BHAYANAK MAUT - Man

December 16, 2014, 9 years ago

(Independent)

David Perri

Rating: 8.5

review black death bhayanak maut

BHAYANAK MAUT - Man

The truest testament of metal’s global reach is, unsurprisingly, on the records: Sepultura not-so-coyly emulated the Bay Area from far-away in Brazil, black metal bands influenced by Norway's winter release albums spawned in air-conditioned studios in Southern California or Florida, and latter-day, groove-enamored American death metal has been perfected half-way across the globe in Mumbai by Bhayanak Maut and its latest album, Man. Fiends, bow your heads and witness: it’s during "Perfecting The Suture"’s massive, and massively recalibrating, moments that one realises borders are but mere lines drawn on paper when it’s a matter of the life and death we call extreme metal. To introductions, then: Bhayanak Maut (“terrible death”, in English) is amongst India’s most well-known metal groups, one that has gained enough of a following to open for Enslaved, Satyricon and Amon Amarth in its homeland. Propelled by a foundation that is soaked in the blood of Misery Index, the Acacia Strain and Lamb Of God, but with the gravitas and menace that hints at far, far darker places, Man is a record that was executed by a band that is at the absolute apex of its particular creative process.

Meticulously crafted and written (in a previous life we might have called this record “fucking tight”) with the solemnity that comes only from listening to thousands and thousands of hours of extreme metal records, Man is the calibre of album that, all things being equal, could propel Bhayanak Maut into the global metal conversation, this collective more than capable of adding its particular static to the overarching noise. The main critique here lies in the fact that Man is too long at 17 tracks: a 10 or 11 song album would possess the efficacy to truly cut deeply, instead of allowing for some of the peripheral flesh-wounds that distract.  But that’s a minor issue when compared to what Bhayanak Maut has achieved here, the band squeezing throats until there is absolutely no air left to breathe.



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