Artist: Lithos
Album: Social Circus [EP]
Label: Independent
Release Date: April 2013
It really feels good to see that the music scene in India has reached a certain level where not only a lot of people have started to learn music, but they are getting good at it and even releasing albums. For instance, I never expected a band to manifest in a town like Jodhpur, and that too a Hard Rock/Metal band. But here we have a band that not only started playing music but also released an EP in just over a year of their formation.
Meet Lithos, a three piece Alternative/Hard Rock/Metal band from Jodhpur formed in Feb 2012, who have been pretty active since their formation. They have participated in many competitions taking place all over India from Rajasthan to Mumbai to Chennai and have opened for the Electro Rock giants, Pentagram. With Amet Vikram on vocals and bass, Ripudaman Singh on guitars and Rahul Sharma on drums, the band came up with their first release titled, ‘Social Circus’.
The band’s songs are based on very simple progressions and they exhibit a strong essence of grunge and alternative sound with occasional use of metal techniques like palm muting and screaming. The record consists of three songs which offer quite a bit of variety but still manage to have a thematic sound which creates a hallmark for the band. ‘Witches With Angel Faces’ was the first track released from the EP. It starts off with a melancholic clean guitar intro and moves on to the verse, crafted off beautifully on clean chords and nicely delivered vocals. A very appreciable thing about the song is the way in which it progresses from low tempo paced clean sections to heavy distorted bits through well-tailored bridges. The song linearly gains energy with every clause and you will land in a part where the song would be driven forcefully with distorted guitars and screams. A good track indeed!
Next up is ‘Clown Of The Town’ which kick starts with an unfitting upbeat electro pop tune and turns into a distinctive alternative track with melancholic vocals and minimal progressions. The song is based on nicely constructed riffs but somehow I found it sounding too raw and empty. Perhaps more experience in production could have helped them gain a more satisfying sound. However the composition is pretty decent and would certainly sound better if rerecorded. ‘Why?’ is the heavier track on the EP. It is constructed with some straightforward grunge and hard rock riffs in the first half whereas the other half is mostly slow, on cleans and gets kinda tedious.
The production of the release is fairly average. The panning of the instruments is proper, however the various tracks don’t fuse with each other and the overall sound is too dynamic. The patch used for distortion lacks gain, hence making the palm muting powerless. Despite the minor drawbacks, ‘Social Circus’ is a very good debut effort by Lithos and we certainly look forward to more material from the band.
