January 16, 2022: There is something highly refreshing about attending a high-octane metal gig, and that was precisely what Metal Bomb Thursday at Kino 108, Andheri was featuring Last Ride Home, Consecration, Trinergic, Asylum and Gutslit. A host of reasons made this gig by ennui.BOMB and Metalabad probably a perfect metal start to the year.
Last Ride Home, post-hardcore alternative metallers from the city opened the night up with a set that clearly warmed up the audiences for a night of insanity later on. Although the genre is not the most popular, the crowd tonight seemed to be enjoying what they were being treated to.
Pune’s Consecration were the second band on stage. Their brand of death metal took the audience to the next level of metal mayhem, with pit scenes breaking out. The music had a large amount of melody to compliment the heavy riffs and bass lines, and for a first performance in Mumbai for the boys from the city next door, the band seemed to have garnered quite a fair bit of support and encouragement.
Trinergic’s set began with a video release of their song Rise of Xyrith. It chronicled a rather simple subject of a metal band playing in the middle of nowhere (read as somewhere around Panvel), and while there was little spectacle in the video itself, production value-wise, not a bad attempt at all. On the live set, it always amazes how vocalist Rahul Nair manages to pack in so much into his vocals, and this gig saw no difference. The band was tighter than any of their earlier performances, and the crowd by now had gotten into the rut of moshing away to glory.
Continuing the launch session at the gig were Asylum, who launched their debut EP, “Inmate”. The band played the EP in its entirety, and from the very start, when they played The Devilish Lizard, the crowd got into the rut of moshing like there was to be no other gig. This gig was in fact all about the mosh scenes, and though space constraints were aplenty for a metal set, the mosh went on, and Asylum made sure they played to a crowd wanting the music to get to its downright grooviest and heaviest bet. Towards The Zero was the song everyone was waiting for, and while the band did do perfect justice to the song, perhaps they could try playing the intro of the song during their next gigs, and create the atmosphere the particular song deserves.
Death grind machine Gutslit were the final band for the night, and if there was a time the venue got absolutely smash packed, it would be during this particular band’s performance. The band have been defining how brutal “brutal” metal can get for quite a while now, and their performance at Metal BOMB Thursday was no different. There are only so many metaphors you can use for pig evisceration and butchershop bloodbaths, and Gutslit’s most recent set is one of them. Drummer Aaron Pinto seemed hellbent on assaulting the drum kit out of shape, Prateek Rajgopal pulverized with his guitar, Gurdip Singh Narang exploited how a massive and intricate bass line can influence a whole set and genre, and vocalist Aditya Barve kept the insanity flowing through, while providing the chuckles from time to time. All in all, Gutslit’s set was the most fitting end to the night, and if this is any sign of the metal gigs in the city to happen in this year, it’s going to be an intense year indeed.
For this being the first metal event by ennui.BOMB ever, and the first by Dushyant Dubey and the team of Metalabad in Mumbai, there are very few things that people can complain about, which is generally the deal post any metal gig, and kudos to that.
Pictures- Sushant Sawant
