Another Vertigo Rush

Lakshman Anand

With an arsenal of effect units, a bass pedal-murdering drummer and a sound that approximates what it must feel like to watch the action scenes from Fight Club while getting high, indications are that AVR may have plans for you. Besides making a proud stand as the winners from the Delhi leg at this year’s IRock, the quartet is sitting on an EP that could explode the progressive scene in the capital.

“We have, like, five regular fans,” says drummer Akshat Nauriyal during a break from practice at the band’s suburban jamming pad in Noida. “So we don’t really think much about where we’re going to go. Besides, ever since we got together, it was never about the shows. We were happy just making music that no one else did,” he adds. The band has been around for close to a year-and-a-half but has only recently started gigging with some kind of regularity. “It takes time to register new music,” says bassist Nikhil Rufus (also of The Superfuzz, besides four other city bands). Just as well, because judging by the sans-vocals rough cut of the EP, Murphy’s Law, they sound like they’re hitting their stride. Perhaps IRock (first the famous Hamsadhwani theatre in Delhi, then the rough Mumbai crowd) will prove to be just the kind of exposure they need to catch more light.

The four songs on the disc, recorded at the studio of freelancing engineer Anupam Roy (who has also recorded Undying Inc and Joint Family among others), have power and precision written all over them. From the moment the guitars in ”˜Run Like Hell’ come up in the short intro and are taken up by the instrumental melody backed by a head bobbing drum-bass interplay, the band slowly starts to tighten up. The next 18 minutes see them tip their hat to everyone from The Edge to Rage, Tool, melodic metal and Seventies hard rock, mixing it all with healthy doses of metre and tempo change. The taut scope of the prog-metal rhythm section and some stunning riffing by guitarist Viraj Mohan is opened out by the delay-heavy minimalistic guitar work of second guitarist Akhil Sood.

There will be days, of course, when the exacting notion culled from this recording will not be met. But if there’re any good old four-piece outfits out there about whom it may be said that they can hit you where you feel it, AVR must surely count among those.

SPIN THIS

”˜Anger Management’: Is it possible that a song can have so many mammoth riffs? This one’s worth it just for the odd little solo that comes out of the depths of the last 45 seconds. Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait for the EP to hear this.

”˜Phase II’: Slow psy riff goes double-pedal crazy halfway in. It is an instrumental, but if that’s not a euphoric chorus, we don’t know what is.

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