Artist: Oxymoron
Album: Oxymoron [EP]
Label: Independent
Mastered and mixed by: Navneet Singh
Release date: October 7, 2012
I remember the day when we had auditions for getting into the school band. It was my turn and I was asked about the kind of music I played. I answered by saying, “Metal”; and the reaction from the music teacher was, “Metallica, huh!? You really like that kind of music”. I wouldn’t blame him because to an average guy, metal was just a form of noise back then. Back then, people didn’t even know what metal was; finding a metalhead was just way out of question. But after last year’s mayhem, metal seems to have manifested in every bit of urban India. Not only we have seen a phenomenal increase in listeners but a lot of bands have been established too. I was really surprised to see bands from places like Jaipur, Lucknow, Shimla, Dehradun and even Dharamshala rising up and coming out with releases.
Hailing from the capital of Uttar Pradesh, Lucknow, is a groove metal band known by the name of Oxymoron. The band ranks number two on metal charts of Lucknow on Reverbnation. Consisting of Piyush Sharma on vocals, Navneet Singh and Shadab on guitars, Ankit on bass and Apoorva on drums, the band released its first, self-titled EP last year. So let’s out check out how “The Second Best” band of Lucknow scores in its very first record.
The release consists of four tracks, all exhibiting a progressive and slight melodic wave of groove metal. An admirable quality of the release is the linearity among all the four tracks. Like the name of the band, all the songs are “interestingly simple”. They don’t display many changes in progressions but still end up being catchy and sound soothing to the ear. For instance, the tracks ‘Indebted’ and ‘Mirror’ consist not more than three or four riffs but you will thoroughly enjoy the fine work on guitars. We can hear some outstanding guitar solos in all the tracks except for ‘The Second Best’, which features a bridge of arpeggios instead of a proper solo.
Another track, ‘The Oral Whore’, kicks off with an upbeat and groovy bassline which merges into pretty heavy breakdowns, differentiating it from the rest of the tracks on the album. But like the remainder of the songs, this track also exhibits some rustic yet splendid work on guitars. In fact, the quality of composition has been fairly good throughout the record and the songs have been structured very precisely. The drums have been laid impeccably on various progressions and add a nice amount of dynamics to the tracks.
But sadly I cannot say the same about the vocals. Piyush has got a nice range but frankly speaking it hasn’t been utilized nicely. The deep growls have been decently done but the grunts are very austere and grainy. They lack the required smoothness at places, maybe because of lack of moisture in the throat or maybe the production of the album is to be blamed. Coming on to the clean vocals pretty disordered and run-of-the-mill; deviating from the scale at places. The lyrics on the are kinda tawdry and cheesy and
As far as production of the album is concerned, it is just about average. The guitar patches have been aptly set and recording is also moderate. The bass drums are not very clear and the cymbals are louder as compared to the rest of the kit. The recording of vocals is very raw and they don’t gel very nicely with the rest of the tracks. A bit of processing could have helped the tracks in sounding much better.
Summing up, the EP is a very good debut effort by the band and we would love to hear more from the band.
