Artist: Corrode
Album: Lapse Into Delirium
Label: Self-produced
Mastered and Mixed By: Ankit Suryakanth of Theorized (confirmation required)
Release date: August 2012
Forming a band, composing songs, playing gigs and above all sustaining oneself while doing that is not an easy process altogether, especially in our country where fan base is so little that often these bands find no motivation to move forward. Our tradition has always placed music as secondary and no individual (except for Sahil Makhija) builds his career on it alone. Crafting of quality music requires patience, dedication and money and with people doing jobs and going to colleges, it really becomes a tough job. Hailing from our country’s own metal haven, Bangalore, is a Melodic Death Metal Band called Corrode, which was incepted in the industry in 2007, but it was not until 2012 that we saw a release from them.
Drawing inspiration from Children Of Bodom, Dark Tranquility, Arch Enemy, Insomnium, Lamb Of God and Omnium Gatherum, the band’s sound amalgamates elements from melodic death metal and metalcore. Since its year of formation, Corrode has played in many events from college fests to professional shows like Riff ‘Em All and Brute Fest, has been through several line-up changes, got endorsed by Steve Clayton and released an album titled ‘Lapse Into Delirium’. The current line-up of the band is: Aditya Rajan on vocals and guitars, Vinay ‘Goldy’ Ganesh on guitars, Nikil Kumar on bass and Ashwin Alexander on drums.
‘Lapse Into Delirium’ deals with the phase in which a man dissolves into distress and emotions, a bit which everyone goes through in his/her life. The album starts off with the title track, a beautifully crafted, sorrowful and slow instrumental. This requiem dawns with gorgeous clean guitars laden with a stunning bassline and keys in background and transcends into a distorted harmony which is reminiscent of the clean guitar progression, giving a magnificent start to the album. The next song up is ‘Laconic’ which starts off with a nice groovy melody supported by a nice bass track. The song has got a nice essence of tunefulness except for the bridge which is kind of dull and muddy and the solo which is pretty mediocre.
‘Casting Shadows’ starts off with a heavy riff braced with a lead and growled vocals and merges into a thrashy yet melodic section followed by the dulcet tone of the chorus. The song is pretty pleasant sounding if you ask me but it doesn’t offer much variety and gets kinda monotonous as you proceed towards the end. The fourth song in the album is the self-titled track, ‘Corrode’. The track has a very gloomy and chaotic kind of atmosphere which doesn’t suggest that it is from a melodeath band. It incorporates use of dark and shadowy scales in its progressions and creates a black metal-ish environment, especially with high pitch screeches appearing halfway through the song. The song is also pretty progressive in nature and has many changes. The song may be unfitting but certainly is a good one to hear.
The album ends with a metalcore number, ‘A Place Called Death’. The song begins with a fast riff in the verse but chorus gets a bit dull and tedious. The slow down after the second verse contains a nice section filled with effervescent bass progression and an easy on ear guitar harmony but the solo following is a bitter disappointment in my opinion. The work on bass has been splendid throughout the album, which is really a rare thing to see in India. The compositions are, frankly speaking, are just about average, although there are some good bits in each song but on a whole, they are pretty ordinary. The production is also below standards; each song has been excessively layered and instruments don’t gel together.
Summing up, the album is a good effort by the band but with more effort, they would certainly kick some ass.
