Event: The Mosh Mayhem Festival!
Venue: Marine Centre, Vashi, Bombay
Entry Charge :Rs.150/-
Time – 6:30 – 10:30

Lineup-
Bloodshed
Atmosfear
Devoid
Zygnema
Infinite Redemption
Infernal Wrath
I reached a little late(was supposed to start roughly around 5:30) but found out that was just in time. The venue was good…the acoustics of the hall and the entire setup was extremely impressive as compared to the other gigs I’d been to. Mostly because gb&a and some energy drink were sponsors. A screen was showing some video with the Shadows Fall drummer, basically endorsing some cymbals and stuff. But leaving that aside, to the gig.

It started with Bloodshed, a Mumbai based death metal/metalcore band. They played a few of their originals, and not wanting to waste time, the vocalist straightaway began moshing with the crowd on the very first song. They also played Devildriver, which was fun, and though their first few songs were mostly for the crowd to warm up, the last one had some amazing riffs to set the crowd in motion.

The next band up were Atmosfear, one of my favourite Indian/Mumbai bands, with many citing the vocalist Ulhas as probably the best and most versatile death metal vocalist in Bombay. He made it clear that he wanted to see people mosh and not just stand there. Part of the crowd agreed for the first song, but then the guitarist somehow managed to break his *gauge 14*(!!) string. But Devoid frontman Arun was helpful enough to lend his guitar, and the performance commenced. Since it seemed that to get the crowd in the mood to mosh, they ought to play a little slow, they played “Abduction of Innocence”, and unsurprisingly it worked. They followed it up with “Hell On Earth” and “Enemy Within”, and by now everyone was charged up for Devoid.

Devoid have a new guitarist, Sanjeev, and there’s one thing that he can undoubtedly do…shred. That added to the extremely catchy riffs and precise drumming lead to chaos, as they belted out their originals like “Battle Cry”, “Black Fortress” and “Devoid Of Emotions”.

Next up were Zygnema, undoubtedly one of the catchiest Indian bands. This was where the crowd energy peaked, and they started moshing like never before, with “59”, “discriminate” and other songs. The best part was undoubtedly when the vocalist called for a “Wall of Death”, and the fans happily complied.

After that we had Infinite Redemption, and it was my first time with respect to this band. They were overall a pretty tight unit (with two guitarists, a bassist and another guy exclusively on vocals)with black metal/thrash influences, it seemed. They played an original called Shadows of Disaster, which was pretty good, and seemed to be dedicated to the victims of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. They termed what they played as noise/rust metal, and also covered a Devildriver song.

The headlining act for the evening was Infernal Wrath. They took rather a lot of time for their sound check, and since it was my first time watching these guys play, and all I’d heard that they were very progressive, I couldn’t help but be a bit curious as to what was up next…and what followed just blew everyone away. They started with synths and acoustics, creating a very dark, Indian(classical) atmosphere. The bassist, who looked as if he’d just come straight out of a Norwegian black metal band, did some brilliant clean backing vocals. Then the onslaught began, and they played as brutal and bad-ass as any band out there can. The vocalist egged on the now somewhat tired crowd to mosh, and everyone went crazy, including the bands who’d performed before. The drummer really took the cake though, with his brilliant, precise and occasionally odd time signature rhythms. The vocalist used bells, cymbals, ghungroos and whatnot to create the appropriate atmosphere, and all of it was flawlessly executed.

All in all, one of the best gigs I’ve ever been to, including Satyricon@GIR, and hope we see these bands more often, so that those who missed this can make up for it.

Ankit Baraskar