Posts Tagged ‘mumbai
2021 Charkop’s Best Chaat | चारकोप में सबसे अच्छी चाट | Mumbai Street Food | Eating Vegan in India
Cyclone Tauktae over the Arabian Sea caused strong winds and heavy rains in Mumbai on May 17, 2021.
Luckily, the city wasn’t in the cyclonic storm’s path, or there would have been serious destruction.
Having never seen anything like it, I enjoyed the experience and the lovely weather the natural disaster brought. And I’m quite impressed as my bike got washed for the first time in six months and I had my monthly bath.
This video was shot in Charkop, Kandivali West.
I BROKE OUT OF AESTIVATION to watch Djinn & Miskatonic, Bangalore’s finest and only proper doom metal band, at Catatonia Fest 2014 in Thane. They’d been scheduled as the final act of the night, and with no disrespect, I wished they’d been given the opening slot, so that I could enjoy their performance while the evening was fresh and the energy levels were high, and fuck back off to the comfort of my home immediately after. But god was never on my side, as Albatross (a band I have watched way too many times) would say. I missed Gaia’s Throne, whose performance, I’m told, was fantastic. Next time, for sure! Chaos did pump some life back into the day, and their guitar levels should’ve been louder, because Nikhil Wartooth’s riffs are quite a treat, especially when the band goes all Slayer on us.
Misery loves Jayaprakash Satyamurthy and company, which is perhaps why Djinn & Miskatonic craft traditional doom metal like no other band in India. If the doomsayers from Bangalore were disappointed at the low number of people who stayed back for their set, they hid it very well, but one could tell they were drained from all the waiting. Despite their dismay, Djinn & Miskatonic treated the remaining few to songs old and new, performing like undertakers on a graveyard shift. The YouTube link below this review is for the ‘metalheads’ who ran away because it was past their bedtime; there can be no excuses for not listening to what you missed out on last night. Thane and Mumbai owe Djinn & Miskatonic an apology right now and a better slot and bigger audience next time.
ALSO READ: My review of Varg Vikernes’ latest bore: Burzum‘s The Ways Of Yore
FREE DOWNLOADS: In The Name Of Satan | Snowless | The Darkness Of Being | Devil Worship
FEEL LIKE READING MORE ABOUT THE MUMBAI METAL UNDERGROUND?
IRWIE VAZ, the axis of Naked Earth | PRADEEP MIRANDA, on why Pin Drop Violence ended
MUST SEE: WHEN METALLICA’S JAMES HETFIELD MET BOLLYWOOD MEGASTAR AMITABH BACHCHAN
ALSO SEE: WHAT SHAHRUKH KHAN, SALMAN KHAN AND AAMIR KHAN WERE DOING TOGETHER
EXCLUSIVE: Welcoming Trooper – the Iron Maiden beer – to India | BEER REVIEW: Trooper Ale
The baap of Indian extreme-metal festivals is upon us, outdoing itself with the lineup as it does every year. For ordinary mortals who can’t read metal logos, these are the bands performing at Domination: The Deathfest VI: Killchain (OSDM from Mumbai), death-doom act Primitiv (that’s how they spell it), Navi Mumbai death/groove maniacs Wired Anxiety, Insane Prophecy (blackened death/thrash from Guwahati), Bangalore’s sludge lords Shepherd, Plague Throat (death metal from Shillong), and Bombay Death Metal Legion (18 death-worshipping beasts from aamchi Mumbai paying tribute to the unholy gods.) Bombay Death Metal Legion will headline Deathfest VI, playing songs by Deicide, Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse, Nile, Vader, Obituary, Death and other death metal monsters. See you at United 21, Thane!
I’m mourning the loss of a restaurant I was introduced to a few years ago. Jaihind Lunch Home hasn’t gone anywhere; it has expanded its dreams and is now an established restaurant chain across Mumbai. It is now like every other restaurant chain (except Jaffer Bhai’s Delhi Darbar – bless that amazing place) that sits comfortably on its established brand name and doles out carelessly cooked variants of the food that made it famous. Over the last few months I visited three Jaihind Lunch Home branches – the original in Bandra, the other two I know of – the ones in Dadar and Lower Parel. The food at Jaihind Lunch Home was a hit with everybody 
because it was simple and reasonably priced. Since the day Jaihind Lunch Home realized it was always going to keep making money, the restaurant went from humble to fancy (try to remember the old menu and look at the number of items they have now) and the dishes are priced at double the amount we’d be okay paying. Everything from the sol kadi to the prawns gassi and pulao falls in the narrow range of mediocre to passable, but with these prices it’d make a lot of sense to either go to a much cheaper restaurant for coastal cuisine or spend some more money to eat awesome seafood (and enjoy far better service) at Gajalee, Mahesh Lunch Home or Trishna. I’ll miss the unique chutney at Jaihind Lunch Home, but I can’t keep going back to a restaurant only for its chutney.
For coastal cuisine: Malvani Aswad | Malwani Kkalwan | Konkan Aswad | Versova Seafood Festival
Beer reviews: Weihenstephaner | Black Cab | 1906 | Galicia | Fruh Kolsch | Sol Cerveza | Organic Honeydew
Indian underground music scene: Remember Irwie from Naked Earth? | Ashwin Dutt’s incredibly long journey
Concert reviews: Slayer in Bangalore | Guns N’ Roses in Mumbai | Metallica in Bengaluru
That’s right! We’re so fucking sick of the fag-ass core scene in Mumbai that we’re bringing Exhumation back to crush your balls with select cuts from our discography. Along with brutal death metal from us you’ll be treated to some of the heaviest bands in the country that want to slap the shit out of all these core poseurs, so for the safety of the hipsters Nitin Rajan has decided to keep the event just outside Bombay. Come to United 21 this Sunday and listen to some true metal, and if you see a couple of bands wanking on stage you can lynch them to prove how true you are. Black/thrash wizards Witchgoat are coming from Bangalore, black metallers Insane Prophecy are coming from Guwahati, slam/grind monsters Gutslit are coming from the slaughterhouse, and Exhumation is coming straight from hell, so you can step out of your girlfriend’s lingerie at last and attend the first real extreme-music event this part of the country has seen in years. Get drunk, enjoy the brutality, smash some poseurs and go home with some cool merchandise… see you in Thane this Sunday!
Solar Deity T-shirts and CDs will be available at Domination: The Deathfest V
By DEVDUTT NAWALKAR
The first extreme metal gig of the year in Bombay was held at Blue Frog in Lower Parel. Blue Frog is one of the many places that have mushroomed over the city in the time I’ve been away and first impressions weren’t bad, if meager portions at exorbitant prices in a nicely done setting are your idea of a good meal. It’s a bit awkward for a metal gig, the cloistered space before the stage not providing much room for hurtling bodies and a beam going right up out of the floor providing uneasy premonitions of split foreheads and broken arms. Luckily, none of that came to pass and Cosmic Infusion, Stark Denial, and Gutslit proceeded to ply their wares.
Cosmic Infusion played symphonic black metal influenced by the likes of Dimmu Borgir and numerous other Eastern European style bands that mix in folk melodies with their music. They got a great sound from my vantage point; the keyboards (also the vocalist) sounded lush and drove the music well while everything else was distinctly audible also. It’s not a style of music I generally listen to but I’ve heard enough over time to give Cosmic Infusion their due. Promising, hard working band and except for the non-descript, listless core-type passages that are the bane of modern bands, they are one to keep an eye on. I also loved the fact that they turned up on stage adorned in proper corpse paint and black leather. Heavy metal, especially black metal, has as much of the visual, theatrical aspect as the musical, and too many hipsters in this country tend to kid themselves by playing it cool. Heavy metal should be empowering; chaddis and chappals aren’t.
Stark Denial were next and they were terrible. A major crash ejection to Planet Reality after Cosmic Infusion. I don’t know what was worse; the sophomoric bhenchod-madarchod chants or the embarrassing cover of Raining Blood done TWICE. Macho posturing on stage is cringeworthy at the best of times but especially inexcusable when you use it to mask bad music. There were no redeemable features to Stark Denial‘s music. I think they call themselves black metal, but that’s a bit of a misnomer for mine. Perhaps they have and will do better on other occasions. Sadly, this wasn’t one of them.
I was looking forward to seeing Gutslit. Again, I’m not a huge fan of slam; I strongly believe a breakdown should be used as a means to relieve musical tension and not be the main motif itself of the song. Bands like Defeated Sanity that wrongly get labelled as slam use breakdowns very sparingly which serves to offset the band’s more conventional (not to be read as “old fashioned”) songwriting chops. Gutslit played an extremely busy set of songs in promotion of their upcoming album “Skewered In The Sewer”. They are generally a very fast, squeal-happy band that tosses in a couple of breakdowns per song. I can’t listen to this stuff on record at home for lack of memorability but it can make for fun times in a live setting. It is strongly rhythmic music; the Frank Mullen hand gesturing that the style seems to have adopted is tedious at times, but there are fat grooves over which the more creatively inclined can lay a rap or two. Unfortunately, Gutslit didn’t seem to enjoy the sound they got; the vocals were barely audible at times, and the guitar kept going off also. I wouldn’t mind seeing them again sometime though. They are energetic and get the crowd going.
Extreme metal has never been a big thing in Bombay for whatever reason, not the way it now is other parts of the country. I was keen on checking out some new blood in the city; Cosmic Infusion whetted the appetite but the main courses left a bit to be desired.
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Devdutt’s Album Review: Expurgo – Burial Ground
Mumbai’s indie music scene knocked itself awake from its state of dormancy with Control Alt Delete‘s third edition seeing some of the most prolific nonmetal (or unmetal, as they call it) acts play to an eager crowd that packed the newly acquired venue. Two of the acts stood out more than the others because of the nature of their music and the zest with which they delivered it.
Microphon3, the second act of the evening, was a revelation. With an all-star backing – Niraj Haresh Trivedi on drums, Romit Ranjan Gupta on bass, and Venkat Raman on guitar – frontman Microphon3 enthralled the people to a set of Indian hip-hop/rhythm-and-poetry in English, Hindi and Marathi.
The Riot Peddlers played right after, and as expected, took the energy level very high. The mosh pit became active as the hardcore punk band raced through all their hits (in other words, all their songs) and the people who’d been tripping on their smashing debut Sarkarsm were in for a treat.
It’s extremely cool to get to see the drummers – looks at the pics and you’ll see the drummers not lost in the background for a change, but the show stealer for this member of the audience was organizer Rishu Singh. I think everybody had a blast watching Rishu make announcements and threaten the sound guy with dire consequences and urge the people to consume illicit liquor. At some point, the ennui.BOMB boss let all the bands know who was in charge and even hurled abuses at the speechless crowd. It smells like saunf, he observed about about the desi daaru, but conveniently forgot to mention that it wasn’t for the saunf-hearted.
The venue, by the way, kicks major ass. I don’t know what its called, but it is the best venue I have been to since Razzberry Rhinoceros. In fact, this place looks perfect for underground shows and I can’t wait to check out some extreme metal bands here, but I’m content even now to know the indie music scene is anything but stagnant. The cult is alive.
Mehta Kya Kehta? 