Genre Archives: Metal

The Great Indian Rock V

Various - The Great Indian Rock V

We have earlier featured the first 4 volumes of The Great Indian Rock – the annual compilation of the best of the underground Rock scene in India. And now we would like to present Vol. 5 of the series. This volume included the usual suspects – Orange Street and Parikrama – trusted veterans of the scene and also second-timers Envision and Ashtoreth. The rest of the bands were on their maiden appearance. This also marked the advent of Zero on the scene. They would of course go on to be arguably, one of the most popular bands in subsequent years and their guitarist Warren Mendonsa, whose Music has been posted here before, would become something of a legend in Rock

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Diablo Swing Orchestra – The Butcher’s Ballroom

Diablo Swing Orchestra - The Butcher's Ballroom

If you think you’ve heard it all, you’re about to realise that you are (sadly) mistaken! Unless of course you have heard the Diablo Swing Orchestra! Then you would know what I am talking about. Before I describe their music, bear with me while I copy-paste the long history behind the band – 500 years of it, to be precise! The Diablo Swing Orchestra dates back to 1501 in Sweden, where history tells the tale of an orchestra that played like no other. With music so seductive and divine that the ensemble overwhelmed audiences all over the country, and people from all social classes took them to their hearts. Their performances rapidly earned a reputation of being feral and vigorous

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Agni – Wind Dance with Fire

Agni-WindDanceWithFire

Agni was one of the bands of the first wave of Indian Rock, back in the mid-90s, when they released their debut album Wind Dance with Fire in 1995. The album was well-received despite the somewhat poorly-produced videos, a testament to the inherent musical quality of their compositions. Their video for Darkening Light, a brilliant Classic Rock track, received a fair amount of airplay on MTV Asia and the band looked set to go places. But as with most bands of that first wave prior to the phenomenon called Internet, their popularity did not translate to commercial viability because of relatively poor album sales and absence of other avenues of revenue generation, such as concerts and merchandise, and after another

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Rock Roundup II – The Roots Edition

RockRoundupII

If you have been following AI, you may have come across the ‘Rock Roundup I’ post (here). Then you will probably know that this roundup thinggie happens when I haven’t been posting for a while, although I have been searching the web and listening to new music all the while and then suddenly one day I have too many bands to feature and I combine all of them and do a single post! Welcome to Rock Roundup II! (To be fair, this time I was also experiencing a lot of performance issues on the website and it took me the better part of the month to completely redo the site from scratch and make it faster!) I am calling this

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The Great Indian Rock IV

GIR-IV

GIR IV was released in 2000, the fourth in this series of yearly compilations of tracks from Indian rock musicians. But it still sounds surprisingly fresh and there are undoubtedly some gems in there. By this time the phenomenon of GIR had grown – yearly concerts started happening, featuring the bands/artist who made it into the album. The popularity spread, especially amongst the college crowd and this drew in some big-name sponsors. But the essence of the whole thing remained the same – giving the best of the underground rock scene in India a voice, a platform to showcase their talent. Enjoy! [Other GIRs: Vol. I, Vol. II, Vol. III, Vol. V] Mrigya – Ganga Arth – Hai Macha Killer

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