Skyharbor Nominated for UK’s Golden Gods Metal Award

Skyharbor

There’s a good reason Skyharbor are nominated in the Global Metal category at the Golden Gods metal awards this year. The prog metal band grew from Delhi guitarist and producer Keshav Dhar’s home to include Indian American drummer Anup Sastry [from prog metal band Intervals], UK vocalist Dan Tompkins [previously from prog metallers TesseracT] and Mumbai alt metal band Goddess Gagged’s bassist Krishna Jhaveri and guitarist Devesh Dayal. The Golden Gods awards, which is hosted by UK metal magazine Metal Hammer, are usually held in June and honor bands in 18 categories, 11 of which are decided by public voting.

Coincidentally, nominees Skyharbor will also be in the UK the same month, performing at the Download Festival. Says Dhar, “I believe the awards are on June 16th in London, and we’re playing Download on the 14th, so we’ll be around already.” Also nominated in the Global Metal category are Israeli folk metal band Orphaned Land, Argentina folk metal band Skiltron, Indonesian thrash metal band Godless Symptoms and Iranian black metal band From The Vastland.

Skyharbor’s nomination isn’t necessarily a first for Indian metal, though. In 2010, Mumbai extreme metal band Demonic Resurrection won the Global Metal award, after releasing their third full-length album, The Return To Darkness. Gaining a nomination to the Golden Gods awards is not based on entries, which is why news of being nominated came as a surprise to Skyharbor. Says Dhar, “We found out that we were nominated just a few hours before the announcement was made. It was completely out of the blue and very unexpected.” At the awards, Dhar is also rooting for his friends in prog metal band TesseracT, who are nominated in the Breakthrough category.

The five-member band is currently working on their second full-length album, sending files across the Internet and jamming over video phone calls. Dhar said in February, “The whole album is finished instrumentally, so it just needs vocals.  It’s very close to being finished in demo form and it just Anup’s drums. He’s been on tour and needs to get back home before he does that, but we will probably have new material out by then.”

Vote for Skyharbor in the Global Metal category at the Golden Gods awards here.