Ox7gen. Photo: Iza Viola

Barely six months ago, Aditya Ashok released Any Minute Now, the debut EP from his drum ’n bass solo project, Ox7gen. Now, after spending two weeks in Goa, the electronica artist has readied his second EP, An Ocean For Everyone. “I just wanted to get out of the city and do this. I went to Palolem beach with my gear and decided to work on this concept album,” says Ashok.

With only two tracks, Ox7gen’s latest EP is as short as his Goan holiday. “I wanted to do three to five songs, but I realized 12 days was not long enough to make a lot of music. I couldn’t do it in this short time. I recorded three tracks but I wasn’t convinced about one of them, so I decided to drop it,” he says. His vacation recording was put together at a makeshift studio that he set up inside a shack on the beach. “I went there with my gear… an acoustic guitar, computer and synth. Initially, I just wanted to use my beat sampler, guitar and new synth (a MiniBrute) for this EP,” he says. “But then I realized that I forgot to carry cables for the tempo sync,” he adds.

Without a condenser mic or a mic stand, Ashok opted to use a field recorder instead. From recording the sound of the waves, which is a constant on both tracks to conversations with friends in Goa, which forms the intro to the second track, the field recording comes with a hissing background sound that Ashok is happy to overlook. “I wanted to create something that would remind me of my stay here,” he says, adding, “And each of the two songs capture a different mood. The first one is a night listen, while the second is about my mornings here.”

At the EP launch gig today, Ashok will showcase the new ambient tracks, before playing his usual “high energy, fluid” material. “When I wrote these songs (from the EP) I knew they were too mellow and chilled out (unlike my usual stuff) and won’t work in a club. So this time I’ll be doing a live set, something I’ve never done before. I’ll be deconstructing the songs and making them club friendly,” he says, adding that he’s working on a full-length album which he hopes to release this year.

Sky Rabbit’s Raxit Tewari will also bring his solo act, Your Chin, to stage today. Tewari, who hopes to release Your Chin’s second EP this year, will perform some of his new material today. “I’m playing four unreleased tracks besides the EP stuff. There are a couple of newer songs, but they’re not ready to be played yet,” says Tewari. Song such as “Electro-what,” “For Love,” “Sleeping” and “Run Along Little One,” will be part of his hour-long set, which will be accompanied by visuals and videos that he’s put together with the help of some friends. “All of them are fun songs. Some are quicker and more skiddy than the others,” he adds.

Ayan De, who has been busy readying Tewari’s band, Sky Rabbit’s EP, Where, will also be performing a set under his stage moniker Paralights. “I will be playing one new song, but otherwise it will be from previous sets , nothing new, but just a smoother and more live set up today,” says De. “Right now, the working title is ‘Damn you, James Blake.’ It has sort of a James Blake feel to it,” he says about his new track. 

 Ox7gen, Your Chin and Paralights perform at Blue Frog, Mumbai on May 21st, 2013. Entry Rs 350 or Rs 1,000 (full cover). For details, click here  

Daft Punk. Photo: Maud Bernos/ EMI France/ Virgin

Random Access Memories

French duo Daft Punk helped create our current stadium-shaking, Coachella-dominating dance-music moment, and their new album is by far the year’s most anticipated EDM set. The only issue is that it sounds almost nothing like EDM.

Random Access Memories is full of WTF moments: Julian Casablancas delivering maybe the most emotive vocals of his career through a vocoder-style haze; dance godfather Giorgio Moroder waxing nostalgic on an electro-jazz-funk epic; pop-schmaltz guru Paul Williams (“We’ve Only Just Begun”) playing a love-starved cyborg in a disco fantasia. Then there’s the full package – a 70-minute­-plus, over-the-top concept LP of prog-rocking, reverse-engineered dance music orbiting somewhere between Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side of the Moon and Earth, Wind and Fire‘s That’s the Way of the World.

It’s a long way from Homework, the 1997 debut on which Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo perfected a brand of synth-and-sample-centered house music that rebooted Eurodisco and inspired acts from Kanye West to Swedish House Mafia. But plenty has happened since: EDM has gone megapop, while DP, following a 2007 stadium tour, repaired to L.A. to rethink their game.

Random Access Memories reflects all this. Like ex-smokers turned anti-tobacco militants, Daft Punk have been disparaging EDM in the press, and without forsaking their Kiss-like robot personae, they’ve built a record more or less wholly on live instrumentation. Its brilliance is often irrefutable – like when the exquisitely funky rhythm guitar of Nile Rodgers flickers through “Get Lucky” and “Lose Yourself to Dance,” or when studio grandmasters Omar Hakim and John JR Robinson create godhead break beats apparently using drumsticks instead of loop triggers (see the prog-rock freakout “Contact”).

There’s a narrative here, too, although in concept-album tradition, it’s a vague one. The processed vocals unspool a story that suggests cyborgs striving to be human – pretty much the story of all of us these days. On “Touch,” Williams trades drama-queen verses with a cyber-chorus, like some alternate ending to Dave Bowman’s standoff with HAL, the computer, in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s completely ridiculous. It’s also remarkably beautiful and affecting. So goes much of the record. Verses approach the banal; old-school-production treacle is laid on thick, but the creative soul is palpable. The jazz fusion gestures conjure ecstatic disco history as well as cheesy wine-bar soundtracks. And the absence of “modern” club beats is striking. This is not a record for the average Electric Daisy Carnival goer.

But maybe that’s the point. A sort of Portrait of the Artists as Grown-Ass Ravers, this is Daft Punk conjuring the musical era that first inspired them, when disco conquered the world with handcrafted grooves and prog-rock excess magnified emotions in black-lit bedrooms. At times, the album is a victim of its own ambition. But it wouldn’t be half as awesome a ride if it had aimed any lower.

The five-minute song continues the band’s style of fusing the mellow and the heavy, coming in with a wall of fuzz and groove first, before settling into a quieter movement. Karnivool first started performing “The Refusal” during their tour early last year.

Download “The Refusal” from Australia’s Triple J website here. Listen to the song below.

Sahil Makhija and Siddharth Basrur rock each others band’s T-shirts. Photo: Siddharth Dugha

It’s rather embarrassing to be seen in a black T-shirt at a metal concert. Try explaining that to Indian metal fans and they’ll probably gag you with their moshpit-sweat soaked Slipknot T-shirts (black with the band logo in red). So imagine Mumbai humor metal band Sahil Makhija’s surprise when he spotted a dozen students wearing all black, but without skulls or dragons or Goth prints on their tees. What he saw from a distance, looked distinctly like a large bird. Could they be part of Symbiosis International University’s animal welfare wing that showed up to protest against his indiscriminate consumption of poultry and pork? Fortunately, the students were Workshop loyalists and not animal activists. All 15 of them wore Workshop’s “Khooni Murga” T-shirts, released in September 2009, with the image a large rooster towering over a caricature of the band. “The students even set up a merch stall for us and made us a poster,” recalls Makhija of his band’s fans at the show that was held in Pune in 2011.

Makhija, who has been releasing merchandise since 2001, says that Indian audiences have always been keen on band T-shirts. “I printed 300 T-shirts for about Rs 200 back then (in 2001) and all of them sold out,” he says, “(Today) People pay 1,000 bucks to see Indian Ocean play at Blue Frog, so what is it for that guy to fork out Rs 500 for a T-shirt?” The enterprising musician, who also fronts the death metal band Demonic Resurrection, even ran a T-shirt design contest for DR’s latest merch in January this year. The band received 61 design entries of which three are being printed and sold by Delhi-based label Nameless Merch’s site. “We are currently getting a profit from T-shirts,” says Makhija. The band’s black “Lord of Pestilence” T-Shirt earned them a profit of Rs 35,000, which was used as prize money for the design contest and to fund DR’s fourth album. 

Bengaluru stoner/doom metal band Bevar Sea have released six T-shirts designs since 2010 and have also sold more merchandise than music from their debut album that released in November 2012. “It’s (merchandise) a self-subsistence cycle which keeps us in public consciousness,” says guitarist Rahul Chacko, who also goes by his design avatar Scribble Bandit and has designed all six of the band’s T-shirts, including their most popular one of a hipster-slaying biker, “Abhistu.” Fellow Bengaluru death metal band Inner Sanctum’s bassist Abhishek Michael agrees that T-shirts serve as publicity vehicles for the band. “It’s free mobile advertising,” says Michael. Inner Sanctum has released four T-shirt designs until date, with the latest one titled “Devouring Eye,” out in January. The band feels they earn some profits from the sales “but not enough to say…go record an album,” says the band’s vocalist and T-shirt designer Gaurav Basu aka Acid Toad, whose work is now in high demand.

The math and effort add up to profit. Releasing a T-shirt is less time-consuming (up to six weeks) and is cheaper (between Rs 200 to 300 per piece to design, print and sell a T-shirt) than putting out a new album. Besides, merch brings in bigger profits than CD or digital sales of the album. “An order of 400 T-shirts priced at an average of Rs 500  would make more than 500 CDs priced at Rs 200,” says Eshaan Sood, the 18-year-old CEO of Delhi-based merchandise label Nameless Merch. Last year, Sood signed on 12 bands to retail their merch, selling around 3,000 T-shirts in a year.

Last month, alternative music webzine NH7.in called out to bands and their fans to be part of The Scene, a monthly series of free gigs curated at the Mumbai club, Blue Frog. The Scene also offered bands a space to sell merch. Nikhil Udupa, who is part of the marketing and alliance team at NH7, says that T-shirts will start selling more than CDs in the coming years. Adds Udupa, “Nobody buys music to begin with. I think people would rather buy a great T-shirt or poster.” This also explains why Mumbai alternative metal band Goddess Gagged put out a new T-shirt last month on Nameless Merch. The band has no plans to write or release any new material in the coming months, but their new T-shirt (“Tune In”) certainly helps keep the buzz around the band going. “Our CD came out in November 2011. We’ve sold 450 or so of those so far, but we’ve sold out all 50 of the newly designed T-shirts and 65 of the 100 T-shirts that were first designed,” says bassist Krishna Jhaveri.

The growing appeal of band T-shirts is also evident in the rise of the number of online merchandise stores. In 2010, Delhi-based CD Rack (which was Sood’s first business venture with Indian bands) and Mumbai’s BombayMerch was the first online store to begin selling Indian band CDs and merchandise. Today, there are at least seven merchandise stores such as Redwolf, Headbangers Merch, Hysteria, Nameless Merch and No Nasties selling Indian band T-shirts online.

Of course, metal bands release merch more often than bands from any other genre. Sood hazards a guess, explaining why: “It might be because they (non-metal bands) get more shows and don’t need the extra money.” Sood says he is yet to sign on a rock band to Nameless Merch, considering there is always a manager to deal with, unlike most self-managed metal bands. “There’s always a manager who thinks he knows everything and wouldn’t want to listen to someone (like me). Metal bands are much more open to work with others. That’s been my experience.”

Sood should know. He set up CD Rack, an online store to sell Indian metal CDs  when he was just 14, in 2010. Six months into the business, he realized that the money was in merch. “I stopped CD Rack and I started working on a solid plan to build Nameless Merch.” Launched in January 2012, Nameless Merch is frequented by fans of metal bands such as Demonic Resurrection, Goddess Gagged, Inner Sanctum and Skyharbor. DR’s “Lord of Pestilence” and Goddess Gagged first design, “Modern Machines” (designed by Sood) are tied at the top spot of highest selling T-shirts on Nameless Merch.

Bevar Sea guitarist and designer Rahul Chacko at his merch table. Photo: Uday Shanker

In the case of Bengaluru-based store Hysteria, it was bands who convinced Ehsan Arif, one of the store’s partners, to set up an online merch division in 2010. Says Arif, “Some bands contacted us because there was nowhere their fans could buy it, except at gigs, which didn’t happen often.” Arif then contacted Kryptos, to sell their merchandise as part of their Coils of Apollyon album promotion and the site now stocks T-shirts by Eccentric Pendulum, Inner Sanctum and Devoid.

With metal and rock ruling the merch space in India, it wasn’t long before Delhi EDM artist Sahej Bakshi aka Dualist Inquiry printed T-shirts to promote his Doppelganger album. After selling out the first batch of 250 T-shirts (priced at Rs 400) launched during the first leg of his tour in March, Bakshi picked Mumbai indie clothing brand Redwolf to take the sales online. Bakshi now has a second batch of tees on sale for Rs 499 on Redwolf, which also sells T-shirts by Mumbai alt/grunge rock band Blakc and electro folk act Bandish Projekt and Mumbai punk rock band The Lightyears Explode.

Online stores such as Headbangers Merch and Hysteria agree that the only reason their merch sales shoot up is because bands promote their online portals. At gigs, Makhija says fans attend with the intent of buying merch. “At some point, a T-shirt will always outweigh a CD. Some bands are, in fact, bundling a free CD with a T-shirt. Stuff like that is the future of merch,” says Makhija.

The future of Indian band merchandise will depending on how many CD collectors are still around, according to Riju Dasgupta, bassist of Mumbai power/horror metal band Albatross. “Every time you release an album, you have a contingent of people asking what the purpose of a CD is in this day and age. But you don’t become a musician with the idea of selling your music,” says Dasgupta. He shows his old school roots when he adds, “I smile wider when I sell a CD than when I sell a T-shirt. You become a fan of the band through their music. Design comes later.” 

It’s A Pattern

While black is the most popular color among fans, these are our top picks of band T-shirts out now

Doppelganger

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Dualist Inquiry – “Doppelganger” “The T-shirt was designed by Harikrishnan Panicker, a US-based artist who did the album cover artwork and then adapted it for clothing. We put this out to help foster a sense of community among supporters of indie and electronic music,” says Sahej Bakshi. Price Rs 499. Available at Redwolf.in

This article originally appears in the May 2013 of Rolling Stone India.

Ray Manzarek, 1970 Photo: Michael Ochs Archive/Getty Images

Doors co-founder and keyboardist Ray Manzarek died on Monday, May 20, in Rosenheim, Germany after a long battle with bile duct cancer. He was 74. 

“I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today,” Doors guitarist Robby Krieger said in a statement.  “I’m just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade. Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him.” 

From the Archive: Ray Manzarek Opens a New Door

Manzarek grew up in Chicago, then moved to Los Angeles in 1962 to study film at UCLA. It was there he first met Doors singer Jim Morrison, though they didn’t talk about forming a band until they bumped into each other on a beach in Venice, California in the summer of 1965 and Morrison told Manzarek that he had been working on some music. “And there it was!” Manzarek wrote in his 1998 biography, Light My Fire. “It dropped quite simply, quite innocently from his lips, but it changed our collective destinies.”

They quickly teamed up with drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger and began playing gigs around Los Angeles. About a year later, the Doors recorded their debut album for Elektra Records. “We knew once people heard us, we’d be unstoppable,” Manzarek wrote in his memoir. “We knew what the people wanted: the same thing the Doors wanted. Freedom.”

The Doors didn’t have a bassist, so Manzarek often played the bass parts on his Fender Rhodes piano. He also played a Vox Continental organ, which can be heard on the famous intro to “Light My Fire” and numerous other Doors classics. The group shared credit on most songs and split all profits evenly.

The group carried on for two more albums after Jim Morrison died in July of 1971, but they split in 1973. Manzarek remained extremely busy, producing albums for X and playing with Iggy Pop, Echo and the Bunnymen and others. In 2002, he began touring as the Doors of the 21st Century with Krieger and Cult frontman Ian Astbury. Doors drummer John Densmore filed a lawsuit over the use of the name and it lead to a protracted legal battle.  

“Morrison required all three of us diving into his lyrics and creating music that would swirl around him,” Manzarek told Rolling Stone in 2006. “Without Jim, everybody started shooting off in different directions. . . The Doors was the perfect mixture of four guys, four egos that balanced each other. There were never any problems with ‘You wrote this’ or ‘I wrote that.’ But [after Jim died] the whole dynamic was screwed up, because the fourth guy wasn’t there.”

From left to right: Ashutosh Phatak, Suranjan Das, Nitin Chandy at True School of Music. Photo: Siddharth Dugha

Lower Parel’s Sun Mill Compound, an old time industrial estate now chock-a-block with offices where every bylane takes you to a different workplace, will be home to a multi-genre music school this September. Spread over 15,000 square feet, True School of Music will train students upto the professional level in guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, vocals as well as music production, engineering and disc jockeying. The school complex, when complete in August (they plan to offer music bootcamps, free lessons, screenings for a month before the launch), will encompass a state-of-the-art auditorium, production studios, music library as well as accommodation facilities for its visiting teachers. Faculty members from top-notch music schools such as New York’s Manhattan School Of Music and London’s Academy of Contemporary Music (ACM) will be part of True School’s teaching staff.

True School of Music, which is primarily funded by the private equity firm Zodius, is the brainchild of Ashutosh Phatak, the well-known keyboardist and composer (Petri Dish) and one of the founders of the popular music venue, Blue Frog, along with advertising industry veteran Suranjan Das (J Walter Thompson and Saatchi & Saatchi) and sound engineer Nitin Chandy. The founders are quite clear on their objective: not to create music prodigies or great rock bands, but to train professionals for a career in music composition for advertising, television and films.

“Honestly, it’s been at the back of my mind for 15 years now. I’ve been a part of the music business for the last 20 years. When I started off as a composer, I had to figure everything out on my own,” says, Phatak, CEO of True School of Music. “I’ve seen this industry grow and I think now there is a real viability of a career option here, which sometimes gets missed out, especially by the parents. We need to address the fact that musicians are earning more than their counterparts in banking or whatever traditional roots parents want their kids to take. The idea (of the school) is to enable people to make a living out of music.” Of course, Phatak is referring to musicians who work in the film and advertising industries here and not alternative musicians who are part of rock and jazz bands. Adds Phatak, “There’s a reason why we chose to open the school here. Mumbai is the heart of the music business and we are focusing on giving students opportunity to work in the industry.” 

Justin DiCioccio, Associate Dean of the Jazz Arts Program at Manhattan School of Music, who has performed with artists such as Randy Brecker, Red Rodney and Clark Terry, has designed the curriculum at True School. Every three months, six faculty members from Manhattan will visit Mumbai to conduct classes on keys, piano, guitar, bass (electric and acoustic), drums, vocals and saxophone, while the faculty from ACM will take care of the sound engineering and music production aspect at the Mumbai school.  “It’s an exchange program of sorts where Indian students get trained by professionals, while the teachers as well as grad/ doctorate students from Manhattan can learn more about Hindustani music and pick an elective such as tabla, basuri etc during their time here,” says DiCioccio, whose faculty team comprises teachers and sessions musicians, who plan to take their faculty band to venues such as Blue Frog during their stay. 

While rock and jazz will be the primary focus, the school will also offer basic level classes in Hindustani classical focusing on vocals, tabla, harmonium, flute and sitar, based on a curriculum drawn up by singer Shubha Mudgal and percussionist Aneesh Pradhan. D. Wood, the Mumbai-based American composer well known for his work on movies like Dev Benegal’s English August and Mani Kaul’s The Idiot, who is currently teaching at Subhash Ghai’s Whistling Woods Film School, will oversee the rest of the music program. “My work is to be a bridge builder of sorts. My objective is to help musicians find their own music personality and train them without piles of notebook, but with loads of experience,” says Wood, who plans to juggle his work between the film school and music school. “In fact, I feel the two worlds meet. My work will be to encourage people at both the institutes and bring about a wide pool of talent that helps find the right musicians for the right filmmakers,” he adds.

True School, slated to open on September 16th, hopes to attract students across the spectrum: From amateurs to those who aspire to go abroad to schools like Berklee College and NYU for professional qualification. Das, who is the COO at True School of Music, feels that his school has a distinct advantage when it comes to the latter segment, because of it being based in Mumbai. “They (students from international music schools) have the music skills but not the cultural and environmental context. So we are not just providing you with the musical skills, which any good school will, but also placing you in an environment which will give you a real world exposure to the industry people so you know how to handle and survive in these situations,” says Das. DiCioccio is glad to have amateurs on board as well. “Even those who do not wish to pursue music professionally will benefit from the course. In turn, they will help develop an educated audience in the country, so we are creating musicians as well as listeners,” he says, adding, “ My philosophy is to create the complete artists/ musicians of the 21st century; where one is a performer (playing music), composer (arranging, songwritring) and pedagogue (writing method book , conducting master classes). All three are intertwined.”

Das, Chandy and Phatak hope to use their considerable clout in the Mumbai music and advertising circles to provide the students hands-on work experience by getting them to intern with leading music composers, production studios, ad agencies and also play live gigs at venues like Blue Frog. “It is not just about academics, but also gaining first-hand, real world experience. With industry engagements, we are hooking up with every club in the city, not just Blue Frog, where our students from the certificate program will work. The DJs can play an early or late night set at a club, our school bands can perform at lunch or early sets at music venues. So it’s a win-win situation for everyone— these clubs will get free talent, which is certified by us, and the kids are getting real world experience,” says Phatak.

“When we first thought of the school, we looked at every music school in the world and thought about what was important and would work for India as a market and enable musicians to succeed here,” says Phatak. While small-scale academies and schools are now commonplace in the country, there are only a handful of full-fledged music schools such as Chennai’s Swarnabhoomi Academy of Music (SAM) and The KM Music Conservatory and Audio Media Education, founded by AR Rahman. Lata Mangeshkar recently inaugurated Vishwashanti Sangeet Kala Academy in Pune, a school that focuses on Hindustani classical music and last month, New Delhi’s Global Music Institute adopted the Berklee College of Music curriculum as part of their course. “Schools like Swarnabhoomi are great since they focus on individual musicianship and getting in depth in the virtuosity of being a musician. But we felt there is no one place that offers a well-rounded musical education.”  

The fees will vary based on the courses. The beginner’s course, which falls under the Outreach Department, will focus on schools and students as young as six-year-olds. The Foundation Department, which, as the name suggests, provides the foundation of music, will provide lessons in ten musical instruments (Indian and western), while the Pro Department will help turn musicians into industry professionals. “The idea of the school is to make musicians out of everyone. There’s a fundamental belief that everyone has the capability of being a musician at some level or the other, so if we introduce them to music early enough, they can make the right choice,” says Phatak.

The duration for a full-time certificate student is roughly between 9-12 months and can go up to two-and-a-half years for those looking at part-time options. “The modules are 3 months each and are designed in a manner to enable even working professionals to be part of it,” says Das. The fee for the foundation course, which gives students access to the campus auditorium, workshops, library, recording studios as well as four lessons a month in any instrument, comes at a cost of Rs 5,000 per month. A Pro certificate program on the other hand, can cost anywhere between two to 10 lakhs. “The fee for a certification program will cost about 20 percent of than any other reputed school in the world,” Das confirms. The school will also offer scholarships and financial aids. “Students have an option of doing a work-study program, where they can work here and pay off their loan. They can be Teacher’s Assistants in different classes or work in the marketing department,” adds Phatak. 

Phatak is confident that the students will recover their fees within a year of graduating. “By the time the students graduate, they would probably have worked with enough industry professionals to be able to find good work. So If you are doing a composers certificate program, what you will earn as a composer immediately after leaving school will be equivalent to what you have spent in the last year,” he says, adding a disclaimer, “That is, if you graduate successfully.” 

Undying Inc bassist Reuben Bhattacharya Photo: Blue Frog

When we asked bassist Reuben Bhattacharya to send in five of his current favorites for Turn It Up To 11, he decided to go well beyond the brief and throw in 11 songs. Now you’ve got nearly an hour’s worth of music ranging from metal to dubstep to guitar wankery to background theme music. Delhi groove metal band Undying Inc picked up eight nominations at the Rolling Stone Metal Awards in 2011, for their  second full-length album, Aggressive World Dynasty, and won the Best Album, Best Vocalist and Best Drummer award. Despite the lineup changes over the last year [Nishant Hagjer took over drumming duties last year, while the band are now recruiting a new vocalist], Undying Inc are readying their new album. 

Ion Dissonance – “The Surge”

They’re a major influence. All the new wave of death/math/tech bands today owe this band and the entire Montreal scene a huge one. Like some ominous sounding alien machinery gone mad, this song exemplifies that doing breakdowns is not a simple job. It refuses to leave my head or at least won’t leave until a new Ion Dissonance album comes out and blows it away.

Keith Merrow, Jeff Hughell(Decrepit Birth) & Wes Hauch(The Faceless) – “Top Romulan”

This is executed with precision and complete bad-assery by masters of their instruments. This track left me gobsmacked and I can’t wait for the more extreme Keith Merrow stuff. Also, as nerdy as this may sound, the title is total Star Trek reference WIN!

The HAARP Machine – “Lower The Populace”

Our drummer Nishant is a huge Alex Rudinger fan and recently got me listening to THM a lot more. Superlative playing and deep musicianship there. This song pretty much defines the one stop solution to all of our country’s problems.  Government-developed secret virus, where are you?

Spawn Of Possession – “Where Angels Go, Demons Follow”

Absolutely mental. Ticks the right check box for me from word go. Spawn Of Possession take in all the best bits of technical brutal death metal and create a ridiculous masterpiece. I had no idea when I met the insanely talented and down to earth Christian Muenzner (of tech death metal band Obscura) that he would one day be doing this. Incurso is a mind-altering album.

Meshuggah – “Concatenation (Remix)”

Dug this one out again. That tone, plus a warship-sized groove. This is a remix done the right way with slower tempo that will compel you to bang your head persistently. Blasting it out of the car stereo helps me deal with the everyday commute.

Blotted Science – “Brain Fingerprinting”

Webster + Jarzombek. Enough said. Creepy tech metal that will crawl up your spine like insects under your skin and induce uncontrollable fits and seizures. It’s been a mainstay in my playlist ever since I first discovered The Machinations Of Dementia in 2009. Not advisable if you have arachnophobia, though.

The Monolith Deathcult – “Gods Amongst Insects”

Had the good fortune of sharing the same festival billing with these guys at Inferno. Epic death metal made even more epic with the voice over by Peter Cullen (also the voice of Optimus Prime) A monolithic epic sound that will truly makes the average human feel like an insignificant little ant. Did I mention Epic?

Evan Brewer – “Actualize”

A track to soothe my nerves at the end of a hectic day. I am a huge admirer of Evan’s talent and drive. Besides his work with The Faceless and T.R.A.M, his recent solo album Alone is an absolute must listen for any bassist worth the salt on his fingers.

The Dillinger Escape Plan – “One of Us Is The Killer”

Not like I like using unnecessary expletives to make a point, but these guys truly do not give a flying fuck and have no rules whatsoever to their music. The title track off their new album is deft with honest songwriting that sucks you into the limbo of a strange, disturbing Hitchcockian murder mystery, in a way only DEP can.

Slayer & Atari Teenage Riot (Spawn soundtrack) – “No Remorse/ I Wanna Die”

Spawn Soundtrack was on one of the most important crossover records of the Nineties and that tape still holds prime position in my record collection. Still remember what a huge debate this nasty track sparked off between Slayer fans. What a criminally underrated track. Dubstep party DJs, go back to your mommies and let these guys show you how a truly brutal remix is done. R.I.P Jeff Hanneman

Mark Snow – “X-Files Theme”

This is one of the most iconic and timeless themes I’ve ever heard. Recently rediscovered this while watching The X-Files rerun, got all nostalgic and realized just how much ahead of its time this show was. Creepy, weird, dark and evil, it comes into its own when you’re alone. Just turn off all the lights and play it on loop. Remember, the truth is out there.

Reptilian Death. Photo: Roycin D’Souza

There’s a common love for drama among the bands lined up to play Rolling Stone Live Night at Blue Frog, Mumbai on May 19th. Three Mumbai bands – death metallers Reptilian Death, heavy metal act Albatross and black metallers Solar Deity – take stage this Sunday. The uninitiated should pack a pair of earplugs and check out our gig breakdown

Reptilian Death

Set: 45 minutes of death metal featuring songs from their first full-length album, The Dawn of Consummation and Emergence.

Watch out for: Face paint, masks and warrior garb turn this set into a theatrical act.Vocalist Vinay Venkatesh reaches deep into some nether world for the blackest growls he can bring to stage. Says drummer Sahil Makhija “Whatever apprehensions I had [about performing live with Reptilian Death] were gone after the first gig.”

Spin this: The lyric video for the song “O.”

Solar Deity. Photo: Sanath Kumar BS

Solar Deity

Set: 45 minutes consisting of five songs from the black metal band’s two releases so far, In The Name of Satan and The Darkness of Being.

Watch out for: Considering it’s their second gig as a band [they debuted at the third edition of Trendslaughter fest in Bengaluru in February], vocalist and guitarist Aditya Mehta is excited and nervous at the same time. “We play extreme music. It’s normal to see them [extreme metal bands] in black. I dress normally every day, but at gigs, I don’t want to see people in pink T-shirts jumping around and playing. We wanted to look the part and give this visual aspect of the band equal importance [as the music],” says Mehta, whose black-robed band members are ready to give their city their loudest set yet.

Spin this: The nine-minute stoner-black metal [if that exists] song “The Birth Of A Star,” off their second EP, The Darkness Of Being.

Albatross

Albatross

Set: An hour-long set featuring material from their last EP, The Kissing Flies, and their upcoming release, Wings Of the Assassin. The heavy metal band also pays tribute to one of their genre’s most famous frontman, Ronnie James Dio, marking his third death anniversary by covering “Holy Diver.”

Watch out for: A dose of quirky stage antics. “People call me ‘ketchup boy’ because of the bloodstains on my lab coat, but it ideally shouldn’t discourage you,” says Dasgupta, who doesn’t mind if people ridicule or rock out to the band’s horror story-influenced heavy metal. “We’re not into gore or blood. There’s a crazy sense of humor all my influences have – King Diamond, Ghost and Alice Cooper.”

Spin this: “The Kissing Flies,” the 10-minute epic, bizarre tale of, what else, kissing flies that bring on a sense of ecstasy.