Metal Factory feat. Inner Sanctum Eccentric Pendulum, Escher’s Knot at Counterculture, Bangalore

CounterCulture Presents “ Metal Factory”. An evening dedicated to all the Metal bands from the country. This will happen first Sunday of every month. With lack of venues, bands striving to play, they are following the #PayForTheArts campaign where the the bands get paid equally from the turnout at the gate. Though Metal is growing at a snail’s pace, CounterCulture is providing space and support for some immense talent in this genre. To kick-off the “Metal Factory” they have:

Eccentric Pendulum ( Bangalore) :

The band has toured Europe twice and played big shows including Wacken Open Air and SWR Festival, Portugal (alongside Immortal, Candlemass, Asphyx, Hail of Bullets, Gorod, Cerebral Bore, Concealment, etc).
The band has played massive shows in India and shared stages with bands such as Opeth, Kreator, Meshuggah, Textures, Enslaved, TesseracT, Orphaned Land, Suidakra, Karnivool, Amon Amarth, etc.
Won ‘Best Drummer’ at Jack Daniels Rock Awards 2012. Won ‘Best Bassist’, ‘Best Drummer’ and ‘Album of the Year’ at Rolling Stone Metal Awards 2012. Headlined Rolling Stone Metal Awards with Zygnema. Headlined many college shows and won competitions all across India. Won the Indian leg of the Wacken Metal Battle and became the first band to represent India at the global metal battle at Wacken Open Air 2011.
Debut EP released in 2009 titled ‘Sculptor of Negative Emotions’ (sold over a 1000 copies across India, USA, Australia and Europe) and album titled ‘Winding The Optics’ released in 2011, both receiving massive critical acclaim.

Escher’s Knot:

Escher’s Knot is a Metal outfit from Chennai/ Bangalore formed in mid 2009. The band consists of Abijith (Ston’d) on vocals, Anshuman (ex-IIIrd Sovereign) on guitars, Siddartha Ramanathan (Trojan Horse) , Madhav (Theorized) on bass and Manu (Wolf’s Lair) on drums. With influences ranging from Tool to Textures to Decapitated, the band caters to a unique blend of technical riffing and drumming, heavy bass lines and growls and screeches. Being one of the few metal bands to have cropped up in Chennai, the band has carried the mantle quite well with frequent pub gigs at Unseen Underground and college festivals. January 2010 marked a terrific start to the year with the band winning the Chennai Sangamam Festival and subsequently finishing first at IIT-Chennai’s Saarang Festival. The band released its debut EP Tessellations in May 2010 at the Summerstorm Festival held at Bangalore where it got an overwhelming response. International and National reviews from some of the best in the industry have been pouring in ever since. Despite their recent beginnings, the band has had considerable success come their way having played alongside international acts like Lamb of God, Gojira, Dark Tranquillity, HammerFall, Sybreed, Decapitated, De Profundis and many more. Apart from these gigs, the band has headlined some of the biggest college music festivals like MCC (Chennai), KIIT (Bhubaneshwar), BMSCE (Bangalore) to name a few. The band is currently working on new material for a full length album.

Inner Sanctum:

A new decade upon us! Since 2006, Inner Sanctum has been evolving from an underground project band into one of India’s premiere metal outfits and one of Asia’s constant parameters in the thrash and death metal genre.

In 2009, Inner Sanctum entered Resonance Studios to record “Provenance”, their highly acclaimed first release! Blessed with a crushing sound, courtesy Lasse Lammert, LSD Studios, Germany and Resonance Studios, 4 tracks of the band’s own characteristic style unleashes rage upon the listener; storming, violent, old school infused metal. This record made its way into various top ten lists for 2009-10 and has more or less pushed the boundaries of metal music in Asia.

Inner Sanctum has over the years earned critical and commercial acclaim and has even numerous awards including the Band of the Year 2007 (Levis), Band of the year 2009 (headbangers.in) and Best Emerging Band of the year (Jack Daniels Rock Awards).

The story so far… Inner Sanctum was formed in the early months of 2007. Chintan and Michael, the founder members having played with each other for several years decided to join forces and form a band that would best express their influences in music. Tejas who previously played for Premonition was roped in as the second guitar player. In search of a drummer and vocalist the trio auditioned several but zeroed in on Abhinav (ex Illusion) and Gaurav, thus completing the line up.