Artist: SystemHouse33
Album: Depths Of Despair
Label: Independent
Mixed & Mastered by: Akash Sawant
Release Date: March 26, 2013
The number of metal releases in our country has clearly increased over the past couple of years, which is a good thing because this clearly indicates that the culture is spreading out. But as they say quality is better than quantity, I have rarely experienced an album which weakened me in the knees, gave me Goosebumps or made me believe that the money I spent on the album was of total worth. When you listen to a particular band, you judge them with respect to the amount of uniqueness their music possesses and how different their sound is from their influences and trust me, amongst the myriad bands, there are only a few who score in this criteria.
SystemHouse33 is one such band which makes an effort to put something new on the table with its latest grind. Hailing from Nagpur in September 2003, SystemHouse33 infuses a considerable amount of groove and thrash elements in its strategically technical riffs and offers quite a new sound for us to hear. Being in the scene for almost 10 years now, the band shifted its base to Mumbai in their early years and has given us three studio albums and one EP till date. With Samron Jude (Sceptre) on vocals, Daniel DSouza on guitars, Leon Quadros on bass and Atish Thomas on drums, the band releases its third studio album, ‘Depths Of Despair’.
Starting off with ‘Abstraction’, Systemhouse33 is yet another Indian band which goes forward with the idea of starting their album with an ambient electronic instrumental before they give us the real deal. It is followed by a track called ‘Depths of Despair’, which pushes in with odd-timed thrash/groove riffs and goes into a long section of breakdown. The track, being a treat for the technical fans, offers pretty interesting riffs which stream with a great flow. ‘Death Wish’ is more on the thrashy and straightforward side rather than embracing technical sections. The track features fairly innovative progressions which are power packed with a lot of grooves, a thing you’ll always find about the bands in Mumbai. However the guitar tone is pretty muddy and this makes the riffs, not only in this song, but most of the songs, pretty obscure.
The next two songs ‘Stark Revelations’ and ‘Courtesy And Protocol’ have a quite good construction when compared to other songs on the album. The songs offer us a perfect balance between technical sections and straightforward sections. The drum lines have been laid perfectly on each riff, which are rather innovative and catchy. Though, the vocals are a bit disappointing as the screams seem to be a pretty austere and crude. ‘Resistance’ adds an element of variedness in the album as it is mostly based on a low tempo and is comparatively quite melodic. Besides the skull-pounding breakdowns, the song offers pretty catchy riffs and melodic portions which have been crafted perfectly. Samron has added a bit of darker tone to the album with his growls put over the main riff and breakdowns, which sound much better than the screams which we hear in the rest of the album.
The production of the album is just about average. As stated earlier the guitars sound a bit muddy, obscuring some good riffs with less amounts of chugs. Besides that the tracks lose dynamics at some places, but the overall sound is satisfactory. The work on guitars is quite good; I won’t say that it offers something totally new but it appears to be quite fresh when the compositions are put together. However, a better take on the sound of the song as a whole would definitely help the album be more innovative than it currently is.
So the verdict is that the band’s music is definitely something new and exclusive but what keeps this album from being an excellent album is the tiny lack of innovativeness in its sound, which I believe won’t be much of an issue for a band that has been in the scene for 10 years.
