Skyharbor at Euroblast festival in Germany

Keshav Dhar, lead guitarist of Skyharbor

After getting all round praise for their performance opening for Lamb of God at Nokia Alive in May this year, Delhi prog metal band Skyharbor are now at Euroblast festival in Cologne, Germany.

The eighth edition of EuroBlast will feature technical and progressive metal bands such as Vildhjarta, Sybreed, Veil of Maya, Chimp Spanner and Tesseract.  “It feels amazing! I’m very proud to be sharing the stage with such fantastic and accomplished bands,” says frontman Keshav Dhar.

Dhar spoke about how the gig came about saying: “We were approached by Euroblast shortly after our last show in Bangalore with Lamb of God.”

Skyharbor’s current line-up consists of Devesh Dayal (guitarist for Goddess Gagged), Nikhil Rufus (bassist for Indigo Children), Anup Sastry (drummer for Jeff Loomis) and guest vocalists on their debut album Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos included Daniel Tompkins (formerly of Tesseract) and Bhayanak Maut’s Sunneith Revankar.

With the exception of Rufus and frontman Dhar, Skyharbor’s band members are based in different cities ”“ and often different countries. Says Dayal, “Putting a band together on the internet like that was a big risk. Keshav & Nikhil were the only two members that had met in real life, so it could have all went wrong if someone turned out to be a douche.”

Apart from playing at the festival, Dayal is “stoked to see Veil of Maya, Jeff Loomis, Monuments, Vildhjarta, Tesseract, Red Seas Fire, and Circle of Contempt”. He adds: “After the Burial will be sweet too. I met their vocalist this summer at Warped Tour and we talked a bit about Euroblast.”

There are no other international gigs announced yet, but Dhar says, “Nothing for sure yet, but I’m sure we will have updates on this shortly.” Dhar recently produced Bangalore experimental metal band Limit Zero’s full-length release Gravestone Constellations.