Photos: Albatross Pay Tribute to Black Sabbath at Hard Rock Cafe, Worli, Mumbai

Albatross paid tribute to Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Ronnie James Dio and Megadeth at Hard Rock Cafe, Worli. Photo by Bryan Jacob Daniel.

Despite all the back-and-forth about foregoing integrity [to the “scene”] by taking on tribute gigs, there’s always a sense of comfortable familiarity in drunkenly belting out, say, the mournful chorus to Ozzy Osbourne’s “Mama, I’m Coming Home”. And that’s exactly what Albatross pushed the burger-munching, Jägerbomb-chugging crowd to with their tribute to Black Sabbath and frontman Ozzy.

The Mumbai horror metallers opened to about 50 front-of-house headbangers with “Gets Me Through”, but wasted no time in turning up the volume and calling on the seated expats and corporates to join in on the fun with 1973’s “Sabbath Bloody Sabbath”. “Do we have any Coldplay fans in the house?” asked vocalist Biprorshee Das, who would proceed to declare, “Too bad, thank you for coming down; here’s some real music” to the now-growing crowd.

With a lot of instrument changing and mic swapping, Albatross called on friends and musicians through the night to join them on their 19-track-long setlist that occasionally digressed to pay homage to metal titan Ronnie James Dio [“Holy Diver”] and Megadeth [“Tornado of Souls” in honour of recently-deceased drummer Nick Menza]. Vocalist Akshay Deodhar [of metal band Hellwind] and guitarist Shrikant Sreenivasan [of prog band Coshish] took on “War Pigs”, singer Pratika Prabhune mellowed the crowd down with an acoustic rendition of “Dreamer”, while on-stage powerhouse Nitin Rajan [of Primitiv and Killbrium] growled his way through “Sweet Leaf”.

By their penultimate medley of “Sabbra Cadabra/Paranoid”, the six-member band had a crowd of around 180 strong headbanging to their uncannily on point renditions. Albatross closed out with the operatic “Heaven and Hell” before Hard Rock’s PA took over with Iron Maiden’s “Fear of the Dark”, a subtle hint at the next potential tribute (?)

Photos by Bryan Jacob Daniel

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