thoughts, Change, Slaves And The System and a cover by Killswitch Engage. At the end of the gig, the two guitarists Abhijit and Hareesh were asked by Harmony Musicials India (HMI) to play Metallica's Master Of Puppets using the newly launched Rage guitars, which went on pretty well. All in all, the crowds absolutely loved the band. A small screw-up happened midway during the gig when the Abhijit broke his string had to go offstage to change, but this incident didn't dent the overall performance.

I didn't stick around for Rusty Moe and E-Flat, so don't know what they played and how they sounded.

The first band to start the proceedings on Day 2 was Touchwood. Now these guys played some real crazy music, something in the vein of Dave Matthews Band and Hootie & The Blowfish. Jazz funk with a lot of other varied musical influences. I recall that the guitarist and keyboardist were good and the female vocalist was outstanding. A real smoky voice, sounded wonderful and complimented the band perfectly. Don't remember any of their originals though.

Public Issue are usually a great, extremely entertaining band and I love watching them play live. Being finalists of the Campus Rock Idols, they really know how to play a good set too but on Saturday, they were just all over the place. Nipun, who usually has a beautiful guitar tone almost tore my eardrums off with a sharp scratchy tone and Kristo's vocals jus didn't pep me up the way it usually does. They played a few originals like Spiderpig and Clockwork but they were all over-shadowed by their abysmal Michael Jackson medley. I mean, its not the way the played the songs. They played it well but trying to infuse funk rock with classic MJ is a definate no-no and thats jus' what the band did. I remember them played Black Or White, Smooth Criminal, Beat It and Billie Jean but with the alternate versions and the scratchy guitar tone, I jus got pissed off. I was really surprised though. Public Issue is a super band and I've seen them play way better shows..

Skrat was without a doubt, my pick for best band of the day. I've seen these guys play when they were jus starting out a couple of years back, and they had promise but lacked a lot of factors needed to really make it big. At JRO, they were completely different. They had everything a real professional band needs. Great stage presence, great energy, had the crowds and most importantly, they played some friggin' great music! Their originals like Red Shoes and Stay Wild among others got the crowds singing along and screaming for more. In fact, the crowds even braved the initial onslaught of the rain and stayed put in front of the stage to watch the band play. I was really impressed with these guys. If you're reading this, kudos to you!

Bleed from B'Lore started off with some nice solid nu-metal stuff. The jump-the-f**k-up kind that really gets you on your feet. They even played a Limp Bizkit cover (don't remember which one) but they lost their way after that by playing Vindicated, Iris and some other alt rock stuff. If they'd continued in the nu-metal vein, they'd have been a huge success (My opinion, obviously) Of course, the alt rock music got all the girls on their feet and they were all, ooh, I love this Goo Goo Dolls song, etc but I was disappointed with the way the set ended..

I didn't really watch Blood And Iron's whole set. Watched them play The Alter and Anarchy, don't remember the rest. I'm not a huge fan of their music, but I do respect them. They've been around a long time and are one of Chennai's premier metal bands today, so.. From what I saw, they were pretty impressive. Mark's vocals are great and Manu's a crazy drummer. I also grabbed a copy of their new album Dynamite World which was on sale at the venue. The Rain Gods blessed Chennai when B&I were onstage but the crowds braved and rain and stayed in their place, jumping and screaming for more. They are among the most popular metal bands in the city and it wasn't hard to see why, after their performance at the gig..

Abraxas was the last metal band of the day before Motherjane. Coming down all the way from Pune, they were tight, in-your-face and heavy as all hell but the overdose of LoG influences put me off big time. They were a great live act and had some crazy energy, got the crowds going with moshpits and wild headbanging, but the whole band seemed to be trying to hard to sound (or not) like LoG. I'm a huge LoG fan, I can't get enough of them but I don't appreciate bands that try so hard to emulate them and I felt Abraxas was one of them. I'd surely watch these guys live again, though I'm not too sure I'd spend too much time listening to their originals. I liked the drummer, he was pretty tight.

I didn't watch Crimson Wood play on Day 2 but I hear they were pretty good.

Motherjane was the headlining act for JRO 2009, and were they great or what?! Complete with face paint and a whole road crew to boot, this band is really going places. I also picked up a copy of their second album Maktub (review on Headbangers India) plus a motherjane tshirt. Fusing Carnatic music with classic rock, Motherjane have carved a niche for themselve in the Indian music scene. Starting off with Chasing The Sun off their new album, they went into Mindstreet, Blood Into The Apple and other originals of theirs. At one point, Baijju the guitarist even burst into a passionate rendition of Vande Materam which got everyone standing to pay their respect to our country and this great band. Suraj armed with his jar of honey also won the Leon Ireland Outstanding Vocalist award, given to the most deserving vocalist by the Unwind Center every year since the untimely death of Leon Ireland (Moksha).

All in all, a great 2 days of music and great fun. The Rain Gods tried their best but the spirit of music in Chennai will never get damp.

I've taken a few amateur pics which will be in the next few posts.. Hope you liked my review! Cheers!

Abraxas at JRO 2009

2009-07-22T10:46:00.003+05:30

Bleed at JRO 2009

2009-07-22T10:42:00.003+05:30

Heretic at JRO 2009

2009-07-22T10:29:00.005+05:30

Realms at JRO 2009

2009-07-22T10:25:00.006+05:30

Blood Covenant at JRO 2009

2009-07-22T10:01:00.007+05:30

Interview With Blood & Iron

2009-05-23T14:18:00.013+05:30

Blood & Iron, what’s the exclusive story behind the name?
Ø Ashish: We were all sitting around after our second jam session as a band and were wondering what we'd call ourselves. Ideas were being tossed about - we eliminated those names we thought were either too clichéd or too obscure and settled with "Blood & Iron". Considering the type of music we play, it seemed most appropriate. It's Bismarck’s phrase for what it takes for his nation to strengthen.

Please introduce yourselves, (with regard to names, instruments etc) What genre of music does Blood & Iron play ?
Mark Thomas – Vocals
Vivin Kuruvilla – Keyboards
Vikram Bains – Guitars
Ashish Shetty – Guitars
Arun Daniel - Bass Guitars
Manu "Vlad" – Drums
Ø Mark: It is a bit tricky to classify, genre-wise… So I’ll first tell you about our influences. It’s pretty diverse – Iron Maiden, Megadeth, Dream Theatre, Primal Fear, Hammerfall, Grave Digger, Kreator, pre-92 Metallica, Nightwish, Savatage and so many more. These bands cover a wide portion of the metal spectrum, and listening to our music one can easily say we’ve forged a new brand of metal – which is unique and hence, hard to classify. So we’ll just leave it at Heavy Metal. \m/

When was the band formed? How long have you known each other? (Mention previous band members)
Ø Ashish : It began as an idea on Feb14th, 2005. Krishna (our ex-drummer and present drummer of Blind Image) and I were in the same college and we were both die-hard metalheads. For the band: We got friends, and then friends of friends – including Vivin, our keyboardist. By the end of the year we got Mark and Arun, our vocalist and bassist. By August ’06 – We decided it’d be a good idea to get a second guitarist to play dual leads and harmonies – since our songs were screaming for ‘em, and we got Vikram Bains to do just that. He brought with him a rough, old school, thrash edge into the band.
Ø Vivin: After Krishna left we went through quite a few drummers – we finally got Manu in Dec ’07 and he’s made a huge difference to the sound. We’ve stuck with this line-up since then and it’s worked out pretty well for us. We’re all good buds, sharing a passion for metal – and having good fun playing it. The Ex-members list includes: Krishna – Drums, Darren – Guitars, Vikram Raymund - Bass and vocals, Bert – Drums, Praveen – Drums

In 2007, B&I released a self titled debut album. How has the band evolved since then?
Ø Vikram: The experiences we garnered from the first album taught us a lot, and this second album will be a testament to the fact that this band is anything but static. The songs are more powerful, they're catchier, Vivin absolutely shines with his keyboard and we've got a lot of dual guitar solos - all in all, it's a different experience compared to the first album
Ø Arun: As of now, we’re planning on naming the album as “Dynamite World”. It’s got about 6 songs in it: In Darkness, Dynamite World, Promised Lands, Altar Of Blood and Anarchy. It’s very different from our debut album – be sure to check it out once it’s out

Tell us about the concept behind the first album and the upcoming second album
Ø Vivin: The first album was a concept album. The tale of a Soviet soldier fighting in WWII in the bloody Eastern Front. It's about how pre-war euphoria gets twisted into despair through the bitter experiences and scars which only war can deliver. It's got twists in the story and it's intentionally a little ambiguous at the end. Was quite a lyrical effort to put it all together
Ø Mark: The second album tackles a wide variety of topics. From socio-political philosophy to prophetic promises, from dark epic fantasy to brutal stark reality – Dynamite World does not bother being politically correct. The track list for this album is Anarchy, Dynamite World, In Darkness, Kneel at the Altar, Unleash the Beast, Promised Lands

When will the second album be released? Any nation-wide tours planned for promotion?
Ø Arun: The album should be released by the end of June, or by early July. Hopefully the release coincides with the June Rock Out (JRO) festival, which is an annual music festival in Chennai and Bangalore.
Ø Ashish: As far as tours and shows are concerned, we've got our ears to the ground and are looking to play as many shows as possible to promote this album

You guys were judged by Opeth at IIT Saarang. What was it like? What were the thoughts running through your head while you were on stage?
Ø Mark: The show at IIT-Saarang was pretty good. We were the only metal band to qualify to the finals. This band is cursed in one aspect – when we pick lots, we usually pick the #1 spot, and this time was no exception. We kick started the show and the show went quite well. The sound on stage was brilliant and the crowd was brilliant. All in all, a good show. I felt quite honoured when I was selected as the “Best Vocalist” by Opeth – we had quite a party after that show.

What is your most memorable concert so far?
Ø Manu: We’ve had so many – it’s really, really hard to point out one particular time. We’ve had a blast everywhere from Kolkotta to Kerala. I guess I answer for the band when I say that every time we play for a crowd of music lovers and metalheads – it’s a memorable concert right there. The feeling of being up on stage, playing the kind of music you love is special – and if the audience connects, it becomes so much more than that.

What songs do you perform most frequently? Do you play covers? If so, which ones?
Ø Ashish: We usually play only original compositions, and that’s been our modus operandi since our first show. But for shows which stretch beyond an hour we usually throw in a cover or two. We've covered Maiden, Metallica, Grave Digger, Nightwish, Kreator and Whitesnake to name a few, through the years.

Any anecdotes or stories about the band? From the jam room to the studio to the gigs?
Ø Arun: There's so many stories - and most of them are just scandalous! This band has given us all so many fond memories and experiences - it's been an awesome ride. The way I look at it, we're all good friends - we love playing our kind of music and partying pretty hard after that. Absolutely no politics within the band and that’s very important for a band's longevity. We've got good synergy on and off the stage, and that definitely helps too.

Who writes the music for B&I? Tell us about the song-writing process.
Ø Vivin: Ashish or Vikram usually come up with a few riffs they think go well together and they bring it to the rest of us. We build a song from that point. So, as far as the music is concerned the whole band is involved. Lyrics are handled by Mark and Ashish, and Vikram chips in with ideas from time to time. We follow absolutely no formulae as far as music or song structures are concerned – it’s probably the first thing one can notice when they listen to our songs. It’s not chaos, but it’s not rigid in any sense either.

What are the lyrical and musical themes behind B&I's music?
Ø Ashish: We place a great emphasis on quality lyrics – every song has an idea behind it. Substandard lyrics jus don’t pass muster as far as we’re concerned. I honestly believe one can put up the lyrics of this band and it would be as good as anything any other band on the international scene has to offer. Lyrical and musical themes are quite varied. The first album dealt with war and the psyche of a soldier undergoing that. The second album has a bit of everything... Except songs about sex, drugs and rock 'n roll. :-P

How do the band members manage between work (and college) and jam sessions? How often does the band rehearse?
Ø Vikram: We're all working now, as opposed to some of us who were in college last year. And it is pretty hard to meet up and practice (or record). But we've managed with difficult timings right from the inception of this band - and we set aside weekends for band-related activities. We're quite strict while rehearsing as well, before shows it's as much as it's humanly possible.

What are the challenges ahead of the band right now? And what is the goal ahead?

Ø Mark: The challenge is publicity and getting our music out there. Not just to the Indian audience, but to a much wider international audience as well. Our goal is to get signed on by a reputed international recording label, and all our efforts are directed there.

Are you signed on to any record label? Or looking for one?
Ø Ashish: No, we aren't at the moment. We've got a few offers from some minor labels here but we thought it'd be best till we wait till after the second album to see what our options are. So we've got our options open.

How fans can access your music online ?
Ø Arun: We've got our music put up on Reverbnation and Myspace. Check them out and support us.
http://www.reverbnation.com/bloodnironx
http://www.myspace.com/bloodnironx

Is there someone you’d like to give a shout out for all the support?
Ø Vivin: Our families - first and foremost. They have been beyond supportive and then we'd also like to thank our fans who've stuck with us and have faith in this band. Bands from Chennai hardly get any publicity, but we've been fortunate enough to garner some really die-hard fans from all over the country.

Special message to your fans?
Ø Blood and Iron: Stay Metal \m/

Album Review: Undying Inc - Evilution Of A Manimal EP (2008)

2009-05-06T15:02:00.006+05:30

What would you do it someone told you that you have just 10 minutes left to live? You’d do what any Indian metalhead would do. Put on Undying Inc’s EP “Evilution Of A Manimal” and spend the last few minutes of your life headbanging to cyclic patterns of overwhelming aggression, caught in a complex web of crushing riffs, flavoured with relentless drumming and served chilled with gut wrenching vocals.

This is Undying Inc’s latest studio venture after “Preface To Erase”, the highly successful album which has firmly put this four piece death/thrash metal band from New Delhi right in the center of the Metal Map of India. The EP is just a prequel to “Evilution Of A Manimal,” a full length concept album, expected to be released later this year. The songs, filled with rage, anger and hatred speaks about the evolution from man to manimal, an aggressive, mechanical creature which multiplies and feeds off the earth like a parasite, raping and destroying what comes in its path.

The 3 song EP is filled with nice, juicy hooks to sink your teeth into, and at the same time, contains all the right ingredients necessary for a brutal assault on your senses.

The album kickstarts with a drum roll and Manimal in on. At almost 4 mins, this song is the longest on the EP. Short, violent breakdowns with maniacal drumming sets the tone and gives you a taste of what is to come. Manimal leads into Evilution, a groove based song with crunchy riffs clocking in at 3.11 mins. The drumming sounds like a gear shifting 18-wheeler truck. Really heavy, and yet, very fluid. The last song on the EP is Existance Failed. Starting off with a parental advisory note, the song quickly proceeds to hammer your mind, distort your brain and cause you to feel like you’ve been hit in the stomach with a sledgehammer.

Overall, a real explosive treat for the listener. The album’s got great production, courtesy Anupam Roy (Demonic Resurrection, Narsil etc) and slick artwork, which is an abstract representation of the concept. 10 minutes of metal mayhem seems too short a time for such brutal madness but then again, it is an EP after all, which doubles up as a teaser for the album.

Last words? Just a warning: Not recommended for the weak at heart.

Interview With Rat King

2009-05-06T14:39:00.005+05:30

They say what's in a name. So why the name RAT KING?
Ø MURARI: We saw this article online (Wikipedia) about a phenomenon called "Rat King" where rats get tied together at the tails, primarily because of all the blood, mucus and feces. They stay tied together, and grow like that their whole lives, like one huge mass of rats. We thought that was pretty cool, plus we were fascinated by the whole Pied Piper Of Hamelin story, so we decided it would be perfect.
Ø DEEPAK: The Wikipedia article struck us as something completely out of this world - something surreal and horrifying at the same time. We used to talk about the possibilities of 'it' having a collective consciousness; a kind of Godhead.

Introduce yourselves... (Name, place, instruments, previous bands etc)
Ø MURARI: Murari. Chennai, Guitars, DeathVOX (\m/), Maelstrom
Ø DEEPAK: Deepak. Currently residing in Kozhikode. I like to play drums. Performed with a bunch of bands over the 5 or so years I was in Chennai - Deadspawn, Moonshiva, Fall Of Reason, The Sixth Element, 7 Days, Maelstrom etc.

What genre of music do you consider your work to be? Who are your major influences?
Ø MURARI: I don’t think Rat King really is definable by genre. I think you can probably categorize each album in some genre, but not the band as such. We might just turn around and do some bizarre take on a well-established genre like hip-hop or rock. Who knows? Anyway, if you want genres, I think the second album can be described as a blend of heavily ambient, classical and orchestral music interspersed with violent phases of metal. Our influences are films, film-makers, philosophers, musicians (to a certain extent) and mainly artists of every kind. Some examples would be the surrealist cinema of David Lynch, the breathtaking ambience of Andrei Tarkovsky, the horror and visceral detail of John Carpenter, the sadistic hedonism of Marquis de Sade and so forth. This sounds like a load of pompous crap, but it's true.
Ø DEEPAK: I hear it as a soundtrack to a really bad movie. We used to talk about mailing our music to Shuko Murase, Shinchiro Watanabe and all those anime giants, 'cause we saw parallels in our music and what they were doing with their animes. The most recent additions to my ever-growing list of inspirations are Phillip Glass, Hermeto Pascoal, Univers Zero and Dalek.

When did you form your band? How did you guys meet?
Ø MURARI: Formed somewhere around June/July 2008. We were part of Maelstrom at the time, and recognized the stagnation and limitedness of current music for what it was. Also, Fantomas and John Zorn were involved somehow.

Your debut album is called 'The Plague Of Hamelin’; tell us more about the same.
Ø DEEPAK: It is a morbid take on the Pied Piper Of Hamelin story. In our version, the Pied Piper, who tries to rescue the town from the plague, confronts the rodents. They battle, and he is defeated, and metamorphoses into an uber-rat beast known as Lord Piper. He is the embodiment of pure evil, to a certain extent. In the original story, he, to spite the villagers who didn't pay him for his services, leads the children of the village away (like rats). In our version, the kids are led to the rodent lair, and are feasted upon. Not a good day for Hamelin overall.

Why this genre of in particular? I mean, you guys were great as Maelstrom and Fall Of Reason, why didn't you chose to do more death metal?
Ø MURARI: Like I said above, not enough scope for experimentation. We had all sorts of new ideas, and themes, and wanted to explore them further. Death Metal is not really suited for narrating a story with choice musical phrasing.
Ø DEEPAK: Deth Metl is 4 l00sars!

'TPoH' is available for "FREE" download. How has the response been? Are you planning the same for "LARVA,' your second album?
Ø DEEPAK: The response has been terrific, and we have been able to get our music across to people from all over the world. For Larva, it depends on our on-going negotiations with Road Crew Records. I sound like corporate sleaze.

RAT KING is a studio project, if I'm correct. Any plans to take this on stage?
Ø MURARI: As of now, no. We aren't planning any live performances and we really don't know how we would. Maybe if they made a play based on our album, we could perform live. Certainly not generic "concerts" though.

Could you briefly describe the music-making process?
Ø MURARI: Deepak and I chalk out an outline for the story, and we write up a small script. We then compose songs based on that script, and send them back and forth between each other, making changes along the way. We then see which songs really contribute to the storyline, and are strong enough to be on the album.

Personal Opinion here. Although 'TPoH' was brilliantly done, the lack of vocals for me was a 'tiny' setback. Are you considering adding vocals for LARVA or will it be in line with TPoH?
Ø DEEPAK: In the strict sense, there are no 'vocals' for Larva either. There are vocal phrases though, but we use these more to represent some part of the story. For example, if the protagonist is in torment for some reason, there might be a guttural scream recorded. But we primarily use instruments and ambience to tell the story.

You got some good reviews on international e-zines. What’s your ultimate goal as a band?
Ø DEEPAK: Personally, I would love to see Rat King making music for films, anime, games, etc... Also, some sort of live production with a theater group would be awesome. That would be the perfect avenue for our music. I read about Virgin Steele's House Of Atreus concept albums being used as part of a Greek tragedy play. Something like that, with less cheese.

Is there some one you'd like to thank for emotional or financial support?
Ø MURARI: Family and friends really, but not for support. Just, you know, who else is there?
Ø DEEPAK: My folks for paying my rent while I was in Chennai. The girlfriend for introducing me to a lot of great films and music and more.

Any last words?
Ø MURARI: I had a good day (Cloverfield)
Ø DEEPAK: Merci beaucoup!

Album Review: Mastodon - Crack the Skye (2009)

2009-04-01T14:40:00.011+05:30

Fire. Water. Earth. Air.

Atlanta based progressive metal band Mastodon finally completed their cycle of albums connected to the elements with their fourth studio venture, Crack The Skye. Produced by Brendan O’ Brien (AudioSlave, AC/DC), this is a tribute to Skye Dailor, drummer Brann Dailor’s sister who committed suicide at the age of 14. “I can see the pain”, sings Troy Sanders in the title track, “It’s written all over your face…” Dailor was quoted saying “For me personally, it means the moment of being told you lost someone dear to you, [that moment] is enough to crack the sky."

Musically, this album is very different from any of the band’s previous works. The entire album is a chilled out maniacal frenzy of sounds. Intricate guitar arrangements and shifting polyrhythmic drumming in a subtle undertow with choral harmonies and dream-like synth sequences. The solos are massively classic rock influenced, embracing hints of country and blues, with lyrical themes varying from astral travel to Tsarist Russia, Rasputin to cosmic wormholes, and yet, it all fits in the grand mad scheme of things.

The album starts rolling with Oblivion, drummer Brann Dailor on vocals during the intro and chorus. A great opening track; starts strong and sets the tone for the rest of the record. Oblivion leads on to Divinations and Quintessence, in which Troy Sanders sings, “Let it go, let it go…” Let go of what, you wonder? Let go of the pain and the sorrow? Or of control, let it go and fly away into the Skye? The song is laced with guitar arpeggios over crazy Brann Dailor’s signature style drumming, with psychedelic synth and powerful vocals which drowns you in a veritable whirlpool of emotions. The Czar, an epic in 4 parts, clocking 10:54 minutes comes next. Crushing solos with melodic bridges makes this the most defining track of the album. The Ghost Of Kareila, song number 5 gives us the Mastodon we all love. Double bass pounding and a clash of guitars as the impending doom looms closer. Leviathan and Blood Mountain revisited. I don’t think Mastodon can ever stray away from this. This is what they do best! Crack The Skye, the title song comes 30:32 minutes since the opening strains of Oblivion. This song features Scott Kelly of Neurosis continuing his guest musician relationship with the band by handling the vocal duties on this track. The last song on this juggernaut of an album is The Last Baron. A metal monster twisting around your ears. Frantic drumming with vocal lines beckoning the end of the world. Multiple guitar onslaughts, the Skye cracks and suddenly, it’s over...

But then you think. Is this what you actually wanted from Mastodon?

Gear Review: Line 6 Toneport UX2

2009-03-25T16:07:00.009+05:30

I've had this for almost a year now, got down to using it only a few months back and truly realised its brilliance a few weeks back.

This isn't really a review, but what the hell..

The Line 6 Toneport UX2 is a recording console which doubles up as an external soundcard. Plug it into your USB, plug your bass/guitar/mic into the console, choose your patch and bombs away. You get your studio quality recordings, no latency, no feedback, no issues. The best thing I realised about this is that you don't even need an amp or your pedals to use this. The hardware comes bundled with Line 6 Gearbox, where you can choose your amps, cabs, pedals, effects, whatever you want, tweak around based on your guitar settings until you get the tone you want, and record. You can even download cabs, amps, patches etc online after registering on the Line 6 website, though I wouldn't recommend the patches. Every patch differs from guitar to guitar, and you'll be hard pressed to find a good patch online that suits specifically your guitar.

For those of you who actually use Line 6 processors/pedals like POD XT, Bass POD etc, it’s even easier. You can directly export your patch from your POD XT or whatever equipment you have and directly get the same tone on your recordings.

The funda of this is simple. After setting your patch on Gearbox, jus open your Ableton/Cubase/Acid Pro or whatever software you use, choose the input as your UX2 and record. There's no extra setting or long winded process to set up your recordings software. Very simple to use, great piece of equipment and pretty cheap too. Well, I got mine second hand, for bout 5k but I think a new one costs bout 8k from the US of A. In any case, a great deal.

The body is made of hard plastic and is pretty light. Looks pretty sturdy but wouldn't survive too much rough handling. Don't think that would matter in any case. You're not going to be taking this gigging. Runs on power from the USB hub, so you don't have any power cords plugged in anywhere. One cable to connect UX2 to the comp, another to connect UX2 to the guitar. That’s it.

I have 2 sets of recordings for you to gauge the recording quality. The Fall Of Reason recordings were done first, when Kapil (the guy who sold the console to me, guitarist of Fall Of Reason) was jus figuring everything out. Then came the MaelstroM recordings, when we'd pretty much figured it all out. Fall Of Reason is a 4 piece progressive death / thrash metal band from Chennai, India. Maelstrom is a technical death metal band also from Chennai, India. There’s an obvious difference in the recordings, an improvement that only experience can give you.

All in all, great piece of equipment. Studio recordings at your fingertips. Essential for every musician and upcoming band. And not jus if you're a musician. Hell, I use the external soundcard to watch movies and listen to music too!!

Technical features of this USB studio recording interface are as follows.
**Sample rate conversion: 16 and 24 bit at 44.1, 48 and 96 kHz
**Gearbox amp and effects modeling software for Guitar, Bass and Vocals includes:
**23 guitar/bass amp models with 29 cabinet models
**6 vocal mic preamps for amazing, studio-quality tracks
**29 stompbox and studio effect models, including Overdrive, Delay, Reverb, Wah, Flanger, Chorus, and more
**2 XLR inputs with mic preamps and +48V phantom power
**2 Guitar/Bass Inputs – use the Pad input for guitars and basses with high level pickup outputs, or the normal input
**Dual analog VU meters
**Line 6’s exclusive low-latency ToneDirect monitoring
**Works with leading recording software on Mac® and Windows®
**Includes Ableton Live Lite - Line 6 Edition recording software

I wish you a Happy Recording and a Merry New Console!!