The Great Doom

I like Kyuss a lot. Their style of groovy rock and roll has been growing on me ever since I first listened to the mother of all stoner/rock/doom/desert albums “Welcome to the Sky Valley”. It is a collection of 10 mammoth tracks which are driven by a relentless rhythm section comprised of Brant Bjork on the skins and the mighty Scott Reeder on the bass. The guitarist Josh Homme is a god of desert-blues guitar playing, always walking the line of groove and craziness. John Garcia, the vocalist, achieves what I call one of the best vocal performances in the history of rock and roll. Listen to the tracks “Supa Scoopa & Mighty Scoop” and “Odyssey” and wander off into the burning desert. Naturally I began searching for all things doom. This led me to a bluesy land of music called The Great Doom, where I found other bands like Sleep, The Obsessed, Greenleaf, Earth, Eyehategod, Goatsnake, Unida, Acrimony, Electric Wizard, Melvins, Neurosis, Old Man Gloom, Wolf Eyes and many more. “Tumuli Shroomaroom” by Acrimony has to be one of the greatest stoner/desert albums released after Kyuss disbanded. The Melvins is an other three member mad clown carnival. It will take forever to listen to their entire discography and their music is noisy doom rock which is essential for anyone interested in the said genre. The ambient/noise/sludge/doom band Wolf Eyes introduced me to a few noise freak Japanese bands like The Boredoms and Acid Mothers Temple. I discovered post-punk or whatever people want to call it. Steve Albini’s genius projects like Big Black, Shellac, Rapeman are about raw, garage punk. 

HFT

This one is a recent discovery. HFT (High Fucking Time) is a three piece instrumental jam band from Delhi!. Their tunes are absolutely hypnotic and their songs can go on for 15 minutes if they have to. Lew Hilt on the bass is a madman. Arjun Sen (guitars) doesn’t play guitar in the conventional sense. His unique texture-weaving kind of playing is beautiful. The drummer, Adhiraj Mustafi is the third member of this line up, and trust me, he is the perfect compliment to the bass and guitars. Catch them live if you can and download their mp3s and videos off their webpage http://www.hftmusic.com/ .

Lightning Bolt

Noise. Noise at its loudest. That is how one can describe the music of the drum/bass duo of Lightning Bolt. All efforts to describe their sound in rational terms will eventually prove useless. I write this at a point where I’ve been listening to only LB for more than two weeks. Further listening means you are risking permanent damage to your ear drums. The crazy, incredibly precise drumming of Brian Chippendale leaves one gasping for air. The evil distorted bass of Brian Gibson is definitely going to get you and rip that head of yours. How does one get the idea of replacing one of the bass strings with a banjo string? Wreaking havoc with the sounds thereby produced. The vocals are sung into a telephone receiver. This is one evil evil band, meant for the hardest of the hard-core noise freaks.

I’ve also been incessantly listening to Black Pus, a solo side project of Brian Chippendale, who also writes comic books when he’s not jamming. The first two Black Pus albums are available for free download at http://www.fauxfetus.net/faux/bands/blackpus/ . I find it absolutely impossible to try and describe the sound in Black Pus. Go ahead and find it for yourself!

Best of 2006 : Music

I haven't listened to too much music released in 2006 owing to my extreme indulgence in a few newly discovered bands. Although I discovered both bands old and new, I thought it'd be nice to prepare a list containing just my favourite 2006 releases. Last year also turned out to be radical in terms of the genres I started listening to. Metal suddenly took a back seat and in came post-rock, post-metal, jam rock, noise rock, math rock, sludge, doom, drone, jazz etc., which according to me is a good thing. I also got into techno for a brief period, which is also good! So, lets get on with the list.

1) The Ladies - They Mean Us

2) The Snake Trap - At Home In A Hostile World

3) Battles - EP C/B EP

4) Tool - 10,000 Days

5) Mastodon - Blood Mountain

6) Isis - In The Absence Of Truth

7) Don Caballero - Wold Class Listening Problem

Other releases that I enjoyed include The Advantage - The Elf-Titled, You.May.Die.In.The.Deesrt - Bears In The Yukon, Wolf Eyes - Human Animal, The Devin Townsend Band - Synchestra, The Melvins - A Senile Animal. I do not have any patience to review these albums right now. Go get these albums and write your own reviews!

World Class Listening Problem

I got hold of their latest release. Damon Che proves once again that he is one of the most prolific drummers in the scene today. The spirit of the band hasn't changed at all inspite of Damon being the only member from the previous line-up. They've only gotten more jazzier and the songs are much lesser in length compared to Don Caballero 2, their most acclaimed album. Highly recommended for math rock enthusiasts.

Recent Finds

I've become a fan of Cake. I've heard just one album of theirs (Comfort Eagle) and it left me on the lookout for more Cake. If you like funky music with witty lyrics, you will like the album.

I somehow gathered up the courage to listen to Converge's 2004 album titled You Fail Me and needless to say, it pummelled me. They are one of the most hard-hitting bands I've ever heard. It doesn't make sense to talk about the talents of a band like Converge. You Fail Me runs on similar lines as Petitioning an Empty Sky with a brilliant slow paced song placed appropriately on the album. The last song on the album, Hanging Moon, has to be one of the most abrupt endings one could write for a record. Respect for Converge!

Vicious Circle

How often does one go to a rock show in India and listen to original music? I'd like to see Indian bands play more original compositions. There are two sides to the issue actually. Firstly, we need an open minded audience that is willing to give a new band a chance. The second issue is that the music has to be good in order that the crowd likes it. For example, if you take Zero, a band that has managed to create a very unique sound, it is no surprise that they have sold more albums than most other bands in the scene. In fact in their concerts it’s fairly common to see the audience requesting for their original compositions and actually sing along with the band. On the other hand, we have a whole spectrum of the average run of the mill bands which sound no different from a dozen other acts. Being able to replicate popular rock anthems is good musicianship, whereas creating your own rock anthem for the masses is true musicanship. When will we see all original set lists at gigs? I don't see it happening in the near future. I’ll explain why. Bands that do create good original music unfortunately don’t get the recognition they deserve for lack of backing by record labels, which are very skeptical about signing a home-grown rock band irrespective of how good the band is. This skepticism arises out of a multitude of factors including piracy. There are well known cases of brilliant bands which sold an insultingly small number of albums, for lack of a loyal fan base. The situation is worsened when even the so called diehard fans are satisfied with downloadable mp3s. Why we never borrowed the concept of independent music labels from other music cultures is a little baffling. Although the situation is slowly improving with a few independent studios coming up, there is a long way to go before we see an Indian rock band sell more than a couple of thousand albums. Owing to all these reasons, even groups that have real potential are forced to disband sooner or later. If you heard a good album by an Indian band, would you buy it? Do you like any Indian band? If so, do you own their CD? Or are you happy listening to the pirated mp3s on your computer? Thermal and a Quarter is a talented funk rock band from Bangalore who released their second album for free on the internet. The album is aptly titled Plan B. I sincerely hope the plan works out for them. I have also heard some promising EPs from heavier acts like IIIrd Sovereign and I’m sure there are more emerging bands out there. Only time will tell us if the rock scene in our country is going to get any better.

- I had written this a long time ago and happened to find it by chance on my computer. There are a few Indian bands that I actually enjoy listening to. For example, Zebediah Plush's Afterlaughs is pretty good and I love some of the stuff on it. Demonic Resurrection's "A Darkness Descends" is a very good metal album. Hoping for more good music from our very own desi bands. And ofcourse, the best contemporary Indian rock band according to me is Zero. Older bands like Indus Creed, Rock Machine and Colourblind are quality acts too.

Livewire

I missed Bruteforce, the first band to play in the livewire competition. I saw them live atleast a couple of times earlier and loved some of their covers but never enjoyed their original compositions all that much. Hypnosis was amazing. It was really nice to see good, solid rock and roll (meaning Hendrix) in the livewire finals. The band's originals were very good too. If my memory serves me right, one of them was called Walk Away and it rocked. This was the number one band of the night for me which my made my visit to the open air theater worth it. Next up were Skincold, a nu-metal act, who were playing in livewire finals for the second time. I think they were called off stage before their time was up, as is generally the case with most rock shows around here. The band played two originals and was tight but not brilliant. The vocalist could have been better.

The pro bands were to play next. Demonic Resurrection played three of their most popular songs in the order Darkness Descends, Frozen Portrait and Apocalyptic Dawn. The drummer was all over the place. JP no longer plays drums for the band if you did not know. Sahil blabbered something about this guy, Vikram, who flew all the way from some place to play with them that night. Sahil's vocals were extremely bad in my opinion. Although I really love the band, I thought this was one of their no-so-good gigs I attended until now. Themclones came next and played a few pointless originals and some bad covers including the sacred RATM tracks Freedom and Killing in the name of. The singer can't sing for nuts and on top of that he tried acting really "pro" by throwing water on the crowd and using profanities on stage. The unoriginal swashbuckling heroes of Indian rock, Parikrama were up next. They were accompanied by a violinist and a percussionist this time. They belted out some regurgitated bullshit to please the crowd which was so eager to listen to their messed up Led Zeppelin, Floyd, Coldplay and AC DC covers. I wish they stopped playing music for the sake of music. I left the auditorium after their second song, but fell prey to their aural crap while I was trying to eat something at a nearby canteen. Overall, a very average Livewire yet again from the Mood Indigo team.