the highway called

Don’t ask me how and don’t ask me why but last weekend I drove down to Suratkal with some friends to judge a rock competition in the engineering college there. It was a terrific holiday and surprisingly we saw a few good bands.

Slain won Strawberry Fields this year. I missed them there but heard they were this young band doing some really kickass hard rock. They were just that. Energetic, talented and very tight. The vocalist could sing and guitarist played some mean leads. Good stuff overall and then found out the drummer was in the 10th and the guitarist was in PU. The other kickass band was Fall Of Reason. They played a couple of own songs and covered Blood and Thunder by Mastodon. They were very heavy and the drummer was fucking mad. The vocalist impressed me with his energy but couldn’t hear the bass at all.

Might seem a tad unfair but we tied the bands to win. Metchul rules after all.

Another pretty cool band I saw was Theorized. Not sure were they were from but good stuff. Old school death metal with another good vocalist. Pappu’s New T-Shirt was pretty good fun as well in a power-prog way but let down a little by the guitarist’s refusal to play a solo.

The rest of the bands were varying degrees of shit.

I saw Bhoomi after ages at Rock Ethos and I was quite impressed with how tight they were with the new drummer. They played a few covers and moved away from the all original set-list of Rock Ethos but were good all the same.

We stayed there two nights and almost 3 days and didn’t go to the beach once. We did gorge on the seafood though. Anjal is such an easy fish to eat and these guys really know how to cook it. I swear the Anjal Rava Fry was heavenly. There was also some awesome Squid happening. All in all, terrific food.

Then there’s the place itself. It’s so laidback and peaceful that you can’t help feeling the same way when you’re there. The vibe I get here is better than any other place I’ve been to.

In other news I got the first mix of the Myndsnare album. Sounds pretty good and somewhere along the way KP’s found groove. Sandesh is playing some good shit too and the sound overall is pretty damn good. Myndsnare’s debut album. About damn time!

I finally got broadband btw. Funny thing is, I was getting more new music when I didn’t have broadband and simply burnt stuff from friends. Haven’t heard anything new in ages and currently tripping on Anathema, Ministry and Marduk.