By Aniruddh ‘Andrew’ Bansal
After a hugely impressive debut full-length album ‘A God’s Lie’, Mumbai-based extreme metal band Devoid has released their sophomore effort, a 5-track concept EP titled ‘The Invasion’. Since the 2010 debut album, the band has steadily built their local and nationwide fan-base, and they succeeded in reaching a level at which the new EP received plenty of pre-release hype and media attention. I’m a huge admirer of their debut album, but I was somehow sure that the new release would sound different. I gave the 22-minute EP a thorough listen, and here’s my honest, objective assessment of what the band has offered this time around.
The instrumental piece ‘Prelude’ begins the album, and even though two-and-a-half minutes spent on an intro is rather unusually long for an EP, I think the piece is well composed and the acoustic guitars combined with the symphonic background creates the right atmosphere and builds up the anticipation for the four tracks to come. The band said in a press release that they’ve gone completely D-I-Y on this EP, including production, and that aspect shows clearly as soon as you begin listening to the title track. I thought the production on the debut album was a bit dry and lo-fi, but this EP is even rougher in its sound, highlighting the brutality of the vocals and distorted guitars in full force. I loved the guitar solos and clean guitar segments on the debut album, so in spite of the clear focus on keeping a heavy and raw sound, I was glad to hear a nicely crafted solo towards the latter half of the title track of ‘The Invasion’.
‘Pandemonium Is Now’ turns it up another notch and vocalist Arun Iyer carries this song excellently with his crushing growls. He doesn’t try to rush through, as is the case sometimes with vocalists of this style. He holds his notes perfectly, and that allows the guitarist’s riffs to complement him and amp up the overall sound. Once again the guitar solo is well done, and the song goes through variations in tempo at all the opportune moments.
‘Brahma Weapon’, as the name suggests, might well turn out to be this EP’s Brahma weapon in the long run. The song is absolute all guns-blazing death-infused thrash metal, and seems like the ideal soundtrack for a moshpit. Drummer Shubham Kumar gets to display his talents a lot more on this song than the rest of the EP.
‘The Grand Design’ the longest track on the EP, brings things to an end. The song picks up pace slowly, so each member gets into a comfortable groove and expresses himself fully. It’s musically the best out of these five tracks, without a doubt, and will certainly find itself to be in heavy rotation on my music-player devices.
Overall, I must say I’m pleasantly surprised by the quality of the musicianship on display in ‘The Invasion’. Because of the modern extreme metal trend, specially in their city, I was expecting Devoid to go the deathcore route in order to gain quick popularity, but they proved me wrong. A big ‘horns up’ to them for keeping it true and maintaining the death/thrash metal vibe that decorated their debut album with much success.
My only concern here is the production. It presents the vocals and guitars really well, but lacks in the low-end and the bass is almost completely drained out. The sound of the drums doesn’t have any real impact either, except for in ‘Brahma Weapon’. I just wish the style of production wasn’t nearly as dry as it is. The music would have sounded a lot heavier, and better, if the bass and drums were done justice to. But, I guess you’ve got to cut them some slack because of the D-I-Y approach, and I’m sure they’ll get better in this aspect on the next release.
I still enjoy songs like ‘Devoid Of Emotions’, ‘Black Fortress’, ‘New World Order’ and ‘A God’s Lie’ from the previous release and I’m not completely sure whether the new EP is better, but there’s no denying that the music this time is heavier and has a better flow to it, perhaps because they’re tied together to an underlying conceptual theme, but mainly because these guys have progressed as musicians over the past two years. For fans of extreme metal, Devoid’s ‘The Invasion’ EP is definitely worth picking up.
Rating: 8.5/10
Record Label: Self-released
Release Date: February 3rd 2013
Track Listing:
1. Prelude
2. The Invasion
3. Pandemonium Is Now
4. Brahma Weapon
5. The Grand Design
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