Story 1: Children Of The Cloud
01.Intro - Advance
02.The Raptorsville Fair
03.Jugglehead The Clown
04.Children Of The Cloud
05.Outro - Fold
Story 2: The Assassin's Flight
06.In The Lair Of Dr.Hex
07.A Tale Of Two Tyrants
08.The Empire Of Albatross
Dr. Hex (Bass)
Biprorshee Das (Vocals)
Vigneshkumar Venkatraman (Guitar)
Nishith Hegde (Guitar)
Varun Singh (Guitar)
Jay Thacker (Drums)
Mumbai-based traditional heavy metal quintet Albatross formed in 2009 and are a band that combines bone-chilling stories with bone-crushing metal. The band started out as the solo project of bassist Riju Dasgupta (Workshop, Old Monks) who wanted to marry his love of literature with his other love: metal.
Later on, a lineup of like-minded musicians was standardized and Albatross was born. The band released the critically acclaimed 'Dinner is You', a concept EP about cannibalism and the Kuru disease, which was mastered by Grammy nominated Swedish producer Andy LaRocque from King Diamond, in September 2010.
In 2012, Albatross released ‘The Kissing Flies’ EP as part of a split CD with American doom metal band Vestal Claret to critical acclaim. This EP features contributions from famed luminaries such as Niklas 'Viper' Stalvind (Wolf), The Demonstealer (Demonic Resurrection) and Murari Vasudevan (Rat King).
Albatross has supported legendary bands like Kreator and Wolf in the recent past and besides being a regular in the Indian live circuit did a successful three-city tour of Australia in 2013.
Since then they have been working on their debut album.
Are you sitting comfortably? then lets begin with our first story, and yes the intro starts us off with a spoken story and then 'The Raptorsville Fair' starts and it sounds like something from Nightmare Before Xmas, a very theatrical vocal over some silly fairground style rock music, then a more technical progressive metal sound kicks in, but it returns to that strange but quite awesome other style.
'Jugglehead The Clown' is more traditional heavy metal, pounding drums and maidenesque guitarwork and a more "serious" vocal, very rhythmic and catchy.
Next up is 'Children Of The Cloud' this one throws everything in from prog, death and thrash metal, lots of intresting timing changes and a fantastic vocal performance that ranges from Bruce Dickinson to Dani Filth!
The story ends on the outro with some church bells and a bit more story telling.
So from what appeared to be a light hearted first story the next one seems to be a bit darker, 'In The Lair Of Dr Hex' has this slow powerchord driven rhythm and more vocal gymnastics, the quality of the guitar solos matches anything any euro power metal player can offer, very very impressive.
The pace picks up with 'A Tale Of Two Tyrants' and once again it is the vocalist that takes centre stage here, another stunning and diverse performace from dark bass to near soprano, all over solid heavy power metal.
Opening with some beautiful acoustic guitar comes our final piece 'The Empire Of Albatross', this one is very much influenced by Iron Maiden, but this has some very good modern elements in the mix, as ever the vocalist does what he does best and also tells us a little bit of a story as well.
Rating 10/10
For fans Of: King Diamond, Dream Theater, Iron Maiden, Dream Evil, Iced Earth
