A decade and more of making and playing music, can do certain things to you. You tend to get weary, you slow down and you even think of changing your musical direction a bit. But not for Kerala-based thrash metal band ‘Chaos’. In their thirteenth year of existence, they have come out with their second album, titled ‘All Against All’, an unrelenting assault of metal, as fast and angry as they were, when they started out as young college kids.
The band is also on another high, with their collaboration with musician C.J.Basil for Sanal Kumar Sasidharan’s film ‘Sexy Durga’ winning the Best soundtrack award at the Valencia International Film Festival.
Four years back, the release of their debut album ‘Violent Redemption’, cemented their place among the top metal bands in the country, winning awards including VH1 Sound Nation, Radio City and Jack Daniels’ awards.
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Since then they have been performing regularly in cities across India, even though their home city Thiruvananthapuram, without any dedicated venues for rock and metal music, rarely got the opportunity to hear them.
In their second album, in which they have pumped up the aggression levels, they add more layers to the political positions they had taken in the first. The title track ‘All Against All’ itself is a commentary on the contemporary scenario, serving the potent warning - “Between us all, this hateful wall, Together we fall, when it’s all against all”.
The track has an accompanying music video, for the making of which they brought in their entire army of supporters to star in it. The shoot happened earlier this year at a fallow paddy field at a village in Kannur.
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“It was a great experience making the video. We had the people from the area, many of them who had never heard metal music, helping us out with everything. We could not afford professional actors, as the concept needed a huge crowd. Our friends and supporters doubled up as the actors. The video got some solid response from abroad too,” says Jayakrishnan, the band’s vocalist.
The first album had mid-tempo tracks too, which gave them the breather to unwind during live performances. But, here, there is no let-up to their energy all through the album, probably realising that they had to maintain the intensity, considering the subjects they are tackling. The songs reveal their concerns of the rising communalism, politics of hatred and media sensationalism.
The dangers that free thought and expression are facing becomes the subject of ‘Indoctrination,’ which says “The free mind is chained, To the rotten and old, Young hearts are trained, And cast into a mould.”
The guitar work by N.R.Nikhil takes new groovier routes, even as it remains true to its thrash metal roots. Vishnu’s intricate bass playing and Manu’s pummelling drum work takes the album to a whole new level.
The album, now available at https://chaosthrash.bandcamp.com/ , has already garnered glowing reviews from international metal magazines like ‘Metal Injection’, which compares them to the greats of the genre like ‘Slayer’ and ‘Pantera.’