Flint Knife Murder - Pretayug (2024)

Country: India
Style: Folk/Death Metal
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 7 Sep 2024
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

I like the idea of the website Metal Has No Borders, because that's one of my guiding principles at Apocalypse Later too, so I paid attention to their Best Folk Metal Album of the Year list. It included a trio of albums, Ryujin's self-titled in the bronze tier, Vorgrum's Summit of Dreams in silver and a third EP from Flint Knife Murder in the gold. That's an album from Japan, another from Argentina and an EP from Shillong in the Meghalaya province of India, so far to the northeast that it's past a majority of Bangladesh but not quite so far as About Us, in Wokha, Nagaland.

I don't know that I'd call this my folk metal release of the year because there are highly apparent limitations, but it's a fascinating EP and I'd love to hear more. For a start, it's both folk metal and death metal at the same time, so much so that I can't decide which way it went. It doesn't seem to be folk metal that's been crunched up into death and it doesn't seem to be death metal that's had a huge amount of folk elements overlaid. It feels like it's inherently both genres and both of them are integral to the sound. My favourite part comes at the very end of the opener, Nartiang, with a death metal crunch and a delightfully sticky beat, but a telling folk wail overlaid.

The beginning of Likai that follows comes close, sounding like a field recording of a folk melody in the jungle opening it up, then shifting into the guitars of death metal but the percussion of folk music. I have no idea what's being hit or what it's being hit with but it sounds glorious, with those riffs underneath it. There's a glorious combination of chant and heavy metal riff in Dharmapala, not for the first time. Angulimala opens with a wonderful riff and that folk percussion joins more traditional metal drums for a fascinating sound, that's like hand drums as a full kit. There's some sort of melodious lute halfway that I can't identify but which sounds glorious. The solo is excellent too, again somewhere between folk and heavy metal.

My problem with it is that the death metal angle, when it's isolated from the folk elements which happens occasionally, feels relatively routine. The riffs are good but they don't vary much and I'm not a big fan of the harsh vocals, whether they're death growl or hardcore shout or somewhere in between, because they fall into the common trap of working as texture but without intonation or much nuance. Fortunately, there are a lot of different styles of vocals here and such sections are never particularly long. There are folk chants, dark whispers, clean rock vocals, shouty vocals and harsh growls, each of which adds an element, as does the narrative element on Dharmapala.

I'm only seeing two names associated with Flint Knife Murder, though there may well be more at this point in their career. They formed in 2014, Siddharth Burea on vocals and guitar and Saptarshi Das on vocals and bass, but those are not the only instruments in play here, even if some of it was created digitally on synths. There are no credits for this EP at Metal Archives and it's not on their Bandcamp page. Angulimala is, presumably in an earlier version, but with nobody else listed. An earlier version of Likai is also on their Bandcamp with a guest vocal credited to Tiara Kharpuri.

I've listened to this rather a lot as I've chipped away at my book reviews for the month and I have to say that it's growing on me. It doesn't seem to work well as background but it rewards an active listener, because there are depths here that float past unnoticed if we're not paying attention. A couple of songs, Likai and Dharmapala I believe, feature some tasty bass runs that deserve kudos, but a lot of the nuance is in the songwriting. Dharmapala in particular has both a ritual element to it and a storytelling element.

Maybe that's why it's my favourite song here. It's slower and less overtly death but it does a huge amount with its seven and a half minutes. For something that fits so well as folk/death, there's a strong prog aspect to this one. I adore when the eighties heavy metal solo kicks in and it matches the deep ritual chanting perfectly. I have no idea what's going on but there's a movie's worth of something in this piece. The more I listen with serious focus, the more I find that each piece here has that to at least some degree.

I wonder when they'll get round to issuing a full album. They've put out EPs in 2020, 2021 and now 2024, so they're not without material. I guess it's just a matter of time. I'm looking forward to it.

Snarm - Till the End (2024)

Country: India
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Jul 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

Here's another submission from India. I'm always happy to see these, given that it's a huge nation with a huge musical heritage, but so little of it ever seems to fit into the rock and metal vein. This particular band are Snarm, from Guwahati in Assam, and they call what they do progressive glam/arena rock. It's especially heartening to see a female drummer, which feels odd to call out in 2024 with so many entirely female bands or female musicians playing every instrument imaginable in a wealth of different genres, but is still pioneering in India. So kudos to Arju Begum; may you break that glass ceiling.

Unfortunately, she's part of the most obvious flaw but it isn't her fault. Every time the first track proper, Someday Somewhere, kicks in, my brain screams at me that the production is too thin. Her drums ought to be much beefier than they are and so should the bass of Anurag Gogoi. However, I do have to acknowledge that I'm listening on YouTube, because I don't have an album download. I have no doubt that there's compression involved so this isn't quite how the album should sound, but I found it relatively easy to adjust anyway. By the time that Sky High arrives at the very heart of the album, I've almost forgotten the thin production and I'm just listening to the music.

Initially, it's the arena rock aspect to their sound that's most obvious. Someday Somewhere plays in radio-friendly territory, even at five minutes in length, with AOR vocals from Tsooraj and a tasty fluid guitar solo from the band's founder, Shihan Bhuyan. Rarest of Pearls follows suit with softer vocals and a seventies rock feel. Till the End is good old fashioned hard rock that doesn't seem to do anything flash but flows really well and seeps into our soul because of that. It's the title track and it's the first obvious highlight the album has to offer. No Rain Can Wash Away is a ballad that shifts from delicate piano and soft orchestration to power ballad midway through. Again, there's some tasty guitarwork when it's time for Bhuyan to solo.

Sure, there's a little of their progressive edge late in Rarest of Pearls and there's definitely some glam rock on Someday Somewhere, but these don't come close to dominating the album, at least until One More Lonely Night shows up as the bonus track. That's pure glam rock with metal edges. It's a slick and commercial single but it doesn't really do anything that any other slick commercial glam rock single does, so it ends up feeling like a single that would surely get airplay but wouldn't be particularly remembered after its moment in the spotlight is up.

Mostly, this plays to me like good old fashioned hard rock, mostly seventies but with touches that are pure eighties, and enough AOR to make it totally viable as arena rock. And, while the first half is pretty solid, the second half ups the ante considerably. While Till the End is excellent and all the more memorable with each further listen, Sky High is easily the album's highlight for me. It starts out like another piano-driven ballad, but kicks in hard after a minute to become a seventies hard rock stomper. Sure, I'd like a beefier sound for the bass and drums on one, but it's a gem anyway, right down to a delightful drop into flamenco guitar with handclaps during the second half. Other than that section, somehow it feels Japanese to me, like Bow Wow covering Iron Maiden.

I didn't identify any particular influence on Till the End or Sky High, though there are elements of a lot of different bands discernible. The overt influences kick in after them. This Rock 'n' Roll Ride opens up with a guitar riff that's surely borrowed from Maiden's Back in the Village, but it has a strong Deep Purple sound otherwise. Rain and Thunder features lots more eighties metal guitar, but then it gets Michael Jackson funky and then shifts into European power metal, just in a hard rock framework. It's like Uli Jon Roth covering Helloween. Then there's Reignite, an interesting ballad that's not only folky because of an overt flute. Its sweep is reminiscent of Rainbow Eyes by Rainbow but with Mark Knopfler guitar and a vocal melody that I know I should recognise.

Oddly, while these three songs are the easiest to locate sources for, they're three of the best that the album has to offer, Sky High and Reignite above Till the End and Rain and Thunder for me and This Rock 'n' Roll Ride and No Rain Can Wash Away behind them. That's a lot of songs to call out on an album that's an intro and eight songs, plus a bonus single, which bodes well for Snarm's future, as they develop their own style and hopefully lead the way for Indian hard rock in the 2020s.

This is an easy album to like and also a comfortable album to listen to a lot. There are albums that sound amazing on a first listen, only to fade away after a few more times through; and albums that don't sound like much at all until we dig into them and realise just how amazing they are. This is an album that sounds good immediately and continues to sound good however many times we listen. I doubt it'll top anyone's lists of the best albums of the year, but it's an album even jaded critics are likely to pull back out every once in a while as a reliable old favourite. Thanks for sending this one over to me, Shihan!

Arogya - Supernatural (2023)

Country: India
Style: Pop Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 May 2023
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

I've listened to this album, which I believe is the fourth from Indian band Arogya, a few times now and I'm still trying to come to terms with it. The title track is a great way to open because it gives a good introduction to what they do and does it as well as anything else here. And what they do is an odd amalgam of genres.

For a start, it's clearly commercial, so immediate that it could be used as entrance music for some wrestler or other, especially if they're called Supernatural because that's the first three words, all of them delivered in crystal clear unaccented English with emphasis and serious sustain. It's got a modern metal crunch under it and it finds a grinding nu metal feel as soon as the title's done with, with a harsh and aggressive growl. But then it gets all bouncy and melodic, with a softer, almost a pop vocal for the majority of the song, ramping up in forcefulness for the choruses.

It's quite a mix, as if Arogya want the perkiness of western pop music but the impact of aggressive metal all at the same time. And, while that arguably places them right into the nu metal genre, it seems a little unfair. They're kind of like Disturbed on this track, but both heavier and softer at the same time. On others, they add further elements: some ethnic touches on Desire, gothic metal on Queen of the Damned and Spell and overt electronica on Fade Away. By this point, it's clear these musicians aren't a rock band pretending to be a metal band or vice versa. They're both at once.

And that's when it starts to truly get interesting, because the biases we've brought with us cease to be applicable and we can just enjoy this on its own merits. I tend to like the songs that delve the deepest into gothic metal, so Queen of the Damned, with its bouncy chorus that wouldn't be out of place on an HIM song, is an easy choice, and Spell too, which does many of the same things but has a heavier aspect to it, without losing any of its drive. Forbidden Memories finds the same mindset but also kicks off with a heavy guitar that feels like it's been borrowed from doom metal and spun up in speed.

A highlight for a different reason is the closer, Armageddon, which is slick and commercial and has some tasty harmonies that grow over the length of the song. It wraps up very nicely indeed. Other than that, I tended to find mseylf drawn to parts of songs rather than the songs themselves. I got a kick out of the almost Celtic melody on Prophet and the guitarwork on Drifting Away, whether it's the work of Pawan and/or Mr. G, who are both credited for guitar. I also liked a lot of the electronic flourishes, because they bring character to different songs in different ways. However, the harsher voice rarely did anything for me and some of the more staccato beats left me dry too.

It's fair to say that that surprised me. Often with bands who mix light and heavy, I tend to gravitate towards one or the other, with a few bands nailing both approaches at once. Here, the lighter side is the melodies and the electronica, which I liked pretty consistently, and the heavier side is in the guitars, which I also liked pretty consistently. Where Arogya lost me was in between, with some of the elements often intruding on songs I was otherwise enjoying, kind of like the guest vocals on Evanescence's Bring Me to Life, which was much better as a demo without them.

And that's probably not a bad song to bring up, because Evanescence also combine crunchy guitars and a gothic influence with poppy melodies and electronica, making them an obvious comparison. The difference, of course, is that those backing vocals weren't meant to be there and were forced upon the band by a studio wanting to play to the trends of the day, firmly against songwriter Amy Lee's wishes. Here, Arogya don't seem to be under any sort of pressure to include these elements, apparently simply choosing to do so as an aesthetic decision. Maybe they like the released version of Bring Me to Life better.

And so, I like this album and I appreciate its diversity, merging pop and metal successfully, but feel that it would be better were it to ditch the few elements that don't work.

About Us - About Us (2022)

Country: India
Style: Melodic/Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 18 Nov 2022
Sites: Facebook | Instagram

Formed as recently as 2019 but with the six members apparently all with fifteen years experience in a variety of other bands and projects, About Us are a melodic rock band from Wokha, Nagaland, which is so far over to the northeast of India that it's east of Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, near the Chinese and Burmese borders in what I would call southeast Asia. And if that conjures up thoughts of ethnic eastern folk music as a flavour in their sound, you can ditch them right now because About Us sound as perfectly suited to the Frontiers label as any carefully unaccented Scandinavians you can conjure up.

Well, for the most part. There's some variety to About Us that runs beyond the expected spectrum from AOR to hair metal. There's plenty of that, of course, and it makes up the majority of what we hear, but there's some lighter stuff and even some heavier stuff too to keep it interesting. Not all of it works and I think they stretch a little further than may have been advisable but I appreciate a band who doesn't want to stay in one bucket and About Us certainly seem to be that.

They're a six piece band, with two guitarists and a keyboard player, but the first one to highlight is Sochan Kikon, perhaps unsurprisingly for melodic rock because he's their vocalist. Right Now is an impressive stormer of a track to kick off the album and he shows off both his range and his sustain on this one. Then he does it again on Gimme Gimme just to make sure that we're paying attention. It's impressive, but he overdoes it a little as the album runs on and I'd say he's pitched too high on Lead My Heart, not as a peak but as a general level.

That said, he goes low too at points and even into other styles than pure and clean, because there is a shift late in the album that took me utterly by surprise. The first six tracks, from Right Now to Rock on Top aren't vastly different from each other. Gimme Gimme is softer than Right Now but it has a hair metal edge to it that makes me wonder whether I recently heard it on the soundtrack to the first season of Peacemaker. Lead My Heart has some solid hard rock riffs. Loaded Love is a power ballad with a subtle country twang. Rock on Top is jauntier and more progressive, including the experimental intro.

But then Rise adds a modern edge to the guitar that's very nineties, almost a Pantera vibe, if not remotely as heavy. That song settles down somewhat but Golden Troops doubles down, reinforcing the Pantera feel, heavying it up and even shifting Kikon into a harsh vocal like he's auditioning for a metalcore band. It's a slightly jarring shift and, while I think Rise fits within a decent range for a versatile melodic/hard rock band, Golden Troops feels out of place, especially given that the song after it, Open Your Heart, is the softest, most overt ballad on the album. The dropoff from one to the next is huge.

I'd be surprised if most reviewers don't highlight Kikon first and most. He has an admirable range, though he doesn't seem to acknowledge that less is sometimes more, and he definitely leads this band into the spotlight. However, I'd also call out the guitarists, Renlamo Lotha and Pona Kikon. I don't know how they divvy up duties, as both are simply credited for guitars, rather than one lead and one rhythm. I'm assuming that they're swapping those roles as needed and that suggests that the pair of them are highly talented and just as versatile as their frontman. That's evident in the riffs but especially in the solos, which sometimes play for emotion and sometimes more to show off.

If Sochan Kikon is the first obvious plus point in About Us, then Lotha and Pona Kikon are another and one that becomes more and more obvious with each listen through. I should add that there's a third Kikon in the band, Soren Kikon on bass. I have no idea if they're all related but it seems like a good possibility. Completing the line-up are Yanni Ennie on drums and Renbomo Yanthan, who's perhaps even more fond of eighties rock than the rest of the band, judging from his contributions here.

If you're enjoying the current trend of Frontiers to stretch the relatively tight boundaries of what we might call melodic rock, About Us ought to be up your alley. They're not a huge departure, with Golden Troops the obvious exception to that statement, but they're different enough to stand out, which is good.

Aarlon - Dafan (2022)

Country: India
Style: Alternative Rock/Metalcore
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Mar 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram

After I reviewed the new Bloodywood album earlier in the year, I received submissions from a few other bands from India and that makes me happy because I haven't heard anywhere near enough rock and metal from that country and I'd love to catch up more. In fact, the more I hear, the more I want to hear more because the bands who I have heard are often interesting and uncategorisable. That holds for bands as varied as Prophets of Yahweh, Cosmic Circle and Friends from Moon and it holds true with this album too, perhaps unsurprisingly, as the music here was composed by Ritwik Shivam, the man behind Friends from Moon.

In fact, I now realise that, while Shivam played almost every instrument on that Astray album, the five guest appearances included two members of Aarlon with a third, Guarav Basnet, a guest here too. When Shivam needed a harsh voice, he asked Pritam Adhikary to provide it, who's the vocalist throughout this album, except for Basnet's guest spot on Rok Lo. Shivam had two guest drummers on Astray, one of whom was Prankreet Borah, Aarlon's drummer. Clearly, this is a solid opportunity to hear what Shivam sounds like as only one musician in a band of five, each of which can also call a few shots. Sure, he composed all the music here, but his fellow guitarist, Piyush Rana, handled the lyrics and I'm sure the other musicians made their creative contributions too.

This may not be as wildly varied as Astray, but it continues to keep us on the hop until the end. The genre is very hard to nail down, because they have two very different styles, some songs playing in one and some in the other, with the most interesting moving between them. The first of the styles that shows up is metalcore, because the opener, Vidroh, kicks off hard and heavy but very modern. In fact, the first part of the song is just like Bloodywood, merely without ethnic instrumentation in the drop spots. Adhikary even sounds like Jayant Bhadula when doing his gruff voice. However, the band don't drop into Raoul Kerr-esque raps to provide contrast, Adhikary softens up instead.

And that's where the other primary style comes in, because that's alternative rock, far softer and with clean, characterful vocals. Even on Vidroh, Adhikary delivers in a number of styles, but on the next song, Panchhi, he sounds like a completely different singer, because we move from an urgent metalcore sound to a pastoral one that makes us wonder in Donovan ever recorded in Hindi. They literally go from clanging metal behind a sonic assault to an acoustic guitar over a bubbling brook and tweeting birds in as short a time as it takes for your jaw to drop.

Now, to be fair, the heaviest part of Vidroh was its ending and Panchhi does build considerably, but it feels difficult to reconcile the two tracks as being by the same band. Even when the second goes into its heavier section, it still can't compete with what Aarlon started out with one track earlier, a breathy groove taking over instead that had me rocking in my office chair. That's impressive and I would suggest that, if you don't like the first track, stick around through the second one. There's a lot going on here and you don't want to miss any of it because one style isn't to your liking.

After a few listens, I think it's fair to say that my favourite songs find a different vibe again, as they come early in the second half with an older take on alternative rock. Saavan and especially Aaina could both have done well during the post-punk era in the UK, as ethereal and haunting dark pop music. Somehow, Aaina has a Japanese flavour to it. Tu is more in line, I'd suggest, with their alt rock mode and, like so many of these songs do, builds really well, finding a point where we think it has to have peaked but continuing to build for a little while longer.

If you want the heavier Aarlon, that does return on Inquilaab, but it features a playful kind of rage that doesn't feel quite so angry to me as Vidroh did. The best merging of the two sides of the band may be found on Rok Lo, with Basnet's smooth, sometimes perhaps autotuned voice a fair counter to Adhikary's harsh approach, just as the catchy, commercial alternative rock counters the urgent, in your face metalcore. I think it probably overwhelms it, as it skews more to the alt rock side as it goes and it may end up a little unbalanced.

I'm still in two minds as to how the album as a whole balances those two main styles. As much as I'd usually go for the faster, heavier material, I prefer the softer styles here, especially the post-punk. That said, the songs that shift from light to heavy, and it tends to be that way round, are surely the most interesting. I may be all about Saavan and Aaina, but Tu and Panchhi won't leave me alone. It bodes well for a band when they leave me arguing with myself about what worked best, because it means they're doing interesting things.

Friends from Moon - Astray (2022)

Country: India
Style: Alternative
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 15 Apr 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

This came to me as a submission promising to be varied and it certainly delivered on that, a genre rollercoaster of an album full of slow ascents and scary drops that eventually flows to a satisfying halt. It's impossible to slap a single label on it, but I had to call it something so I tried alternative, because that's its first stop on the genre rollercoaster. It's alternative in Rage On, which is bouncy alternative rock, starting out grungy but escalating into metalcore midway. It's alternative a song later in Rebellion Road too, though this time it's alternative pop, a perky amalgam of post-punk, new wave and college rock. So I guess I'll go with alternative.

However, the album evolves from there and it evolves considerably further than any boundary you might draw around alternative, whether pop or rock. This is a concept album that follows a loosely defined Lovecraftian theme, that of an outwardly normal young man, whatever "normal" happens to mean, who seeks what he shouldn't, eventually finds what he's looking for and is driven mad by the experience. That's why the opening two tracks are relatively commercial, not to mention quite upbeat and even a little innocent. That goes away as the album moves on.

The Enemy is when this man's journey truly begins and it does that by moving from a traditionally drawn rock song into something far more interesting. It's told almost as a dialogue, with a routine verse followed by another with experimental chords and innovative vocal passages, almost as if it flips. This young man is seeing beyond the reality he grew up in to something different, darker. It's clearly progressive rock at these points and that leads us into the standout for me, which is Astray, the title track.

The press release accompanying the album plays up Marvels Beyond Madness as the highlight and it is a peach of a song, one in which "all things culminate", but I'd take Astray over it. It trawls in an awful lot of different stuff to create something thoroughly original. In its way, it's the full journey in miniature, kicking off with a Twilight Zone-esque introductory passage, full of pulses and clocks and strands of melody. Then the rhythms get interesting, to highlight that we're not in Kansas any more, Toto. We're not really in Oz either, but we could well be midway on the tornado, with every snatch of normality we catch being ephemeral. This is a dark trip of a song, even if it's occasionally reminiscent of the Beatles or maybe Saigon Kick. There's carnival organ here and a quirky Danny Elfman sensibility, but it's darker than Tim Burton would allow.

I wanted Astray to be a lot longer than it was, but I'll happily take it as it is, just as I'll happily take the songs that follow. Come Together is not the Beatles song, at least not entirely. It's sometimes a Tom Waits-like cover of the entire Beatles output, rendered off kilter and threatening, with I am the Walrus and Come Together at the heart of it but plenty more up to Lennon's solo Give Peace a Chance thrown in there for good measure. Spoiler: this young man doesn't and we experience the results of that decision in Marvels Beyond Madness.

While I might prefer Astray, Marvels Beyond Madness is still a delight. It's where the album shifts from rock to metal for a while, because the appearance of an Elder God kind of needs the levels of anger that metal brings, and I presume that's what's happening. However, it's also more viciously industrial and experimental and it has a dark soundtrack mindset that's gradually taking over the album. It's as intensely visual as Astray, with every sound serving that purpose, not just the music, and it's often a flurry because we're on the longest and steepest part of the rollercoaster and we are heading downwards fast.

What follows, of course, if you've ever read Lovecraft (or watched Brazil), is the happy ending with our protagonist's connection to reality seared away. Riverine is Syd Barrett madness, not a raging and inconsistent Mad Hatter madness. It's the brain shutting down after a shock it can't handle to think about puppies and dandelions and anything except THAT! What surprises me here is just how long this album spends after the showdown finalé. Riverine has the least to say but it's the longest song on the album after Marvels Beyond Madness, and it's followed by an instrumental that's "an ending credits song", according to the press release.

I guess that works, and Of the Spirit is certainly a fascinating closer, but I wonder if expanding the journey between The Enemy and Marvels Beyond Madness would have been a better approach. It constitutes the core of the story in this concept album, but it's confined to the middle four tracks, with the outer four not unfairly seen as the intro and outro. But, hey, that's a quibble not a fault. I thoroughly enjoyed this journey, which viably mixes metalcore and ambient, Indian music and film soundtracks, post-punk and harsh vocals. It's ambitious stuff and it works.

The man behind it is Ritwik Shivam, who's in New Delhi, because this is primarily a one man band. He wrote everything and he performed almost everything, with a couple of guest drummers on a track each and a couple of guest vocalists also on a track each. The harsh vocals on the opener are the work of another guest. Mostly, though, this is Shivam and it's a mature release indeed for his debut album. At least I think it's his debut album, though other tracks precede it on his Bandcamp page, going back a couple of years. Thanks, Ritwik, for sending me a copy of this. It's good stuff.

Bloodywood - Rakshak (2022)

Country: India
Style: Nu/Folk Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 Feb 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website | Wikipedia | YouTube

Bloodywood have built quite a name for themselves over the past six years, given that this album is their debut of original music, following a 2017 collection called Anti-Pop 1, which was comprised entirely of metal covers of pop songs from artists like Rick Astley, Taylor Swift and the Backstreet Boys. To be fair, they deserve the attention because they've created a unique sound and there are precious few bands who can honestly claim that in 2022. They call themselves folk metal, which is a fair statement, given how much bhangra there is in their sound, but they're utterly unlike any folk metal band you can name.

Much of that is because they're incredibly commercial, which makes it a real shock to realise that this album wass independently released through Bandcamp. How are they not signed to a major label? The nu metal is obvious, furious and frantic beats and crunchy monotone guitars building most of these songs and the vocals split between folk, rap and clean rock voices. The Indian folk side is obvious too, not only in some of the vocals but in the jangly bhangra dhol drums and other more traditional sounds. However, this is highly versatile for nu metal, because Bloodywood venture often into what I think of as soundtrack territory, whether that be films or games. There's as much Machinae Supremacy in here as Linkin Park or Rage Against the Machine.

And, as much as I tend to despise nu metal, not for its use of rap but for its downtuned monotones, childish emo anger and its lack of instrumental solos, I rather like this new serious Bloodywood. It may be Jayant Bhadula's rapid fire vocals that sell the nu metal album the most, but the contrast with the folk side is a huge part of it too. Bhadula is decent at regular speed but when he ups the urgency, his delivery is amazing, clean but raspy and very very fast indeed. Raoul Kerr is a strong rapper and he works well with Bhadula but it's the clean vocals that impress me most.

Well, the contrast impresses me even more. Nu metal is fundamentally angry, at least whenever it's heavier than Limp Bizkit, and contrasting it with traditional Punjabi flutes and jangly bhangra dhol drums is a bizarre concept, but one that works. Indian folk music is inherently happy, so much so that bhangra bands, as the more commercial modern version, are frequent arbiters of mood at weddings. It's hard not to dance to it, even if you can't dance, and it's hard not to be reinvigorated by it, even if you started the day in a bad mood.

The best songs here, like Gaddaar and Machi Bhasad, feature a heavy dose of Indian music so the in your face anger of the guitar and vocals is tempered by folk elements and the result is at once happy and loud. The way that the band play with dynamics is perhaps best shown on Yaad, with an array of softer, piano driven moments, with alternating clean and rapped vocals, but also heavier and angrier sections. Bsdk.Exe features sections with choral backdrops, hand drums, hints at the crunchy metal guitars that will come and a variety of lead vocals over the top. It's not just a pair of unlikely genres combined for effect. Both those genres are properly combined and added to.

The atmospheric side works really well for me too. While Karan Katiyar provides the crunch of the guitars, he also contributes an impressive amount of flute. If I hadn't reviewed the latest Jethro Tull album in January, I'd suggest that this is the most flute I've heard on a rock album in forever. Maybe I should just say metal album there. It isn't just during the intros either, like on Aaj or Jee Veerey. The former feels like it was lifted from a sword and sorcery soundtrack before the frantic beat kicks in and we're suddenly in a video game. The early sections of Zanjeero Se do much of the same thing, piano and underlying electronica reminding of movies and games.

Bloodywood may have got our attention with singles like Ari Ari, which I couldn't avoid on YouTube when it was released, but it wasn't just a gimmick. They backed up the crazy idea behind the song with infectious style and solid musical chops. The only metal band I can think of who got a deeper level of crossover exposure to and appreciation from friends of mine who don't like metal are the Hu. That's impressive. And so is this album. Not everything nails the balance that they do so well, but the majority does and I'm eager to hear their next album.

Bevar Sea - The Timeless Zone (2022)

Country: India
Style: Stoner/Doom Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 1 Feb 2022
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Metal Archives | Official Website | Twitter | Vimeo | YouTube

Here's an interesting sound from Bangalore that I wasn't expecting. Well, OK, I was expecting half of it because every stoner/doom metal band on the planet owes at least something to the original gods of heavy metal, Black Sabbath, and it's certainly Sabbath who are obvious here as this album begins with the title track. It's in the guitar tone, which is heavy but clean, and in the mix, which is rather surprisingly very seventies, with the guitar not as overt in the mix as tends to be the norm nowadays. The bass is effortlessly audible too. You don't even have to stretch.

It wouldn't feel like a 2022 album if it wasn't for the vocals. And, if this is mid-seventies Sabbath in its instrumentation, it's not remotely Sabbath in the vocals and that holds true regardless which lead singer you think of. There's no Ozzy at all to be found in Ganesh Krishnaswamy's delivery but there's no Dio either and no Tony Martin, not even an Ian Gillan. What I'd suggest to compare, if you can imagine this, is a proto-extreme metal voice, halfway between Cronos from Venom, albeit not as demonically acerbic, and Tom G. Warrior of Celtic Frost, sans death grunts.

Like both those singers, especially Cronos, Krishnaswamy has a wildly throaty delivery, and it's an extreme voice without ever venturing into death growl or black metal shriek. The key, of course, is that it's not seventies in the slightest, so there's a stylistic clash at the heart of this sound that's a fascinating dynamic. It took me by surprise, but I dig it. It makes Bevar Sea, on their third album in a decade, seem like they found Krishnaswamy in 1983 and hurled him through a time portal to a 1975 studio to jam on Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, though I have to say I got used to the contrast.

Alpha None is a little heavier, adding some Headless Cross era Sabbath to that mid-seventies vibe and edges from Cronos to Warrior theatricality in the vocals. Krishnaswamy sings in English on all these songs and without an obvious accent, but his stylistic approach adds something playful that I don't think would be there if he sang clean. It's probably fair to say that there are points where he slips up a little and gets cleaner, but he never really gets to a properly clean heavy metal voice.

As if to move on through the history of heavy metal into doom, Sterilise the Divide starts slower in a strong chug mode, though it builds well and, after eight and half minutes, it ends far too quickly. The same goes for The Circle at nine minutes and Cadaver Awake at almost ten. This is because my favourite thing about the band is the effortless way they jam. Even if they never manage to leave their obvious Sabbath influence behind, they drift seamlessly back and forth on that sliding scale that runs from psychedelic rock to doom metal and never stop being interesting.

What makes that extra-interesting is that, when a song plays more psychedelic, usually during an instrumental section, they feel British. However, the heavier they get into their doom aspect, the more American they sound. I'd love to hear what influences this musicians have, beyond Sabbath, because it seems to me that they must listen to Trouble and Pentagram more than Candlemass. It seems to me that they ought to be older influences too, because this doesn't feel modern to me in any way except the way they're sliding that scale, except maybe some of the dissonant chords on Cadaver Awake, which feel almost djenty.

There are two prior Bevar Sea albums, a self-titled in 2012 and then Invoke the Bizarre in 2015. It's been seven years since then, but they've only seen one line-up change, Michael Talreja stepping in on lead guitar in 2016 to replace Rahul Chacko. Everyone else: Krishnaswamy, bass player Avinash Ramchander and rhythm guitarist Srikanth Panaman, are founder members, helping to form the band in 2010. I like this sound and wonder how they came to it, because I don't hear a lot of stoner rock or doom metal from India. What I have heard, however, is from Bangalore, because that's the home town of Diarchy too. Is there a scene there?

Bloodkill - Throne of Control (2021)

Country: India
Style: Heavy/Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 19 Jan 2021
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

I've been hearing good things about Bloodkill, a new thrash band from Mumbai, India, who formed in 2016 and are on their debut album, so I was eager to check Throne of Control out. What I found is that they're a tight and reliable new band who chug really well, the pairing of Shubham Khare on lead and Vishwas Shetty on rhythm the powerhouse behind them. There's a fantastic midsection to For I am the Messiah where the latter chugs magnificently so the former can run free and there really isn't much at all to the title track except solid chugging and neat pauses.

They're not a particularly fast thrash band, falling more often into an Iron Maiden-esque heavy metal sound on songs like Unite and Conquer or a bouncy mid-pace thrash feel to songs like Blindead Circus which really ought to get the pit moving. They do speed up, but never for long enough for us to get a real workout. I have a feeling their pits are going to seriously and constantly churn but never go wild the way pits can. The band I kept coming back to the most for comparison is Death Angel, but the last Warbringer album sprang to mind as well.

If the guitars were my favourite aspect by far, almost every track coming close to the extended section of For I am the Messiah that absolutely dominates that song, my least favourite must be the vocals of Anirudh Gollapudi, who has a deliberately rough voice. He sings clean but it's very hoarse. There are a lot of points where this works, infusing songs like False Face or Unite and Conquer with a Tom Araya-esque attitude, but there are a lot of points where it seems to be too much, like late in 3B or early in Horrorscope, at which point he seems to be trying too hard to be over the top. I wonder how much of that is due to the production and whether it'll show as much on stage.

This isn't a particularly long album, but it doesn't outstay its welcome. There are seven songs proper, plus a minute long introduction, and they're all of a regular sort of length. With the exception of the shortest song, Blindead Circus, which only just nudges past three minutes, everything sits in the four to six minute range, long enough to build well and allow for instrumental workouts, but not so much that anything can even think about being epic and that limits Bloodkill's ability to mix it up.

This is a decent album, if mostly for the mid-paced thrash fans out there who lapped up Warbringer's release from last year, especially given the rough vocals. I liked a couple of these songs a lot, For I am the Messiah chief amongst them, and none of them let the side down. However, I'm not wowed in the way that some people seem to be at the moment, perhaps because I do like my thrash to blister rather than chug and there are precious few moments where Bloodkill do that. But that's fine. It just means that it may speak to you more than it does to me. It's good stuff.

Diarchy - Splitfire (2020)

Country: India
Style: Stoner Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 27 Mar 2020
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | Twitter | YouTube

For a stoner rock band from India, I heard a lot of Budgie in opening number Kamal Hossen. However, Diarchy, as the name perhaps ought to suggest, are a power duo rather than a trio, with Prakash on vocals and guitars and Gaurrav on drums. They generate rather a lot of energy for a duo (though there are additional guests here) and, once again I find myself really wanting to see a band live who I have very little chance of ever seeing live.

Then again, for a stoner rock band from India, there's actually quite a lot here to explore and it makes me wonder about their influences. Their About page on Facebook just lists the expected stoner rock bands, like Kyuss and Clutch. Sure, there's some expected stoner rock here, albeit mostly on the most straightforward and least interesting songs (though that sounds a lot more dismissive than it should), but Splitfire grabbed me most when Diarchy really mix it up.

Tirunelveli, for instance, kicks off as old school psychedelic rock with an inherent Indian sound that wasn't that unusual in San Francisco in the late sixties, and it only really heavies up as it's wrapping up. I might believe that Diarchy have absorbed that through later bands except that Home shows up a few tracks later and that's an intricate sitar-flavoured guitar workout that's clearly Diarchy's Embryonic Journey. Oh yeah, they're listening to older stuff too!

In fact, the album only gets more interesting as it comes towards its close. Kraanti is a highlight for me and, for a stoner rock song, it sure sounds a lot like an early Genesis instrumental for three of its four minutes. Then, just like Tirunelveli, it heavies up at the finish. As we come to terms with that, Diarchy wrap up with Best Way Out is Always Through, a folk chant sung almost a capella, with the majority of the accompaniment being finger snaps. It's a song I'd expect to find on a Jolie Holland album.

In between are the more expected songs, which are all less worthy of comment beyond highlighting that Prakash finds an agreeable amount of worthy riffs on this album. The best may be on the title track, which is the longest on the album by far at almost six and a half minutes, but even the songs that I like least include impressive riffs and grooves. This band would be a lot of fun on stage just jamming guitar against drums for an hour, with any vocals that show up being a bonus.

I really dug this. It's fair to say that Kamal Hossen isn't too far from the sound I expected from an Indian stoner rock band and that made me happy, the nods to Budgie icing on the cake. It, along with Splitfire and much of Gone Too Late, was exactly what I was looking for when I pressed play. However, Diarchy pleasantly surprised me by giving me a lot more than that and I left the album enthralled.

The downside is that not everything is elevated, so otherwise decent tracks like Badger and Sunny Side Up, which are relatively routine stoner rock with a little punk attitude in the vocals, start to feel like filler. On another album, they wouldn't seem like negatives but, a few listens into Splitfire, I found myself skipping over them from Home to Kraanti. That's not good.

I left this wanting more, so I now need to find Diarchy's debut, Here Lost We Lie, released in 2017. If only Diarchy had been one of those bands with a few decades behind them, so I could spend the next couple of days exploring their back catalogue. In time.

Cosmic Circus - Cosmic Circus (2019)

Country: India
Style: Progressive Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 4 Dec 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube

I can't find a lot of information online about Cosmic Circus, just enough to know that they're not the cult krautrock band who released Sternenmaskerade in 1972. This Cosmic Circus is a versatile duo from Mumbai, India. I have no idea who either of the musicians are or how they split up responsibilities, but I know that I like what they came up with. They call it post-progressive rock and this is their debut album.

Their Bandcamp page tells me that this is a concept album featuring a set of five different characters, each of whom gets a track of their own and all of whom meet at the end of the album, their stories intertwining. I'm not sure how that works, given that there are only five songs with words and some of those have very few of them. If everyone meets in the title track, they have very little to say about such a momentous occasion. Maybe there are themes in here that I'm not tracking yet on a few listens.

I can say that what I'm presuming are the five songs in question are notably varied.

With Exordium an intriguing instrumental intro, I would expect that Her is the first track proper. It's initially laid back, reminding of Wishbone Ash but soon moving into King Crimson with layers that I remember from Epitaph on their first album. The lyrics tell a sad story of the violent escape of an abused child, with a video sample midway to highlight that. After that, it gets fascinating, with finger snaps to punctuate an acoustic guitar that evolves into an electric solo and an ending that's a promise but maybe not a pleasant one. It's a real story.

It leads right into Pegasus, a jaunty seventies piece that moves into a prog metal crunch under wild keyboards. I would expect it to be the second of the five songs but it's an instrumental so I have no idea what story it tells. I got caught up in the music, which is almost entirely driven by synths right down to what I presume are emulated steel drums. The guitar solo is fine but it's not as wild as the keyboard solos around it, even the one that plays at the end in some jazz club with the waiters busy and the band tuning up.

Like all these songs, Pegasus runs over six minutes, but it never feels like it's long and only part of that is because the tracks to come get longer as the album runs on. Pale Euphoric hits the seven minute mark and takes things in a completely different direction, being a gothic new wave number before a melancholy voice underlines it. The drums are uncannily lofi here, almost as if they were recorded on a drum machine in a closet somewhere in Leeds while the band rehearse downstairs. For a dark song, it ends playfully, leading to what sounds like a passing bomber and an alarm clock. I don't know why.

Silhouette Before Dawn, longer still, has an eastern edge, sinuous Egyptian melodies emerging from a guitar intro that could have been recorded by Steve Howe for Yes. It's not an instrumental, though it feels like one for a long time, and it makes me wonder why I'm not hearing anything Indian here. This band conjure up a lot of comparisons, almost all of them English, mostly the greats of seventies prog rock with a little second wave from the eighties to keep things interesting.

If that makes four of the five story songs, the fifth is certainly Chasm of Endless Suffering, which is even more jaunty than Pegasus, starting out like a roaring twenties song (and I mean the 1920s not the new decade starting in a few hours) but with a guitar solo over the characterful piano. This is the real epic of the album, almost thirteen minutes long and sometimes feeling like it. There's good stuff here, from Pink Floyd-esque samples to a dancing keyboards section and some neat building riffs, but it's my least favourite of the five core tracks and I don't buy its arc. Maybe it wouldn't have been as much of an anomaly at half the length.

And so to the title track, which supposedly links everything. It doesn't for me but it sounds good anyway, even with overdone static as it starts. It's a darker piece than anything prior, even finding some Black Sabbath as it goes through a slow build, but that build takes to a welcoming psychedelic vibe. "Welcome to the Circus Cosmic" indeed!

With more Steve Howe (or maybe Steve Hackett)-inspired acoustic guitar in a long coda, appropriately enough called simply Coda, we're left to ponder on the previous fifty minutes. I'm not sure if it's as coherent as the unknown musicians planned it to be and it gets lost for a while during Chasms of Endless Suffering, but it's a delightful album for me, constantly inventive and imaginative, as all prog rock should be. The worst thing about it is easily the cover. Here's to the follow up!

Carnage Inc. - Tenebris (2019)

Country: India
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 8 Sep 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Metal Archives | YouTube

I reviewed a thrash album from India in August and here's another one, from Mumbai's Carnage, Inc. I prefer this outfit to Sceptre because they're more consistent, the vocals of the former letting them down. Varun Panchal is an effective old school thrash vocalist and he leads Carnage, Inc. well without ever attempting to take over. His bandmates are up to his standard and these seven tracks play very consistently together.

Carnage Inc. claim to play in the classic Bay Area style, but I'm hearing a lot more of the German bands here, especially early on with lots of Kreator and Destruction in Eradicate the Empire, DeathScape and Saffron is the New Black. When that Bay Area influence does show up, it doesn't bring to mind any one particular band over another, unlike the Sceptre album, which was a clear nod to Death Angel. There's certainly some of that here too, but also moments that clearly come from Metallica, Megadeth, Exodus and Testament.

Even with old school influences, Carnage Inc. are a much newer band, Sceptre starting out at the tail end of the last millennium but this outfit forming as recently as 2011. This is their debut album at a full length, though they released an EP, Fury Incarnate, in 2016. I can only assume that they've been honing their writing and performance on the stages of Mumbai over the last few years because these are mature songs and strong performances. This band is tight.

One downside to the consistency is that, while there are no bad tracks here, nothing really stands out for notice over its peers, at least until a third or fourth time through. The highlights are initially more in parts of songs, like the galloping guitars of DeathScape, the chugging at the end of Murder Maze or the Orphaned Land-esque prog of Tread the Fire.

After a few runs through the album, the songs start to distinguish and they work pretty well as new friends who start to show their depths as we get to know them. Those three Teutonic tracks still play relatively similarly, but the later songs become more interesting. High on Panic, for instance, didn't seem like much first time through but it gradually became a favourite of mine, with a number of tempo shifts.

All the songs here play fast but the second half introduces lots of variety, with High on Panic starting that trend. Monstrosity is a thrash song but it betrays influences outside the genre. Murder Maze reminds me of something I can't place, which is annoying; it's thrash again but it slows down without losing any of its power. Maybe the vocal phrasing reminds me of Sabbat even if Panchal doesn't spit out his words like Martin Walkyier. Tread the Fire is the most different, playing with a few different dynamics and allowing Nikhil Muralidas to be much more obvious with his bass runs than elsewhere.

This is good stuff, even if it takes a little while to properly emerge from the background, and I look forward to another album. This runs short and I definitely left it wanting more. I'd also like to hear more of what's going on in India right now but, when another thrash album shows up, I'll surely be comparing it to Carnage Inc. over Sceptre.

Sceptre - One Shot One Kill (2019)

Country: India
Style: Thrash Metal
Rating: 6/10
Release Date: 14 Aug 2019
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | YouTube

I try out a lot more albums than I review here at Apocalypse Later, staying with what seems like good stuff, and I was very close on giving up on this EP by Indian thrash metal band Sceptre. And by Indian, I don't mean Native American; I mean a band from India, Bombay in this case.

Initially it seemed decent enough. I liked the music immediately, which was both crafted and played very well. I got a Death Angel vibe and that stayed in for much of the album. However, the production is off, the guitars muddy and the vocals far too high in the mix. And, talking of vocals, I absolutely wasn't a big fan of the vocals, which seemed immediately amateurish, almost like a fan singing along over the band's instrumentation.

Just as I was going to move onto something else, those vocals switched it up with an eye-opening section akin to black metal shrieks and I started really paying attention. The longer I listened, the more I liked. The music kept getting better and the vocals started to get interesting. There are points with two voices contributing at once, so I'm not sure if we have one singer or two.

Somehow, while the voice is still too high in the mix on the title track, it seems more palatable and, again, the music is fantastic, courtesy primarily of the guitarists, Gilroy Fernandes and Ronojoy Barooah, but with excellent support from Aniket Waghmode behind the drumkit. The bassist is Janus Sayal and he does a solid job too.

Sceptre have been around for quite a while, which translates to a heck of a long while for India. They were formed in the last millennium, back in 1998, and they put out a self-titled EP a year later. While I don't think they've ever disbanded, they didn't release a full length album until 2008 with one more following in 2013. That's hardly a particularly impressive output for a fifteen year existence and they've been quiet on the recording front since.

I, for one, am glad they're back. I chatted recently about the Indian metal scene with the guitarist from another Indian band and he kindly provided me with a brief list of bands to look out for. Sceptre were in that list and I see why. Musically, they're fantastic and they get better as this five track EP runs on. Flesh Eaters has neat, predatory riffs and it grows well until a glorious escalation at the end. Fear the Mob is better still, grounded in a set of solid riffs.

If the vocals remain the weakest link, they get better as well, notably so on Hate Infested. Maybe the more modern Metallica does groove metal sound works better for the lead vocalist, whose name I'm seeing as Gary Glorious. If there are multiple vocalists in play, I'd like to know which are him and which are whoever else contributes. The vocals on this closer sound as much like a different singer as whoever provides the shrieks.

At the end of the day, this is great thrash with wildly inconsistent vocals and I plan to track down those prior albums to see how things play out with them.

Prophets of Yahweh - Oronodromozro (2019)

Country: India
Style: Progressive Death Metal
Rating: 7/10
Release Date:
Sites: Bandcamp | Facebook | YouTube

India isn't a country most of us would generally associate with extreme metal, but apparently there's a growing scene there, led by established bands like Eccentric Pendulum, Undying Inc. and especially the blackened death of Demonic Resurrection, who have five albums out and have played Wacken and Inferno. Metal Archives lists 69 active death metal bands in India and they haven't even added Prophets of Yahweh yet.

Googling the band's name doesn't help much. Apparently they were formed back in 2012 and this album took them six years to record. ReverbNation lists a few band members but I could only find one of them mentioned on their Facebook page, so that may or may not be out of date. Regardless, there's no vocalist mentioned and there are clearly vocals here. All we really have to go on is this album, which is fortunately a strong debut.

I'm not even sure why they call themselves Prophets of Yahweh, again not the sort of band name you might expect in a country where 94% are either Hindus or Muslims. Maybe it's because the stories of Obadiah and Jezebel in the Bible are notably metal. Obadiah was a majordomo in the palace of Ahab, the King of Israel, whose Queen, Jezebel, wanted him to shift the worship of Yahweh, the Iron Age god of Samaria, to a fertility god named Baal. When she ordered the prophets of Yahweh to be massacred, Obadiah chose to hide a hundred of them in a couple of caves. Jezebel was later thrown out of a window where her corpse was eaten by stray dogs, while Baal faded away into extreme band names such as Baal Zebub or Intestine Baalism. I'd listen to the Obadiah/Jezebel concept album!

I have no idea if this is that concept album, though there's clearly a mystic aspect to the affair and the apparently invented title (with the suffix of "The Holy Spell") works well in the endless mandala on the cover. The title track, which kicks things off, has a droning ritual vocal but I don't know if this is meant to represent the worship of Yahweh, Baal or just the crushing metal riffs to come. The sound is dense, whether the band play fast or slow and the vocals are low in the mix, all making this sound as influenced by black metal as death. Oronodromozro evolves into a guitar chugfest with almost bell like melodies, so there's a lot going on in under six minutes.

There's a lot going on in the remaining half an hour too. What seems wild to me is that the melodies, presumably courtesy of lead guitarist Jithin Peter, remain relatively consistently patient throughout, even though the rest of the band change pace constantly, from ploddingly slow to brutal hyperspeed. Exodus, for instance, starts slow but keeps on speeding up until the drums become so fast that I'm wondering if the unknown drummer invented the triple or quadruple bass technique. Either that, or it's a drum machine.

I found the album as a whole to be an exercise in texture. There's a real array of styles on show here, from the brutal approach on No More to the thrashy early parts of WW3 and the black metal wall of sound in play on Exodus. Each of these has a different texture because of that, though the tracks still play consistently together.

To my mind, the most interesting track here is the last one because it has the most texture. That's Lucid Dream which is appropriately named. It has the most exotic feel, not merely because of the fascinating and often minimal drums but because the vocals become an instrument and the guitar takes the lead role, repeating motifs almost hypnotically. It's spiritual and meditative even though it's utterly in your face, which I think is a neat trick to be able to pull off.

This is an interesting album. I think it would have benefitted from more variety in the vocals, such as the addition of a clean or even a female voice, but I'm not complaining about the end result.