Thrash metal is a sub genre that has a few divisions within it quite often divisible by geographic location. For example there are the obvious likes of US Bay Area thrash and if you need examples of bands who play that style well perhaps you are in the wrong place. Being British I am obviously going to fly our own flag and we not only spawned some classic bands such as Onslaught and Sabbat and many a not so classic from Lawnmower Death through to Xentrix and Acid Reign and of course there is that NWOBTM tag that Earache and others thrust onto us whether we liked it or not but thankfully brought about good bands like Evile and Seregon. Next on our travels, well you cannot ignore Germanic thrash and the likes of Kreator, Sodom and Destruction should be household names. Personally I love my black thrash and find it in Germany, Australia and Norway. The point of this very quick thrash 101 lesson is to say hands up who can name a thrash band from India? Thought not, well now you can as let me introduce Devoid.
From Mumbai which is home to record label Demonstealer run itself by Demonic Resurrection vocalist Sahil Makhija, Demonoid are part of a rapidly growing scene of bands, who we will hopefully be sharing with you in the future (check out review of Albatross for another example). They formed relatively recently in 2005 and this is their debut. I have to say that despite the above examples this does not sound like anything really mentioned in the opening paragraph and so we can at least say it is not doing anything in the way of bandwagon jumping. After ‘A Silent Death’ delivers a very nice classic sounding instrumental intro we rage into full pelt with ‘Battle Cry.’ This is what I can only describe as chaotic sounding, it is bordering more towards blackened thrash and the treble side of things and heavily rasping vocals are high in the mix, the low end is missing a little for sure. Leads are proficiently handled as we break down in the direction of a more classical sound without the vocals. I think that it is singer Arun Iyer’s parts that give this a more extreme mindset than the music often suggests but it is something that works once I have got used to it. Huge errr possessed sounds lead us into ‘Possessed’ and then the dynamic riffing piles over things bringing melody to the fore and allowing the listener to pound fists, play air and bang the head.
At times things do sound a bit thrown together and slapdash and the drums particularly stumbling and trying to catch up. The chaotic clamour took me quite a few listens to get anywhere near close to getting into this and I still do not think that I have succeeded, still it is early days and this shows a lot of promise. Thematically we certainly go for the tried and tested with songs like ‘New World Order’ had plenty of them before as we have samples taken from seminal movie ‘Network’ and the final drunken ‘Beer Song.’ Check them out at the link below.
http://www.myspace.com/devoidindia
http://www.devoid.in
