Artist: Zygnema
Album: Born Of Unity
Label: Independent
Mastered and Mixed By: Akash Sawant
Release Date: June 4, 2010
When India was featured in the documentary, ‘Global Metal’ in 2007, I just knew that there will be a massive escalation in the Indian metal scene and we would witness the formation of a number of bands in the upcoming years and there wouldn’t be a time when listeners would crave for a gig in town. Last year we saw a lot of eminent international artists like Megadeth, Slayer, Children Of Bodom, Opeth, Lamb of God and many others including India on their tour map. And not only did the highflying roll up here, a lot of bands got the opportunity to perform in major music festivals like Bloodstock Music Festival, Inferno Metal Festival and the monstrous Wacken Open Air.
Hailing from Mumbai, Zygnema has built a nice profile with performances in Wacken Open Air in 2012, Osna Metal Festival (Germany) and Metal Asylum Fest (Dubai, UAE) in 2011, YAB (Bangkok-Thailand) in 2010 and are set to thrash up the crowd at Inferno Metal Festival in Oslo, Norway on March 28, 2012. Apart from this, the band has won numerous awards and headlined many other national gigs and have released a brilliant debut album titled, ‘Born Of Unity’ in 2010.
Citing influences from Pantera, Sepultura and Meshuggah, the band’s music is an amalgamation of sounds of Bay Area Thrash and Brazilian Thrash, often with heavy essence of groove and incorporating a lot technicality. And a good thing about the band is that they keep perfect amount of balance between various sounds; not too thrashy, not too groovy. Their lyrical themes generally account the social and political illness of the society.
The album starts off with an ambient instrumental, ‘Phobia’ which features a collage of news channel audio clips about some terrorist attack embedded with acoustic guitar melodies and synth. The song depicts the fear that people have to live with in big cities which are often targeted by the radicals. The craziness in the album kicks in with the song ‘59’, which is filled up with mid-tempo thrash riffs, engineered to make you headbang. ‘59’, ‘Natural Disaster’ and ‘Discriminate’ possess that Bay Area Thrash sound and are propelled up by groove laden thrash riffs which any cult thrash fan would cherish. There are a lot of bands in the country today which go up the groove/thrash/death alley but no one keeps it pure and simple like these guys. Take, for instance, the crazy track, ‘Into The Darkest Night’; the song starts off with a superbly crafted melodic solo and moves onto a subtle thrash riff, progressing towards the heavier end via a splendid bass interlude. The song doesn’t have many transitions, has a simple structure and yet, is pretty captivating.
If you are in for some technicality, check out for the tracks, ‘Machine State Hibernation’ and ‘Theory Of Lies & Negation’ which consists of a lot of odd timed riffs and breakdowns, apart from the constant thrashing, and demonstrates brilliant work on drums; the latter being heavy as hell. ‘Scarface’, one of the crowd’s favourites, draws a lot of influence from Pantera and features a few typical Dimebag progressions but I personally felt the lack of variety in the song whereas the insulin-bursting title track, ‘Born Of Unity’, which is totally filled with some energetic riffs and raspy vocals, totally kills it.
The work on guitars, throughout the album, is really appreciable. We can witness some quality compositions all through; the songs have been flawlessly tailored and the playing is precise and faultless. Check out the solos on ‘Natural Disaster’ and ‘Born Of Unity’; they are skilfully constructed and downright catchy. The drumming has been impeccable; there is awesome display of footwork and songs like ‘Theory Of Lies & Negation’ feature intelligent drumming to go with complex progressions and odd time signatures. The production quality of the album is top-notch; I mean for a debut release it’s simply magnificent.
Summing up, the album is a really great release by Zygnema. Highly recommended for all heavy listeners! Go ahead and buy this album here.
Zygnema are:
Jimmy Bhore – Vocals
Sidharth Kadadi – Guitars
Ravi Satpute – Bass
Mayank Sharma – Drums
Theory of Lies & Negation
