October 24, 2022: After a minor altercation with the venue folk at Hard Rock Cafe in South Bombay, we finally managed to secure our spot in the crowd for electro rock outfit Vega Massive’s second gig in the city. Though delayed by an hour, the moment the five members got on stage, there was quite a bit of clamouring and cheers from broken sections of the audience here and there. The band, consisting of Sarosh Nanavaty on vocals, Suprateek Chatterjee on guitars, Nariman Khamabata on guitars and electronic sound, Rahul Pais on bass and session drummer Gautam Deb on drums put on their game faces for a set consisting mainly of original compositions, laced with the odd cover here and there. Most prominent among their covers was their take on Nine Inch Nails’ Closer.
The band’s music has a fair bit of experimentation, mixing a electronic music with live, and hence, during certain parts of the set, the samples drowned the live element of the band altogether; at others, the music felt sublime like a well-written piece of poetry. The songwriting by Vega Massive is decent at best, because as captivating as their music was from time to time, structurally their music doesn’t sound a whole, and seemed disconnected quite a bit. The band would perhaps do well to incorporate more music like the coda in Baby Doll; that was perhaps the most enthralling part of their set.
Vocalist Nanavaty gave a brilliant and intense delivery, and her vocal range is something that needs a special mention- from squeaky clean low pitches, to intense high-toned vocals, she did it all, and the last song of the evening, their original Baby Doll was what defined the vocal prowess that the girl has in tow. Along with this track, Milquetoast and their earlier mentioned Nine Inch Nails song were perhaps the best songs from the set.
Pictures: Sushant Sawant
