Artist: Chaos
Album: Violent Redemption
Label: Independent
Mastered and mixed by: Keshav Dhar
Release Date: March 29, 2013
We’re just a quarter past 2013 and it is turning out to be really meritorious in terms of heavy metal releases. We have had some brilliant releases by Workshop, Devoid, Sceptre, Mortar, Intoxicate and Halahkuh, just to name a few and there are a lot more are to follow up on. To add to this list, we have one more commendable album, coming out straight from Kerela, by a band called Chaos.
Chaos is a Thrash Metal band hailing from Thiruvananthapuram and their motto is to put old school thrash back onto “the national gig circuits”. Well, thrash metal has indeed almost disappeared from the Indian heavy metal map and we don’t find any bands who play thrash metal in its purest form. But Chaos has been doing a pretty great job in preserving it since its inception back in 2004. With JK on vocals, Nikhil on guitars, Vishnu on bass and Rohit on drums, the band released their first full length titled, ‘Violent Redemption’.
Citing heavy influences from Pantera, Sepultura, Exodus, Testament, Metallica and Godsmack, ‘Violent Redemption’ offers us powerful mid tempo paced thrashy riffs, often laden with heavy grooves and frantic harmonics. Like most of Indian released, it kicks off with an ambient minute-long instrumental, ‘Ungodly Hour’ which features some frightening noises set in a dark atmosphere. From here, the rest of the record is all about chaotic, violent and agitated thrash. Most of the songs follow a simple song structure and a mid-paced tempo, while still maintaining the high amount of energy. ‘Game’, ‘Saint’, ‘Backlash and ‘Merchant Of Death’ are those kind of tracks, which contain some splendid progressions, subtle enough to make you headbang.
The songs are a bit different from classic thrash songs which generally follow a verse-pre chorus-chorus pattern and mostly feature a simple mosh-friendly machine gun progression. Rather, the songs here are groovier with gradually advancing riffs and uncommon song structures. ‘Cyanide Salvation’, ‘Heaven’s Gate’ and ‘War Crime’ are a few songs which have pretty peculiar variations toggling through slow and fast sections, and speedy progressions and melodic interludes, which are connected through magnificently crafted bridges. These songs reflect the innovativeness of the band. ‘Torn’, ‘Self Deliverance’ and ‘Violent Redemption’ are faster songs on the album, which are loaded with brutal and havoc creating fragments that one would love to mosh on.
The work on guitars has been impressive throughout the album. Apart from pretty innovative riffs and progressions, the album features some ground-breaking solos on almost all songs where he just rips out the fretboard of his Dime guitar with mindboggling shredded sections. We can also witness some nicely done bass and drum lines to accompany the guitars on each song. One can say that they make the songs sound just about perfect. The work on vocals has also been very good. JK’s voice has the perfect amount of harshness; the vocals are not growled but they are raspy enough to make them sound brutal. The production of the album is ace; of course the band waited for nine years before they released this album and that has paid off. The tracks have been panned properly and the songs exhibit just the apt amount of dynamics.
Now, frankly speaking, as much as I liked the album, the sound is too commercial and groovy for it to be called Old School. Also despite of containing some fabulous and innovative riffs, the overall sound becomes sort of monotonous occasionally as we move towards the end of the album. Nevertheless, the effort put here is really good and we can definitely look forward to some more brilliant releases by the band.
