- Songwriting
- Lyrics
- Production
- Artwork
RAGE.
That’s precisely how you would describe Asylum’s debut EP “Inmate” in one single word. Right from the word go, you wonder over and over, “what the fuck are these guys so angry about?” The drums are rabid, the guitars menacing, the bass line smooth, and heavy, the vocals as ominous as a Minotaur on steroids stuck in inescapable room. The intro track Towards The Zero sets the mood for the entire album. Trapped within the confines of an erstwhile asylum, the protagonist finds himself facing all of his years of insanity coming together, and then the dawn of unstoppable realization. Vocalist Vivek Bhatt couldn’t do a better job. He just couldn’t- any more forceful, and he’d probably pop a vein or two.
While an ode to the reptilians is found in the second track The Devilish Lizard, the third song, Groove. Trip. Fall. chronicles the presence and orchestration of religion in everyday life, with the final words adding the final nails to the coffin on the subject. Track number four, Agitate The Origin takes a bird’s eyes view on the way the planet has been raped over time by the human condition, and how when it comes to getting it back to bite, it shall come back bad. The final song in the EP, the instrumental Way He Lived is a coda of sorts, and while every track in the EP is open to whatever interpretation, this particular song sets the perfect end to the compilation.
Without a doubt, the music in this entire EP is top-notch, and there’s little to complain about- groove metal that goes around showing who is boss is what the EP manages to do right from the start. The entire sound of the EP is monstrous, especially with the perfect balancing act all of the instruments with each other as well as the vocals. That comes as little surprise as they got in Arun Iyer of MotorG Studios/Devoid to mix and master their tracks. But brilliant as the music may be, it is the composition of the entire EP- theme, lyrics, the constant progression of subject, a solid production and finally musicality based on a skeleton of extreme aggression tapering as the EP flows to more ‘decent’, more closure makes this EP one that will undoubtedly be called one of the best EP to come about in a while.
Listen to Towards The Zero:
Asylum shall be launching the EP tomorrow January 16, 2014, 8pm at Metal Bomb Thursday, at Kino 108, Andheri West, also featuring Last Ride Home, Trinergic, Gutslit and Consecration(Pune). Entry Rs 100. For more on the event click here.
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