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Insurrection V.3 – A review

After months of anticipation and last minute changes, the third edition of Insurrection finally took place on Sunday, 15th June, at Bak Bak Bar in Bangalore. Organized by Sound Awake, the gig promised a diverse line up including an international headliner- Underside from Nepal. It was an exhausting gig, in a positive and negative sense, but mostly worth our while.

After a two hour delay, the show started with Analyzed Consequences getting on stage and struggling with technical glitches. The opening backing track kept stopping because of the loose connections and the unstable stage. That got them off to a (literally) shaky start, but they powered through their set. Though labeled a djent act, they were more modern progressive metal. Despite being an instrumental outfit, they managed to keep the audience just as involved. Unfortunately, the brilliant guitar solos were almost inaudible to those away from the stage, and the china cymbal was too loud, often drowning out the rest of the instruments. But Analyzed Consequences was one hell of a tight act, and surely is a band we need to watch out for.

Bad Taste went up next, and left a bad taste in all our mouths after their set. The bass was out of tune, and the band as a whole seemed unrehearsed. I was expecting something better from Charlie and his new lineup, but was disappointed. Thankfully, Grossty followed, and as always, they were so much fun! Sudden surprises with “Rasputin” and ‘koothu’ beats added the entertainment quotient to the evening, but even their regular stuff livened up the venue, with the audience shouting “TV is full of crap” along with the vocalist. They got my vote for band of the evening, for sure.

Sound glitches continued during Djinn and Miskatonic’s soundcheck, delaying the already delayed show by a few more minutes. Drummer Siddarth capitalized on this and kept the audience entertained with a couple of drum solos. It was great to see Djinn back in action, but I felt that they shouldn’t have been made to go on stage soon after Grossty. The two bands are at the far two ends of the spectrum when it comes to energy levels (in terms of genre, and not performance). Organizers should have considered this when putting the running order together.

Next up was Threinody– Bangalore’s very own old school thrash band. Theirs was a short and tight set with a mix of their popular originals like “In Extremis” and “Surrender to the Blade” along with a cover of Kreator’s “Phobia”. Guitarist Josh has been replaced by Siddarth Kamath, and though the latter did a fab job, I missed the guitar richness that Josh added to Threinody’s sound. Siddarth Naidu is a great frontman, and though very casual, he always makes it a point to personally thank some people in the audience, and this time, even called bassist Narayan on stage to wish him for his birthday!

Mumbai’s Albatross were up after Threinody, and also had a very short set. There were technical glitches again, and the speakers kept going off and on, causing quite a bit of distraction midway through their performance. They’ve played a couple of times in Bangalore, but somehow, have always been restricted because of a lack of time. They again had an abbreviated performance of only about four songs, and that was very disappointing. And it probably angered me a lot more when the band after them, Final Surrender, got to play for almost an hour! Though I do understand that the concept of favoritism shouldn’t exist between local and outstation bands, I expected there to be fairness in terms of time allotted to all the bands too. Final Surrender brought out some decent metalcore, but did not work on how they sounded on the P.A. The drums were ridiculously loud, and the bass occasionally competed with that. Though the people immediately near the stage seemed to be having a blast, the band sounded unbalanced outside.

Underside ended the night with a set that mostly comprised of their originals. They wasted no time in between, and were high on energy throughout. Sadly, people started trickling out by the end of the night, but that didn’t stop the band from delivering.

On the whole, Insurrection was a decent gig, but with very bad time management. I expected there to be chaos because of the last minute change in venue (from Ion Bar and Kitchen to Bak Bar Bar), but things seemed to be going smoothly. Sound problems seem to have become a given at most gigs, so it would help if there were fewer bands and more time allotted to each. That way, each of them gets to play for a decent amount of time, and in case of issues cropping up, nobody compromises too much. The turnout was fairly good (236 attendees, to be precise) and it was a relief to see that things aren’t looking that bleak just yet. Finally, three cheers to Sound Awake for keeping the scene alive, without the genre bias!

Watch out for the new ‘Videos’ section on Headbangers India! Footage from the gig and more… Coming soon!

Theorized pays tribute to Metallica!

So as you might already know, Metallica is coming to India for the first time in October. And if you want to gear up for the gig and listen to some good old thrash from the days of ‘And Justice for all’ and ‘Ride the Lightning’, here’s a great way to do so!

Presenting The Metallican Tribute by Theorized, for the first time in Chennai and also in Bangalore on the following dates at the following timings:

22nd October – Chennai – ScoreNight, Star Rock (8:30 PM)

27th October – Bengaluru – Hard Rock Cafe Bengaluru (8:30 PM)

Theorized have been around since 2008. and brought out their debut E.P. ‘False Hope Of Tyranny’ in January 2009. It was a raving success in India with more than a thousand copies sold and did quite well in Australia, USA, Canada and Japan even without a record label. They cite Nevermore, Death, Old Monk, Opeth, Exodus, Martyr, Haywards 5000, Meshuggah, Testament as their major influences.

Check out Headbangers India’s review of ‘False Hope of Tyranny’ here.

Theorized is comprised of:

Madhav Ayachit – Vocals
Ankit Suryakanth – Guitars
Sandeep Prasad – Guitars
Sankalp Narayanan- Bass
Yash Kumar – Drums
Club rules apply, so though it’s a metal gig, please wear shoes!

For the ScoreNight (Chennai) gig, all Pragash (+91 9500012975) for passes or book your tickets online at- http://tickets.highonscore.com/metallica

Check the Facebook event page for details.

Join the fan page to keep yourself up to date!

Don’t miss this… Theorized is really going to seek and destroy!

Cradle of Filth- Bangalore gig review

Every one of us has gone through a Cradle of Filth stage in the phases of heavy metal education. For some, that stage graduates to other sub-genres, and for a good many others, it stays on. And it looks like there are a hell of a lot of those who belong to that latter group, because Cradle of Filth is apparently the most successful British heavy metal band since Iron Maiden!

So the group at Spotlight Events and the Indian Music Conference decided to make up for the Cynic mess and brought down Dani Filth and the gang to Bangalore to perform at the Palace Grounds. There was heavy rain in Bangalore for the previous few days, so we kept our fingers crossed and luckily, it was a sunny afternoon during the soundcheck.

The first opening act- Blind Image, went on at around 5PM, and played a good set. They have played a couple of shows in Bangalore earlier, but this had to be one of their tightest so far. Their was some flavour added to their set when they were joined by Divine Heresy vocalist Travis Neal for “More than Human”. The band was decent and played mostly originals, but I really felt the LoG cover could’ve been avoided.


Next on-stage was Bangalore’s Inner Sanctum. This band has been getting progressively better with each gig, and by far, their performance at this show was the best I’ve seen in a while. Their stage presence was nothing short of explosive, and thankfully, the sound was decent, and that’s the least a band can ask for. Their set-list consisted of some older stuff from the ‘Provenance’ EP, as well as a couple of new tracks. Inner Sanctum was mind-blowing, to say the least, and luckily for them, the rain gods seemed to have waited for them to finish because just when they got off stage, the skies opened up.

This was not so lucky for Devoid, who were supposed to go on next. Rain is manageable, but what we were stuck in the middle of was a thunderstorm. There was no shelter, and the mass of black t-shirts stood under those ferocious open skies, chanting “Cradle of Filth” and “Start the fucking show”. Though Thor seemed like he’d show everyone the middle finger, the metalheads withstood the downpour, waiting for more music (live music, not Motherjane tracks from the CD).

So, it seemed like the show would go on, and Devoid started their set. The rains, the music and about a thousand drenched headbangers- it couldn’t get more ‘metal’ than that. Devoid was super tight, but unfortunately for them, the sound on the P.A. suffered the wrath of the rains. They played most of the tracks from ‘A God’s Lie’, like “Battle Cry”, “Possessed” and even squeezed in “Black Fortress”. The highlight of their show was when Gaurav Basu (Inner Sanctum) joined them on stage for “Beersong”. These acts are proof enough that Indian metal is no longer amateur and can in fact, kick some serious ass!

Just as Devoid got off stage, the rains subsided, and Cradle of Filth got ready to come on next. Their soundcheck took a while, and in the meanwhile, the crowd kept itself entertained by examining (I’ll be politically correct here) all the destroyed painted faces and messed up make-up of the CoF fans. It continued to drizzle continuously, and finally, almost forty-five minutes later, the dry-ice took effect, and the band made its appearance dramatically. Quite expected anyway, since it was Cradle of Filth! They started off immediately, and there was not too much of interaction with the audience. This could’ve been because the drizzle was steadily getting heavier and the band may not have wanted to waste too much time with useless banter. But Dani Filth did take the time off to get the crowd to chant “Fuck police brutality” as the Bangalore cops started beating up people in front, near the barricade. The barrier collapsed after a while, and it was chaos. But the moshing continued as the band continued to play to the frenzied crowd. Sadly, the sound was pretty bad, and there were times when the guitars, keyboards and backing vocals were not audible at all. Cradle of Filth is a great band live, but the sound wasn’t at all in their favour that night. They played a mix of old and new songs, like “Humana Inspired to Nightmare”, “Lilith Immaculate”, “Her ghost in the fog”, “Nymphetamine” and “From the Cradle to the Enslave”.

On the whole, it was a great show, despite the rains and sound issues. IMC has certainly earned its name back, at least partially! We definitely are looking forward to more shows from their end, and at the next one, let’s throw the men in khaki right in the middle of the circle-pit, shall we?

Check out a video of Inner Sanctum’s performance here:

Hammerfest III – National Disaster Tour

Hammerfest IIIHammerfest is all set to storm the cities of Pune, Bangalore and Mumbai in it’s third edition! Sponsored by Blue Track Entertainment, RATPRO Guitars, bajaao.com, the National Disaster Tour, as it is being described(inspired by Zygnema’s National Disasters?) is also promoting Zygnema’s new album”Born Of Unity” at 150 bucks(with free poster and a sticker). The details are as follows. 1469