Saint Vitus | WhatsTheScene

When the Mumbai-based power-thrash metal band, Albatross, who peg themselves as horror metal, announced that their latest album was going to be a Split EP with the American Doom Metal band, Vestal Claret, I had asked the founder/bassist of the band, Riju Dasgupta (who goes by his onstage moniker Dr. H3X) why they were keen on doing EPs rather than releasing full lengths. He replied that they would rather work on their songwriting chops and on getting their sound right before recording a full length album. So when I received the early copy of their latest effort, The Kissing Flies EP, I was very curious to know how much they had progressed from their debut EP, the Dinner Is You.

Before jumping into reviewing the album, it would be appropriate to let you know that Albatross has a penchant for horror stories and all their songs bear proof of their inclination towards the macabre. This proclivity for storytelling is evident in their choosing to construct a concept around which they weave their songs. ‘The Kissing Flies’ theme is of a hero returning to his hometown, Raptorsville, which has fallen to ruin and beset upon by, well, The Kissing Flies.

The album opener, ‘Wither’, is appropriately dark and foreboding, invoking a sense of dread about subsequent ominous and sinister events. Built on a layer of masterfully eerie sound sampling done by Murari Vasudevan of Rat King, it features the epic, soaring vocals of Biprorshee Das, and creepy chilling laughter in the background.

‘Uncle Sunny at the Tavern’ explodes from the starting block and tells the tale of the narrator arriving at a tavern in Raptorsville, and his chance encounter with an ‘Uncle Sunny’ from his childhood. It paints a picture of a desolate and forlorn decaying town at the edge of total demise. This track is a huge earworm, not only because of the uber-catchy chorus underlined by the noodly leads of Vignesh, but also because of the excellent riffage of the two guitarists; though the guitar solos scattered between the verses could’ve been better thought out. Vocal duties on this track are shared between Biprorshee Das and the brilliant vocalist from the Swedish band Wolf, Niklas Stalvind, who plays the role of the ‘Uncle Sunny’ character in the track.

The 3^rd track in the EP, the title track, is the most impressive – and the longest – of the lot. Clocking in at just over 10 minutes, it features some of the most diverse and punishing vocal performances. Ranging from banshee-like shrieks and screams to the high-pitched King Diamond-esque singing and deep-throated croaks, the diminutive Biprorshee’s effort is nothing short of dazzling. And if those variations in the vocals weren’t enough, Demonic Resurrection’s Sahil Makhija also joins in for some growling merriment. While the vocals are the highlight of this track, the dueling guitar solos of Vigneshkumar Venkatraman and Nishith Hegde are also riveting. However, in my opinion, the most engaging part of the song are the lyrics, which chronicles the horrors of The Kissing Flies plaguing Raptorsville.

The last track of the Albatross side of the split, ‘From Ashes Comes Life‘, is one of the relatively weaker songs on the EP. Despite being a decent song by itself, it fails to engage the listener as much as the other songs. I would’ve liked this track to be a bit slower in tempo, and with more down-tuned guitars, especially in the 4^th verse. The song follows the protagonist as he tries valiantly to rid the town of the malicious malady of The Kissing Flies.

Overall, the Albatross half of the split is quite enjoyable, much more than the debut, Dinner Is You. What is more heartening and commendable is that the band seems to have put in some thought and effort into building the concept for the album, something which not many bands pay much attention to. The resulting tale is gripping and reading the lyrics from the booklet while listening to the album is actually rewarding.

The Vestal Claret side of the split features just one song – a mammoth 17-minute beast of a track, ‘Black Priest’. Divided into 3 parts, the track takes on the duplicitous clergy class with some very wicked, sharp and intelligently written lyrics. Sample this, for instance,

“When you come and seek a savior

Don’t be surprised by my behavior

Coz like my father I’m the deceiver

Here to prey on all believers”

Or,

“Let me put my hands upon you

You’ll be anointed when I’m through”

It is always a great pleasure to read lyrics as delightful as these while listening to music that matches them incredibly well.

The first part of this magnum opus progresses sedately, with measured and restrained drumming. As the minutes tick by and the track builds up menacingly, you slowly realize you are experiencing something phenomenal. At around the 8-minute mark, the track segues seamlessly into the 2^nd part, or rather a musical movement, and switches gears to move with a bit more urgency. Guitar solos make their appearance in this part, courtesy of the immensely talented Simon Tuozzoli, who incidentally, was also behind the knobs, tweaking the sound of the album. The colossal, dirty, down-tuned and doomy guitar riffs – a reverential nod to the traditional doom masters of the past, à la Cathedral, Saint Vitus and Pentagram in this nearly 6-minute segment are absolutely eargasmic . I trust a lot of listeners would want to go back and listen to this part over and over again. In the final section, the track loops back to the first three verses. When the track finally fades out towards the end, you can’t help but wonder whether it actually covered nearly a third of an hour! Throughout this lengthy chef-d’oeuvre, Phil Swanson displays his magnificent set of pipes, which are pretty piercing and unique in their delivery of the irreverent lyrics. In summation, this track is an incredible piece of work and might very well be a strong contender for the song of the year in my book.

In partnering with Vestal Claret, Albatross has scored an absolute winner. This album is a delight to the ears and I expect heavy metal and doom metal fans to trip over themselves trying to get their hands on it. Hope this album gets released on vinyl.

Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan Siddharth Nagarajan

It was a pleasant surprise that the second edition of the TrendSlaughter fest was going to be held barely ten months after the first. Unlike a majority of the smaller metal gigs held at Bangalore so far, TSF comes across as an excellently organized one. The billing was great – 4 local and 2 international acts, all chosen to make sure that a lot of different genres, spanning across the spectrum of metal were on the table – they had everything from sludgy doom to thrash to old school death to grind. The stellar line-up consisted of Djinn & Miskatonic, Dhwesha and Gorified providing support to the headliners – Cauchemar, Dying Embrace and Abigail. The organizers, Cyclopean Eye Productions, were not one bit cheeseparing when it came to the nitty-gritties like having nicely printed tickets and posters. Other things like having pick-up points for the tickets, the excellent merchandize stall, starting the gig more or less on time and finishing it on time, were much appreciated as well.

All the bands, with the exception of Djinn & Miskatonic and Gorified, had something for the merchandise section. Dhwesha had a new tape (their very first release) along with a new poster featuring the album art, Dying Embrace also had a new poster and a DVD featuring a few songs from their previous performance at Riff ’em All, Cauchemar managed to bring CDs and patches of their debut album and Abigail had stocked a fair number of albums on both CD and Vinyl.

The first band on the bill was the unorthodox Djinn & Miskatonic, playing their eerie brand of doom which, while many may not be accustomed to, caught the attention of the slow trickle of people turning up (that and, possibly, the lack of a guitarist).

The slow, lumbering elephantine riffs, the droning vocals and massive drumming worked really well. All the four songs they played that night (including the new ‘7-year Itch’) sank in well with the crowd. If only they had added some cool background art, better coordinated lighting to their creepy, muddy doom they would have been a real treat to watch!

Dhwesha took stage right after and ploughed right into their set. Even though the band has had only two prior performances to their credit, they certainly know how to put on a show. There was a marked improvement from their previous gig, notably with respect to audience interaction.

To their usual setlist of ‘Hoy!Sala’, ‘Yuddabhumi’, ‘Ugra Narasimha’ and ‘Dhwesha’ new song additions in ‘Neeney Alu’ and ‘Sattva Bali’ were made. Add to that an excellent cover of Obituary’s ‘Slowly We Rot’ and you’ve got one helluva show on your hands – old school death metal done well!

Goregrind veteran band Gorified was next to take stage. Having seen them quite a few times last year they really didn’t have anything new to bring to the table but put on a brutal show for all the gore fiends in attendance nonetheless.

As is usual with Gorified, violent moshing started right from the opening note of the first song, ‘Engorged the Disfigured’. The fact that Shreyas was missing behind the drum kit didn’t deter Gorified from playing a longer set than usual. They ended their set with an announcement concerning the upcoming Undergrind Fest and stated that Wormrot from Singapore had been confirmed as the main headliners and were to be supported by local talent in Anorectal Ulceration, Bad Taste, the recently reformed Perforated Limb and Gorified themselves.

Cauchemar, the Canadian doom metal band, was the first of the headliners to play. They are probably the first international traditional doom metal act to play here in India. Due to the fact that their drummer wasn’t able to join them and that Annick didn’t play live bass for the band, Ganesh Krishnaswamy (Bevar Sea) and Deepak Raghu (Bevar Sea/Dying Embrace) provided drum and bass support for their sole Asian gig. It was really heartening to see how well the Bevar Sea guys gelled with Annick and Francois, learnt the Cauchemar songs in such a short notice and made the band feel like a cohesive unit.

Cauchemar’s sound is predominantly rooted in old school doom ethos à la Black Sabbath, Saint Vitus, Pagan Altar and a ton of other doom legends with Judas Priest-esque interludes and passages in a couple of the songs. Their set consisted of the five songs from their debut EP La Vierge Noire as well as ‘Under the Oak’, a Candlemass cover.

They started off with ‘Magie Rouge’, a slightly melancholic number which with Annick’s vocals (which were in French) sounded magical. The next song, ‘Valse Funebre’, continued in the same vein – it was some quality doom that these folks were playing! ‘Les Ailes de la Mort’ brought an up-tempo swing to set, following which they reverted back to playing slow doom in ‘Les Gardiens de la Terre’. The Candlemass cover came next and the band ended their splendid show with ‘La Voile D’isis’. A performance par excellence, without doubt.

The legendary Dying Embrace finally took stage to a crowd cheering and applauding thunderously, this being their first show after Riff ’em All in October. They started off their set with the crushing ‘As Eternity Fades’ followed by a chilling performance of ‘The Passing Away.’ In keeping with the dark atmosphere they’d conjured, the next track in their arsenal was ‘Blood Rites’.

Then came the iconic, blood-curdling, hair-raising shriek from Vikram that meant ‘Grotesque Entity’ was on next. This was followed by the much-awaited ‘Dagda – His Time Has Come’, mainly for Jimmy’s disorienting, blistering solos. Just like their previous performance at TrendSlaughter, Vik had a surprise for the fans. This time around the giveaway was a DVD (Carrying the Burden of Doom) of their previous outing (before this, it was a special re-issue of their EP Grotesque).

They seemed to have wrapped up the set with ‘Spawn of the Depths’, ‘Oremus Diabolum’ and a tribute to their idols Autopsy – a brilliant cover of ‘Twisted Mass of Burnt Decay’. Back for the encore, they had yet another surprise – a new song titled ‘Ascendence of Namtar’, that had the added pressure of living up to DE’s legacy and it didn’t disappoint. It was almost as though the decade, that had passed since they had last written any material, never happened, or didn’t matter. The song was heavy as f**k – some good old school doom metal with Persian/middle-eastern vibes. And, on that high note, they ended their performance of the night. Kudos to Deepak Raghu for playing so well with no break immediately after Cauchemar’s set.

The final band to play that night was Japan’s Abigail. Raw, abrasive, highly energetic thrash is what this three-piece band dished out – Motorhead of the east as some of the people at the gig quite rightly put it. The first half of their set consisted of numbers that leaned towards punk/thrash, while quite a few from the latter half were more black/thrash in nature.

They put on a charged high-octane performance, interacting well with the crowd, who after a couple of minutes started massive, back-breaking, neck-snapping, frenzied mosh pit- a fitting response for a song titled ‘Satanik Metal F**king Hell’. Their entire set was a raucous, loud thrash attack, what with the aggressive riffing and angry solos that accompanied them, the shrill battle-cries that formed the vocals and drumming that simply sought to bludgeon everything in its path!

While there was a communication barrier of sorts, the more or less incomprehensible howls of the frontman Yasuyuki were taken by the crowd as a sign to raise hell. They played a massive set of around twelve songs without showing any signs of fatigue or wearing down. The encore, consisting of three songs, was just as lively as the main set. And, for their very last song – ‘Rocking Metal Motherf**kers’, they had Vikram from Dying Embrace and Annick from Cauchemar join them on stage to take on vocal and bass duties respectively and play their hearts out, which was as good an end to the show as one could expect.

Allowing the crowd to hang out and freely interact with the international bands was a good thing to do on the organizer’s part – the fans who purchased merchandize managed to get it autographed and the bands were more than happy to oblige. A fairly large number of posters were distributed to the crowd after all the bands had performed and quite a few people stayed back to either get more autographs or photographs along with the band members.

The show ran smoothly with no hiccups, with each of the bands putting forth a great performance. All in all, it was a great showcasing of Bangalore’s Metal underground while introducing bands from around the world to the Indian scene. Attendees indeed got their money’s worth and here’s hoping to more such gigs in the future – kvltest show of the year indeed!

Tag Archives: Saint Vitus

The Kissing Flies by Albatross

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TrendSlaughter Fest II at The Kyra Theatre, Bangalore

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