Bhayanak Maut - Man (CD review)

01.I Am Man
02.All Glory To The Beard
03.Genosis
04.Stage 1 - Trema
05.Perfecting The Suture
06.It Knows
07.Bhayanak Maut
08.Stage 2 - Apophany
09.Now, Creation. Forever, Destruction.
10.Stage 3 - Anastrophy
11.XOXOXO
12.For Science
13.Princest
14.Stage 4 - Consolidation
15.Iku
16.Light Shall Conquer
17.Stage 5 - Residumm


Aditya Nair (Guitar)
R. Venkatraman (Guitar/Samples/Keyboards)
Ishaan Krishna (Bass/Guitar)
Rahul Hariharan (Drums)
Sunneith Revankar (Vocals)
Vinay Venkatesh (Vocals)

Guests:

Abhishek Kamdar, Kuber Sharma, Ishaan Krishna, R. Venkatraman and Rahul Hariharan (Additional Voices on ‘All Glory to the Beard’)
K. Venkatesh (Spoken Word on ‘Genosis’)
Eshwari Pandit (Spoken Word on ‘Perfecting the Suture’ & ‘Princest’)
Shalaka Pai, Eshwari Pandit & Anisha Singhi (Cheerleader shouts in ‘XOXOXO’)
Abhishek Kamdar, Kuber Sharma, Ishaan Krishna, R. Venkatraman, Rahul Hariharan, Sahil Makhija, Eshwari Pandit & Anisha Singhi (Additional Voices on ‘Iku’)

From Bombay, India "Bhayanak Maut" (Hindi for 'Terrible Death') formed in 2003.
They have produced 2 albums so far, 'Malignant' and 'Metastasis', this new album'Man' is the last piece of their "life-cycle of cancer" trilogy, with, and i quote; "Man is the biggest cancer to have ever existed."

This album comes complete with a 118 page story book.

Starting with some sound effects and samples as an intro (but forming part of the first song, hooray!!), 'I Am Man' becomes a heavy death metal influenced workout and that is the main sound you get from the majority of the songs, heavy, agressive, elements of technical guitar and drum playing and growl vocals.

So each piece titled "Stage" are short melodic instrumentals, this divides up the story into chapters as per the book.

Finally we get to 'Stage 5 - Residumm' one song and its 31 minutes long! except taht there are huge chunks of silence and then short bursts f music and finally at the end its like a song being played backwards and forwards at the same time, its weird, but intresting, if not a bit annoying when it keeps going quiet.

This is one helluva monster of a concept album, you will wait a long time to hear something this good for a long time, why? because music tends not to be made this complex with that amount of thought behind it.

Rating 10/10
For Fans Of: DevilDriver, Cradle Of Filth, Mastodon, Fragarek, Xenochord