Doom and stoner rock still isn’t exactly the most exciting music for metalheads in India – this, despite the fact that every second listener can raise their horns to every time a Black Sabbath song comes on at their local pub. Many decades later, the slow-burn hazy form of metal has built its following – with bands such as Electric Wizard, Sleep and Acid Bath becoming hail-worthy names.
Closer home, Bengaluru has been notoriously equated with incubating a doom, sludge and stoner rock/metal scene. In India, that usually means if you even have a handful of bands, it’s enough to qualify. While Bevar Sea were the first to make a mark with studio releases (2012), close behind were Djinn & Miskatonic, who released their debut album Forever in the Realm in 2013.
It’s taken about four years – and there’s a joke about making slow heavy music somewhere in there – but Djinn & Miskatonic have released their second right now and it stands at a mammoth 66 minutes.
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Comprising Gautham Khandige’s moody but gnarly vocals, chunky guitars from Sriram K.R. and Mushaf Nazeer, bassist Jayaprakash Satyamurthy’s indemnifying groove and punishing drumwork from Siddharth Manoharan. While they take some time the layers on ‘Doombringer’, it builds affinity as it progresses, subtle keys and guitars making it a psychedelic listen. They amp up and pick up the speed on ‘Frost and Steel’, but it’s not too different from what we’ve heard before. There’s a bit of backing vocals from Sriram on ‘Harvest of Kings’ which makes it theatric, and the guitars are perfectly melancholic. ‘Hangman’s Hope’ remains convincingly heavy and thundering, which caps the album at a mystical high. All in all, a must-listen for any fan of heavy music.
One other reason you might want to get your hands on something like this in its physical format, of course, is the incredibly infernal art from artists such as Fabled and the Painter of Oz.