Album Review: Mumbai Metallers Last Ride Home’s Ambitious Journey

Mumbai metal band Last Ride Home. Photo: Sahil Makhija/courtesy of the artist

[easyreview cat1title = Signs cat1rating = 3 cat1detail = Self-released]

‘Signs’ album artwork

Post-hardcore, for the uninitiated, is yet to have its day in the sun. There’s just a handful of bands in this space that grew out the U.S. who took the energy of hardcore, but didn’t make it about only pace and loudness. There’s clean vocals, but also over-the-top screams and a lot of melody. In India, it’s always been a bit of a misnomer to call the likes of Mumbai’s Scribe a post-hardcore band, considering their music exudes influences ranging from death metal to djent. While Delhi’s Grammy Winning Effort stay in a hardcore space of groovy punk-meets-southern-rock, emerging artists such as Mumbai band Death By Fungi definitively place themselves in the hardcore punk space. The closest band we’d place to the genre are erstwhile Mumbai metallers Goddess Gagged, who still preferred the term alternative metal.

So excuse the scepticism when it comes to Mumbai’s Last Ride Home. The band started out in 2009, but after a few lineup changes and about two years recording, their debut album Signs released in April. It’s safe to say the band’s seven-track album leans more into modern metal, djent and prog metal than post-hardcore for the most part. “Memories of a Certain Place and Time” has delay-laden guitar leads moving across the regular fare of seven-string riffs, which is certainly more djent than anything else. Deep Ramkumar’s clean vocals, however, stand out well on one of their earliest releases, “Unknown Address.” There’s a glimmer of more potential on “Face Your Fall,” the slow melodic choruses coupled with a scream and a guitar solo that surprisingly fits well.

There’s barrage of breakdowns used more than amply on Signs, but the guitar tones are unmistakably progressive metal and nu-metal. On Signs, it feels like Last Ride Home are still dabbling around trying to find their sound. They arrive at the right places sometimes, but other times, as Deep sings on their title track, “It seems we lost our way”. It might take a few more gigs and much more songwriting before they can definitively call themselves post-hardcore.

Key tracks: “Face Your Fall,” “Unknown Address”

Listen to Signs. Buy the album on OKListen.