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Big 69 : India’s First Metal Pilgrimage

Metalheads who think the scene is dying… there’s a light at the end of the tunnel! Mumbai is now ready to get its very own metal music festival, called BIG69. Supported by Pepsi MTV Indies and managed by BAJAAO Consulting and Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., BIG69 will bring the biggest names in the rock music arena to India. In its very first year, BIG69 will showcase UK’s leading heavy metal legends Carcass and progressive metal act Sikth as the headliners. The festival will take place at the Richardson & Cruddas industrial compound in Byculla on the 17th and 18th of January, 2015 and the lineup includes Italian metallers Fleshgod Apocalypse and UK rap metallers Hacktivist along with some of the biggest Indian bands such as Bombay Metal Project and Joint Family, who will be reuniting for this festival after seven years of being defunct.
Carcass is one of biggest influences in the death/grindcore and melodic death metal genre. After disbanding in the mid 90s, Carcass reunited in 2007 for touring purposes, but the reunion became permanent in 2012 with a new lineup as drummer Daniel Wilding and guitarist Ben Ash joined founding members Bill Steer and Jeff Walker. With a 2013 release ‘Surgical Steel’ the band sets foot in India for the first time this January.
SikTh, who disbanded in 2008, have made a triumphant return in 2014 with a headlining set at the Download festival and are considered by many to be the godfathers of modern progressive metal. Vocalist Mikee Goodman said: “It has always been a dream to travel the world and play shows for myself and the rest of the band. It is an honour to be here right now. I heard some bands were recently coming to India to play. At last this chance has come for us and we are very excited to see and play in India!”

Fellow headliners Hacktivist who are considered to be one of the rising stars of the UK progressive metal scene and Fleshgod Apocalypse from Italy will be the other two international bands performing at the event. This festival will also give a platform to some of our very own Indian bands who have been performing in this genre. These include Nepal’s Underside and Indian metal biggies Demonic Resurrection, Undying Inc, Zygnema, Kryptos, Devoid and Noiseware. There is also something that young aspiring bands can look forward to. Pepsi MTV Indies is conducting a band hunt to choose two promising bands who will get a chance to play at the festival.

Apart from music, the festival will also have a special focus on art, with well-designed stages, art installations and the Indies KVLTure project – a special showcase of visual art, photographs and iconography associated with heavy metal. This will involve a number of collaborations with some of the finest artists and designers from the Indian metal scene who will create artwork and designs especially for the festival. Artists already on-board include Reuben Bhattacharya aka Visual Amnesia, Aaron Pinto, Avinash Jai Singh, Anirudh Singh aka Nuclear Puke, Gaurav Basu aka Acid Toad and Aaquib Wani. Limited edition prints of their artwork will be available for sale at the festival, along with special Indies KVLTure project merchandise and much more.

Festival managers BAJAAO were the company behind the now-defunct cult underground venue B69, which is still remembered fondly by the city’s metalheads. BAJAAO, along with the festival’s promoters and partners, is very excited about this upcoming new event that is to be added to the city’s annual calendar. Festival promoter Ashutosh Pande said: “We’ve had a long association with the Indian metal scene. BIG69 is our effort to take metal to the masses and to fill the void that B69 left behind. We intend to replicate the B69 experience at a much larger scale by giving Mumbai its very own Festival director Himanshu Vaswani said: “Mumbai hasn’t had a big music festival in a long time and we’re very excited to be doing a metal festival on this scale. We’re making sure that everything – from the line-up and stages to the whole experience – is as big as it gets.”

Early bird tickets are available at www.insider.in/big69 at Rs. 2500 for a two day pass. School and college students can avail of a special discounted pass at Rs. 1500. Find all the details at www.big69.in.

Watch this space for updates!

Zygnema releases new single

Zygnema- The Mumbai based thrash / groove metal band who have also represented India at the Wacken Metal Battle in 2012, have just released a brand new single. Titled “Shell Broken Hell Loose”, the single is available for streaming and also free download.

You can check it out here:

Free embed music player from ReverbNation.com

The powerful single has been receiving positive feedback and a lot of reshares on Facebook. The band is currently working on their second album, and the new song along with the response is an indication that good things are to come from the Zygnema camp!

For updates, visit them on Facebook.

Korn arrives in India

Nu-metal band Korn has just arrived in India for their gigs scheduled on the 5th of September in Gurgaon, on the 7th of September in Mumbai and on the 9th of September in Bangalore.

These gigs are a part of Korn’s ‘Part of Totality Tour 2012’. Tickets are available online here.

In a statement issued earlier, Jonathan Davis, vocalist and band frontman said- “We are so excited to be heading to India for the first time. It’s an incredible country with such a rich history, and we just can’t wait to perform there for the first time ever as Korn.”

“We see so many fans on Facebook from India, and I’ve personally heard how crazy Indian fans are. All I can say is that come September, IT’S ON!” Davis added.

The 2 time Grammy award winners will feature material right from their ‘Blind’ and ‘ Freak on a leash’ days to the current hits like ‘Narcissistic Cannibal ‘

The gig dates and venues are as follows:

5th September: Gurgaon, Leisure Valley.
7th September: Mumbai, MMRDA grounds
9th September: Bangalore, Clarks Exotica, Devanahalli

The gig is being organized by MOOZ Entertainment. For details, visit http://www.moozentertainment.com/

 

DR announce ‘All Star’ show, invite demos

Demonic ResurrectionIndian metallers Demonic Resurrection have announced an ‘All Star’ show on the 5th of November at the home of Mumbai’s metal shows B69. When quizzed about the ‘All Stars’ Demonstealer was quoted saying ‘We’re basically inviting our favourite singers from different Mumbai bands to join us on stage and sing their favourite DR songs, we’re also having a bunch of our favourite bass players do the same since Husain will be somewhere in the mountains at that time’. The gig is one of the pre-parties being held prior to the Bacardi NH7 Weekender Festival where Demonic Resurrection will be performing as well and have promised fans a truly ‘Demonic’ experience.

The band has once again thrown open the opportunity to open the show to a new band inviting demos to be sent for the band to review. “We strongly believe in giving new bands a chance to play alongside us because we think there are heaps of great bands out there that just need to be given a chance, when we started out it was the bigger bands at that point like Naked Earth, Fate and Sceptre who gave us a chance opening for them and we’ve come a long way since then, we’d like to give the young bands of today that same chance and we have a lot of faith that they will deliver a kickass performance given their drive and passion for metal.’ said Demonstealer.

Interested bands can email their demo links and band bios to demonic.resurrection.online@gmail.com by Sunday 23rd October.

Exclusive Textures listening party at B69 Mumbai

On the 31st of August there will be an exclusive Textures listening party at B69 in Mumbai, during which fans can enjoy the new Textures album ‘Dualism’ before it hits the stores. Scribe will also perform live during this evening. The listening party starts at 9:00 PM and entry is free.

Textures’ new album ‘Dualism’ will be released on the 23rd of September through Nuclear Blast. The band will also go on a worldwide tour in support of this new album.

For more info:
www.texturesband.com
www.facebook.com/textures

 

Workshop disbands!

Mumbai’s “funny band” Workshop has just called it quits. It was only recently that Riju Dasgupta, bass player, announced that he would be quitting the band to concentrate on his other project Albatross. And just as the note released says, Riju, along with Sahil and Hamza, were the main guys in the band, and without that equation, it didn’t seem right anymore.

Here’s the complete note they released via their Facebook page:

“After almost 4 years as a band, releasing 1 album, playing tons of shows and filling the internet with video blogs and other madness, we who are Workshop have decided to call it quits. This was a very hard decision for us to make and we have long pondered over it. Workshop has been a part of all our lives and we will forever cherish our moments together as a band and the support we’ve received over the years from friends, family, fans and any other catagory of people we may have excluded.

Workshop in essence was Sahil, Riju and Hamza. It just doesn’t feel the same anymore and it would be wrong to continue the project without us being 100% into it, it wouldn’t be fair to us or the fans. So we feel that it is time to call it quits.

We were in the process of writing and recording our 2nd album and while we don’t know what to do with the music but we are goign to complete the recording process and then take a call if we should release it or not. But for now the band Workshop is now over. So we put down our yellow hard hats and undress ourselves out of the jump suits or ‘broiler’ suiits as Demonstealer once called them and we hang them up high.

We loved every minute of this awesome journey and we received so much love and support and even braved the critisim we often faced about ruining metal/music by adding humor to it, but given the chance we’d do it all over again. Workshop was an extension of who we are as people and when people are not there anymore it cannot be Workshop.

We’re rambling now, but that is mainly because it is always painful to say goodbye. So stay funny, stay fantastic and we’ll see you on the dark side of the spoon.

Signing off,
Workshop”

And also check out this very creative farewell message to fans.

Click here to view.

Headbangers India wishes the band members all the best with their other projects. As for the rest of you, the post for humor-metal band is now currently vacant. Think you can give it a shot?

Riju Dasgupta quits Workshop

Mumbai based metal band Workshop has just announced that Riju Dasgupta aka The Rijunator has quit the band.

The note reads:

“It is with great sadness that we announce the departure or our longtime bass player, founding member of Workshop and close friend Riju from the band. After 3 years with Workshop Riju has decided to pursue a different path.

We’ve had an amazing journey together and all good things in life do come to an end so we wish Riju a lot of success in his musical journey ahead. While it is almost impossible to imagine Workshop without him we have decided to carry on and will soon be auditioning bass players.”

Riju also released a note explaining the reason for quitting the band:

“Dear fans and friends,

In what has been a very difficult decision, I’ve decided to step down as the bassist of Workshop. Difficult not only because I’ve had a total blast playing before you fuckers across the country, but because Sahil and Hamza are two of the best friends I’ve ever had. From making an absolute fool of myself on national TV to making an absolute fool of myself off TV, from getting all excited about Bunty Aur Mallika Sherwath video stats to watching you all scream ‘Do Bade Bubbley’ when we played the song, from the madness onstage and in the jamroom to the food we stuffed ourselves with post the jams; the journey’s been nothing short of fucking awesome.

And now you ask, why then dost thou quit? As of now I’m focused on my main project Albatross and it’s a full time commitment. I wish Workshop all the best; as I know they’ll keep kicking ass without me and I pledge my support to whatever they decide to do.

And to conclude here’s thanking everyone who’s ever been part of the Workshop clan- Sahil, Hamza, Raj, Devesh, Shome, Zain, Mrudul, Jared, Deepti, Mikhail, Basrur, Bipro, Eshaan, Santhosh, Aditya, Demonic Resurrection, Coshish, Channel [v], every fucking gig organiser who’s invited us for their fest, everyone we’ve shared the stage with, everyone who’s ever interviewed us, everyone who’s made these last 3 years really special. Love you all.

So long and thanks for all the bukkake,

The Rijunator”

Vinit Bharucha announces departure from Bhayanak Maut

Bassist for Bhayanak Maut- Vinit Bharucha, has just announced via the band’s official Facebook fan page, that he will be quitting the band.
He stated- “It is with a heavy heart that I announce that I’m no longer part of Bhayanak Maut. I have spent the best 6 years of my life with the band and I love each of them, but sadly I am unable to give them the dedication they deserve. They will remain my close friends and confidants. I am absolutely sure that they will thrive irrespective. Guys, please kick ass and do me proud. You know I mean it.“

Amogh Symphony releases promotional video

Quantum Hack CodeVishal J.Singh, the man behind progressive/experimental metal act Amogh Symphony has just released the promo video for his upcoming album ‘The Quantum Hack Code’. ‘The Quantum Hack Code’ is a concept album that revolves around the Quantum Theory. The album is scheduled for a December 2010 release.
For more updates on the artist and the upcoming project, subscribe to the Amogh Symphony YouTube channel.

Atmosfear Vocalist Ulhas Parts Way With the Band

Atmosfear has been one of the more prominent local bands in Mumbai for quite some time now. They’ve been a part of most of the gigs I’ve been to over here, so it saddened me when I heard that Ulhas, the vocalist, was leaving the band. This is the message they’ve sent from their facebook page. 1665