There’s that old adage that goes “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight but the size of the fight in the dog.” For a practical demonstration of the same, grab a copy of Bhayanak Maut’s three-song EP Metastasis that’s up for free download. A sort-of commemoration of the time the band spent with drum whiz Jai Row Kavi while erstwhile drummer Rahul Hariharan was off earning his stripes in Scotland, the EP packs in three tracks of ass-kicking, skull-crushing, face-melting metal into 10 short punishing minutes. Bottom-heavy, solid riffs cut through Vinay Venkatesh’s enraged growling and Sunneith Revankar’s spitfire screaming in ”˜Chakna for Church,’ the hackle-raising opener to the EP, tethered firmly to Row Kavi’s something drumming. Loose, running riffs dissolve into a massive breakdown on ”˜Dear <name>’ before exploding into angular riffs tipped with pinch harmonics. The most memorable riffs of the bunch, though, belong to ”˜Confucious’ whose lyrics veer from raging irreverence and seeming priest-bashing to poking fun at producer Anupam Roy (We’re out of lines/We make fun of Pom Pom/Pom pom pom pom pom). But, on the whole, the EP is not perfect. While vocalists Venkatesh and Revankar seem to have found the perfect synergy here, the combination of hard-driven vocals and guitars sometimes drown the sound of the drums in the mix. The EP also lacks the ear grabbing quality of their previous album and it takes many listens for the songs to really sink in. But this is the sound of the band cutting loose and having fun and on this EP they do that perfectly well.
Key Tracks: ”˜Chakna for Church,’ ”˜Confucius’
