Artist: 1833 AD
Album: My Dark Symphony
Label: Self-released
Mixed and Mastered By: Anupam Roy
Release Date: June 2012
It all started back in 1982, when a band called Venom, convicted of bringing the “heaviness” in music, released a song which would act as an instigator of something deep, something evil and something which would form a whole new culture. The song is none other than ‘Black Metal’. Hence began all: the corpsepaint, the church burnings, the murky music and murdering of oneself’s bandmate. Black Metal has been of the one of most sacred and most controversial genre of music and has had a huge cult following around the world. India, where the recent big bang has led to formation of n number of bands, doesn’t particularly have a good scene in the genre apart from some underground bands in Bangalore. One of the very few bands in the country is 1833 AD from a place where the metal scene is not that good altogether.
1833 AD is a black metal band from New Delhi, formed in 2008, citing influences from bands like Emperor, Mayhem, Satyricon and Darkthrone. The band doesn’t exactly have a black metal façade, with corpse paint and long spiked wrist bands, but they do come up with mind boggling music which would please any black metal fan. With on Nishant Abraham vocals and guitars, Rahul Mehalwal on guitars, Sushmit Mazumdar on bass and Raghav Sehgal on drums, the band released their debut album in 2012 titled ‘My Dark Symphony’
‘My Dark Symphony’ is a concept album divided into three segments: The Creator (Brahma), The Preserver (Vishnu) and The Destroyer (Mahesh), whose theme revolves around the orthodox religious teachings and exploitation of the human race, explained flawlessly with really dark and gloomy music. Each segment starts off with minute-long ghastly and haunting instrumentals followed by three wicked tracks. Production wise the album incorporates the general black metal policy of sticking to a misty sound and creates a nice shadowy environment but the tracks lack bass and a little more volume of bass guitar could have made the songs better. However, the instruments have been panned nicely and have good equalizer setting.
Musically, the band has created a unique sound in the album which doesn’t seem like any European black metal bands. Songs like ‘Who Will Kill The Emperor’, ‘Wiser Than The Wisest’ and ‘Inheritance Evil’ assimilate an Indian essence to the song creating a whole new inimitable sound. The work on guitar is splendid throughout the album. ‘Sephiroth’s Curse’, ‘Ten Gods’ and ‘End Of Time’ constitutes really dark and unholy guitar harmonies and demonstrates swift and continuous movement of right hand over multiple strings, which one calls tremolo picking. Check out for the chaotic riffs on ‘Empty Shrines’ and ‘Maa Nishada’ and the melodic chorus on ‘1833 AD’.
Unlike a normal black metal record, the album offers some well-structured solos especially in tracks ‘Wiser Than The Wisest’, ‘Empty Shrines’ and ‘Who Will Kill The Emperor’, which melodically signify chaos. We can witness some gut wrenching vocals throughout the album. There isn’t much variety being offered here; Nishant moves over the same range of high-pitch grunts but the vocals perfectly deliver the furiosity and have been laid impeccably on the blasphemous music. The tracks also expose really crazy drumlines with nice amount of footwork and speedy blast beats. The variations in drumlines add a nice amount of dynamics to the tracks.
Summing up, ‘My Dark Symphony’ is a darn good album and we certainly look for more epic releases from the band in near future.
Official MySpace profile: www.myspace.com/1833ad
Listen to 1833 AD on ReverbNation: www.reverbnation.com/1833ad
Official Website: www.1833ad.com
Rating: 4.5/5
