Review: Noiseware’s Clouds at Last is a mixed bag

Artist: Noiseware

Album: Clouds At Last

The year is 2010 and Pune metal band Noiseware are opening for some of the best names in international prog metal — UK’s Tesseract and Swedish giants Meshuggah. In the following year (2011), Noiseware would release their debut EP

Wake Up and Soar , keeping in line with their hilarious internet-friendly zaniness. But then, it’s taken the very same band nearly seven years to come up with their next offering.

If you’re new to Indian metal, this would be surprising. The band members of Noiseware branched into different projects even as they kept the band going, but it just wasn’t the same. The lyrics on their (finally) released full-length album

Clouds At Last seem to make it a vehicle for coming to terms with the internal struggle and hurdles that they cleared to arrive at clarity. Straight from ‘Solar’, Noiseware retain the brutality and chaotic grooves they were known for from before, like on ‘Within Dreams’, which rumbles with complex patterns.

While that voice of doubt (and ultimately self-realisation) is Aman Virdi’s growling and sublime delivery, there’s an unshakeable amount of rhythm and dissonance from guitarists Adhiraj Singh and Aniket Patni, bassist Bob Alex and drummer Gautam Alex. There’s a bit of an electronic influence running through ‘Vortex’ and the delectable ‘Paraflight’, borrowing from the scree of dubstep and modern electronica. ‘Iridescent’, however, leads with a ton of clean vocals and becomes amazingly poignant. The softer, more balanced approach means the complex rhythmic patterns take on a subtler shade, but it doesn’t make tracks like ‘Europa’ too special. When you dig djent and modern metal — which has been popular and rehashed for more than a decade at this point — it’s tough to find interest in the same tones and styles, like on ‘Parallax’.

Thankfully for Noiseware, they are aware of these tired tropes. They pull into a delicate clean section that swells to close ‘Parallax’, and then also works well to end the album during its string section-aided title track. There’s plenty of freshness on

Clouds At Last , but also some things stale. Noiseware seem to be on their way to weaning off the djent clichés for the most part.

Get the album on noiseware.net