Happy Dashain 2066/2009

METAL DUSK wishes you all HAPPY VIJAYA DASHAMI 2066/2009. We wish you have a joyous and cherish moments on this auspicious occasion.

- Metal Dusk

Cruentus

The history of the formation of the band doesn’t go to far back, as they were formed about a year ago when Brij and Alice, having similar taste in music, decided that they wanted to do something about it. But they really had no idea how to go about getting the other band members. Hence they resorted to their friends Mahendra, Adoit, Girish. And the first ever ones to be names ‘Cruentus’ were Brij on vocals, Alice on lead guitar, Mahendra on rhythms, Adoit on bass, and Girish on the drums. With this line up they did played a few gigs covering sepulture songs.

Few months into their journey, they faced trouble as three of their members Mahendra, Girish and Adoit decided to leave the band to continue with their further studies. Mahendra left for UK, Girish went to Bangalore and well Adoit too wanted to concentrate more on his studies so, they left Brij and Alice in square one again. Five months went by before Brij and Alice made any progress with their search for new members. When, finally Allen, Ranav and Ryan came to their rescue. Well Allen is actually Alice’s brother and the other Ranav and Ryan met in high school. And the new and the current line up of the band is Brij on vocals, Alice on guitar, Ranav on second vocals, Ryan on bass, and Allan on the drums.

But just being another face in the crowd of the newly arising bands was not enough for these guys, they wanted to make a mark and well they have as they have chosen black metal as their genre. Why black metal and not anything else? “we find it very creative and unique and we wanted to expose the Nepali music scene to something new as the music being played in the concerts were becoming very monotonous,” says Ryan the bassist.

They came out with their first single called “Massacre of the holy ones.” Mahendra, their ex-guitarist, has helped them in many ways although he himself is in UK. You can almost count him as their sixth member as he is constantly sending materials for the band to work with. Anywayz when asked what the single was about they said “it is self explanotary, it speaks for itself”
Currently they have 2 other singles to their name, “Unknown Warrior” and “Bless me with thy Pain.”

Antim Grahan : The Band that shaped the Nepalese Metal Undeground Scene

Formed in the early 2004, Black Metallers Antim Grahan rise from Kathmandu. Covering some songs of the likes of Children Of Bodom at the beggining, the band now has a strong hold identity of it's own originals. Fronted by the vocalist Parash, Antim Grahan is Pankaj on guitars, Supath on guitars, Pratik on bass, Niraj on keys and Sabin on drums. The band has undergone a few line up changes with the bass player Pratik and drummer Sabin joining the band later replacing previous member Sagar on bass and Hari on drums, who left the band due to their own personal reason.

The band took out an EP titled 'Forever Winter' which was a joint production of KTMROCKS RECORDS, Mingmar Dolma Lama and Antim Grahan. Antim Grahan is the first band to have a record deal in the history of Nepali metal scene. They got the label of KTMROCKS RECORDS which happened to be the first record company in Nepal for the local underground metal scene. The EP, 'Forever Winter' got an overwhelming response from the metal fans which created an immense popularity of the band in the underground metal community around the country. Songs like 'Infected' and the title song itself 'Forever Winter' was a massive success.

The band says that their music is representation of pain, suffering and dark realms of imaginary worlds. About their music, the band says " We really don't wanna give away any messages to our listeners coz the whole music is presented in a very story like way, more of like fairy tales with a very dark and painful environment. So all we want is that the people enjoy our music and have totally fuckin' owesome time while listening."

After a very good response from the fans from underground community for their debut EP, "Forever Winter", and then they released their second album titled "Tales From The Darkened Woods". This album by the band has come in a very short time off it's release of their first album, but the new album promises to be much improved technically and musically. 'Tales From The Darkened Woods' is much more bigger, better and heavier then their first EP.They have now come out with their 3rd New Album titled "In The Ambience Ov Malevolence".The most profoundly dense track on the album is “With Vengeance I Bleed”, with inventive use of classical piano motifs, all the while raging with blast beats and journeying through a full-on classic metal passage; it’s a song of utter brilliance. The final track “300″ is total black metal mayhem and is, of course, inspired by film adaptation of the graphic novel 300 that came out last year. The song samples Gerard Butler’s famous “Tonight, we die in hell!” quote from the film and fittingly, the vocalist also yells “This is Sparta” after the midway build-up.The album has powerful unhinged black metal interspersed with melodic keyboards and haunting female vocals. Admittedly, it’s a sound that has been done to death by the likes of Cradle of Filth and Nightwish. It’s not breaking new ground, but at the same time this loud-soft dynamic really enhances their sound, and is best incorporated on “Infected II” and “Serenade For the Gracious Death”. There are sweeping guitar riffs with epic overtones as on “Angels and Eternal Dismay” and more brutally on “Winter Blossom Ov Ceremonial Grief”.

Carrying on to the melodic level that the band has been going on, they have experimented with traditional 'Flute' and a new member, female vocalist Rajani Kayasta on their new album.This is the first time in Nepal that any underground metal band has introduced these kinds of experiments..

The band sites their influences as Gorgoroth, Cradle of Filth, Lord Belial and so on.

1st Post : Scenes

The present scene music of Nepal includes several popular rock and roll bands, including 1974 ad (Hard Rock), Nepathya (Folk Rock), Mukti and Revival (Blues Rock), and the long-running Cobweb. There has also been a surge in local rock/metal bands with the emergence of numerous bands like Nastik, X-mantra and Albatross and more recently Atomic Bush, Ushma Beg, Nekhvam and many others. An indie rock scene has also emerged, with punk bands like "Rai Ko Ris"(www.raikoris.com), with singer and bass player Sareena Rai, leading the way to a nascent DIY movement.

Metal bands such as Vhumi, on the other hand, is regarded as the significant band that started playing melodic death metal style. The band has become one of the most consistent and active bands in the underground scene. Similarly, Epitaph has pummeled the scene with a new breed of metal – thrash-death. Bitter Euphemism has stepped up a notch into the realm of technicality and groove while bands like Arachnids, Morgoth, Prakanda Bimba, Cryptic Violence, Fallen, Obscured, Pralay, The Time, Ushma Weg and Night have contributed in their own way to the scene. What these bands bring out on stage is interesting and more importantly unique in the Nepali metal scene, probably even in the whole South East Asia.

A very few level of involvement can be seen from the so called senior musicians and bands (of 1980s or 1990s) on the current scene. However few inspirations, motivations and guidance remain. (Respect!) Fronted by two inspiring “senior” guitarists Iman B. Shah and Deep S. Rana, HMG-Ministry of Rock, even though a strictly heavy metal cover band till now, helped motivate a new generation of young guys into playing music.

Besides the bands and musicians and ktmROCKS and most importantly the metalheads - the Internet has been a great contributing factor in the development and evolution of Nepal’s metal scene. The ktmROCKS forum is vibrantly alive from compositions of the forum members (mostly musicians and band members). With styles ranging from extreme death metal to virtuoso shredding to ambient to psychedelic acid techno to grunge to ‘you name it’, the forum users have taken the scene to heed and started recording their own songs and expressing themselves with the aid of modern tools. The year 2007 seems to be a promising start for “our” metal scene as beckoned by the releases of “Barbaric Regulation” (Epitaph) and “The Last Verse of Madness” (Morgoth/Lost Oblivion).