It was a Sunday evening and hundreds of metal fans gathered at Geoffrey’s Pub for the fourth edition of Unseen Underground Pub Fest. The Unseen Underground Pub Fest is one of the few events that metalheads can look forward to in Chennai. Despite the rare heavy rain that Murphy had to send on that day alone, fans turned up in decent numbers for the show.
The fest began with Blood Stain, an original composition by Crypted. Crypted is a recent progressive / thrash metal band formed this year. Though it was their first performance in Unseen Underground Pub Fest the crowd was pretty impressed by their performance. Their cover of Gojira’s “Backbone” was also quite powerful, causing a wave of banging heads at the pub. The riffs in combination with Arvind and Shiva’s vocals raised a terrific atmosphere. Vishnu displayed his dexterity on drums in their original composition called “Equilibrium” and “Held By chains”. They also covered “Black Label” which pulled the entire crowd towards them.
Armour Of God was next on stage and started with “Journey” – an original song dedicated to their former guitarist Late Arjun Vasudevan. They also played “Destiny” and “Dawn Of The Reapers” the songs that are already familiar to their fans. Mark, vocalist of Blood And Iron came and joined them on stage for a Metallica cover song “For Whom The Bell Tolls”. Addy and Gene displayed their talent on guitars with “Scars Of Heaven” and Boskey showcased his finesse on keyboard for their new untitled number. Leon’s astounding act on the stage and his drumming skills were appreciated by the gathering .Their last song for the evening was the COB cover “Everytime I Die”- played by request of the audience.
The most awaited band of the night had to be Blood And Iron with Manu on drums, Vivin on keyboards, Arun on bass guitar, Ashish on guitars and Mark on vocals. They played their own compositions from their first album, and the more recently released ‘Dynamite World’. They started with In Darkness and followed it up with Blood Oath. Tracks like Promised Lands, Dynamite World & Anarchy got the audience pretty ecstatic, like they always do. Ashish also replaced his Jackson guitar with a HMI King V mid-way, as part of a promotional stunt.Just after Fear Of The Dark medley they wrapped up with their self titled song from their 1st album leaving the crowd asking for more.
The last band of the evening was Escher’s Knot, a technical death metal project of the band Carnage. The band has gained a good popularity among the metal crowd within a very short span of time. They started with Textures cover “Drive” followed by their original track “Up For Nothing”. Their original “This Page has Been Left Blank Intentionally” seems to be extremely technical, and was pretty well coordinated by Anshuman with his 7 string guitar and Manu’s drum patterns. Though it was late, the crowd did not start filtering out like they always do. Escher’s Knot managed to hold them in till they finally concluded the Fest with a Break The Cypher.
Overall, it was a great show, and only makes us wait for the next season of Unseen Underground.
-Nicky
