Skyharbor Hit The Stage Before Taking Time Off For Second Album

Photo: Patrick Häberli

There are a different set of challenges facing bands with members spread across the country. But when your band mates live in different continents, as is the case with progressive metallers Skyharbor, they get choosy by default about the gigs they play.

The Delhi-based supergroup, which grew out of guitarist Keshav Dhar’s bedroom solo project Hydrodjent, expanded to include British vocalist Dan Tompkins (formerly of prog metal band TesseracT), Anup Sastry (drummer of American technical metaller Jeff Loomis’s band), and Indian members Nikhil Rufus (bassist of Delhi psych rockers Indigo Children) and Devesh Dayal (guitarist of Mumbai post-hardcore band Goddess Gagged).

Dhar confirms that this is the current lineup of the band, which will be writing songs for a second album, the follow-up to Blinding White Noise: Illusion & Chaos. “I’ve noticed a lot of confusion on the internet and people are still asking this question again and again about whether Anup or Dan are coming down for the shows. This is our lineup, and this is what you’re going to see on the second album, everyone is equally a part of it as much as I am,” says Dhar, “The reason I started this as a studio project was because I didn’t have like-minded people. But now that I do, it’s not going to be a solo project any more.”

The supergroup appeal combined with slick prog metal compositions makes them well in demand. They have accepted offers to headlineNationalLawSchool’s annual music competition Strawberry Fields on November 30th and a club gig at the second metal night on December 4th at Blue Frog inNew Delhi. “We’ve gotten a lot of interest from a lot of colleges and festivals who wanted us to play, but there was always some kind of shortcoming when it came to either performer fees. Like, travel, since we have people from all over the world. These guys [Strawberry Fields] were the only guys to sort things out on all counts,” Dhar says. The band had to turn down playing at the Bacardi NH7 Weekender in Pune due to conflicting touring schedules with Sastry’s tour with Jeff Loomis.

The two Indian shows are following their performance at the four-day prog metal Euroblast Festival in Cologne in Germany earlier this year. Similar to Euroblast, their set at both shows will consist of all seven songs from Illusion, including “Order 66,” “Dots,” “Celestial,” and “Maeva.” Their set at Euroblast saw an impressive audience, tells us Dhar. “There were a lot of important industry folks there ”“ people from gear companies, guitar companies, from labels, booking agents from Avocado [which books the biggest bands in Europe] and people from Century Media [a major metal record label]. We played to a lot of important people and I think we made a good impression on them so we have been getting a lot of interest,” Dhar says.

Next year’s schedule is already looking good. Dhar says they will spend the first half writing, and the second half touring. There’s a break in activities after the two gigs, with vocalist Tompkins concentrating on his other pop project In Colour and guitarist Dayal gigging with Goddess Gagged. Dhar, meanwhile, hopes to get started on writing songs again. Dhar says, “We’re going to take a break because partly we want get things done for the second album and also because we simply do not have enough material to play live at the moment. We have about 40 minutes, which is not enough.”

Skyharbor play at Blue Frog, Delhi along with Grammy Winning Effort on December 4th. Entry: Rs 350. Event details here.