I pick up the headphones , plug them into my laptop, start itunes and the moment the intro of the first song reaches my ears only one thought comes to my mind. Surprisingly the same one that has come back to me over and over again everytime I have started listening to this album. The fact that I havent heard all of Creed or Alterbridge enough number of times to do justice to them or Arbovirus' originality. I have acquired all of Creed's music very recently and will do that comparative analysis at some later point of time but right now lets focus on the job at hand.
How is Arbovirus' album
64m 53s ?
Arbovirus is a Bengali Rock Band from Bangladesh and has been in the circuit for quite some time I believe. Not only have I heard a full album from them before this I have also been ignorant enough to really not hear any of their music before. So I apologise to the hardcore Arbovirus infected out there for daring to write a review about a band whose evolution I have not monitored. But trust me I have only good things to say about them. So maybe you can be patient for a little longer. Also if anyone here reading this post is closer to any of the bengali bands please let them know that I am trying to make this a more regular affair and if the band members think I do a good job in understanding their music and the message they are trying to send I would be glad to review a new album if they sent it to me or even their myspace links.
Bengali Rock Music has reached its tipping point and the revolution has begun. The faster we come out of our Classic Rock and Folk Rock phase and evolve into a more compact, professional music base (fans included) the better it would be for the industry as well as the future bands.
64m 53s is an unique album. Many times in this post I will come back to this same thing about the professionalism of Bangladeshi bands and since this is my first post about any Bangladeshi Rock Band I guess its the best time to give them the rounds of applause that they deserve for being a far more - tighter , creative, at times 100times harder and much much more open to experiments - musical force and this album just by its sheer name underlines the same.
The first song
Shikarokti (Confession) starts of with a guitar solo that reminds you of Mark Tremonti and no one else. Slide guitar style, overdrive guitars with a subdued gain, off key chord progressions and almost when you are going to write them off as another core alternative band having the same gods as most other alternative bangladeshi band, starts the vocals. Honestly I have heard better Bengali Rock vocals than Sufi but together with the rest of the band the way his voice kept the first song as tight as a dead man's fist was really the only thing that kept me listening.
No doubt the musical prowess of the band was unquestionable. What I wanted to hear was some good music. I have told my readers earlier and even now that although the bands or albums I have till date reviewed are all the ones that I really like there have been quite a few that just glue my finger to the next button solely because they just dont have the zing and are either simply cheap and lazy rip offs of Fossils or Warfaze or are wannabees with a lot of spare time and money. Arbovirus are neither.
This is driven more forcefully by their next song
Uttaradhikar (Right to Succession). 30 seconds into the song and after a very innocent guitar loop, you hear a faint remembrance of an old Nirvana chord groove ending very abruptly to the original loop and the vocalist taking it from there. Sufi's voice has both maturity and boyish ness. At times in the album it tries more than it can achieve but in this song it once again blends beautifully to the really significant bass line and the constant overdriven rythm guitars and some very powerful drumming till the guitar lead takes over and you really dont realize that its 4 minutes up and they have indeed produced a fine alternative track and left you with wanting more.
Ja Icche Tai (Whatever the mind wants) starts with a very soft acoustic guitar background and only the high hat groove leading to once again a very significant bassline. By now I realise that one of the greatest successes of this band is to not ignore what Bangladeshi Rock Music is really all about - a bunch of really really great bassists. The song boasts of very very touching lyrics. A short song it really makes you happy and sad at the same time. No sharp tones. No head banging and yet its a good really good rock song.
Mukut Chhara Raja ( King without his crown) once again has the bass channel turned up to a notch that says "Dont Ignore Me". Progressive from the start the vocals start off well but some how dont end up well at the first break of the song. Starting again from the second stranza, the voice somehow tries to regain its conviction and does a good job till the really high point of the song comes for the last one minute when the guitar really comes in the fore front. It was probably a deliberate to not give it the lead channel till the last lead even though you could hear the lead through out .To me the song is good to hear but fails to leave a big impression. I blame it on a somewhat half hearted effort to make the song sound really good as a unit and thereby failing to underline at least one individual brilliant peace of musical artistry.
Adhar O Isshor (Darkness and God) the fifth song of the album starts with a reverse loop intro (music recorded earlier and then played reverse and recorded as the intro of the song) leading to a very simple guitar pluck lead with a very short delay along with a really good peace of drumming ultimately leading to a very very fresh and deep set of lyrics done perfect justice by the vocals, with the reverse loop continuing througout the song. The song excels in successive layering. The guitar intro lead goes above the reverse loop. the drum and the delay goes on the lead. the vocals come on top of all that. The bass fits itself somewhere in between (surprisingly not a very significant part of the song ) and all the layers come out at certain points of the song. till at about the 4th minute the guitar intro steals my heart completely along with a really really fine peace of drumming. The song talks about a guy trying all sorts of different things including isolation wanting to see darkness and it is right at this point after the guitar lead that they throw the punchline
" shudhai takey jomat badha andhar dekhtey dao amaye,
ishot heshe, jowab ashey, tobey tomaye isshor hote hobey,
hotey hobey .... isshor"
loosely translated it means "I asked him how can I see concentrated Darkness, with a faint smile he replied, for that you have to be God, you have to be the Lord." It is on the word lord that the background guitar lead comes and joins and finally fades away with the last 10 seconds being just feedback and to me that counts for that shows the attitude of the band and its perfect. This song on my list is far ahead than most of the others and is definitely my best song of the album.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGEXnOf0sdw
Prithibir Sesh Prantey - Somebody please translate this for me. I cant find a poetic enough translation for this song.
A slow three note guitar intro , reasonably side stick drum layer, Sufi's voice echoing out into a falsetto and before you know it its 2 minutes into the song and my feet is tapping to the rather complex yet not too distant 3/3/2 drumming. I dont know what to call this song because I only pretend to be a music know-all but am not one and therefore do not know the exact classifications of different genres of rock. To me this would fall in the category of just rock. You will hear something similar in Travis or Coldplay or maybe even the modern Oasis albums. Everybody does justice to their parts in the song -the guitar lead, the rather atmospheric background vocals , the nicely intertwined bass line and the song finally ends with an outro of the song being very same as the intro .
Amader Gaan (
Our Song ) - This beautiful song begins with a very very nicely done piano intro. I am convinced that the piano intro and the tune is influenced by a very well known pop song but I cannot remember it. Help me out here guys. The vocals and the lyrics of the song once again are soft as the song requires lamenting about the uncertain future of the band and their music and this song is therefore a request , rather a prayer in waiting. 80s rock personified the song however is the first of the next few rather short (4 minute songs). There is a hint of psychedelia but so little that I really didnt sense it :)
I personally like the short songs in this album and I believe that the band is brilliant in creating an atmosphere that lasts for four minutes and then leads to the next one. I guess that also makes financial sense. In a 60 minute tape you get more songs in and the chances of one of them becoming really popular increases . Rather naive you may say.. but right now we are not talking about the strategies but rather the music.
Omanush ( Inhuman noun) the next song experiments with definitive American Heavy Metal Music and trust me if I say heavy. Maybe not sepultura heavy but definitely Megadeth and Pantera heavy. Their Wikipedia page suggests that they are heavily influenced by pantera and nirvana and this song definitely proves that song. Starting from the opening chant to the really familiar chord pattern to the guitar lead , the song reeks and speaks of every metal song Indian and Bangladeshi metal heads are fond of. This song apparently was the most popular from this album and knowing the history of bangladeshi rock music I am not surprised.
A note once again to my Calcutta Rock music fans. While we were happy with Parashpathor and Cactus and sometime Chandrabindu belting out one track after another about unreciprocated love, lost love, defeated love, folk love and other forms of sad romantic love songs based highly on synthesisers and octopads and rather primitive in their structure, Bangladeshi Rock Music by the same time had not only experimented with the same love blind pop-rock, evolved into British and American Heavy Metal and had even started flirting with Thrash, Death metal and Hardcore. This is one of the reasons why I loved Fossils and still do. They started it all man in Calcutta.
Anyways I will always come back to this over and over again so lets not dilly dally and get to the next song -
Chhaya Manush (Man in the Shadow). A song that starts with lyrics like the following will obviously catch my attention just because they are deep or at least pretend to be so.
" Amake Chenar Chesta Koro Na, Amake Chintey Tumi Parbey Na.
Majhe Majhe Ayenar Shamney Dariye, Proshno kori nijekey, tumi key, tumi key "
translation - " Dont try to understand me, You will not be able to,
At times I stand in front of the mirror and ask who are you, who are you "
Before I go into an hour long praise of this song I would just like to say this song is my next favorite song to Adhar O Ishhor. I love the guitar effects of this song, the slow distortion, classic rock sound, rather simple chord structure and drum beat (3/4??), the long guitar solo, the really really brilliant lyrics and i can go on of how much I am obsessed and proud to hear a really good classic rock song coming out of a bengali band's album. This is the kind of song that arbovirus plays really best. The song ends once again with a faded feedback and by know it seems to be a pattern one of them or all of them likes. Or its probably the guitarist who really wants the sound to linger. Thumbs up because it works.
Corporate Anthem - When I first heard this song I was actually did not like it. I still dont like it so much as far as the lyrics are concerned, which obviously, as the name suggests talk about the nuances of the boring yet stressful corporate life. I should admit here that while I love psychedelia and Floyd and Yes and other pseudo intel bands I also love Iron Maiden and Judas Priest and thats whats this song sounds like. Iron Maiden or to further generalise, NWOBHM. So as far as the music is concerned I like it. Its one of those songs that I will gladly hear when I want to concentrate on what I am reading or writing but I wouldnt really notice it when it starts or ends in a bunch of songs sounding similar. But mind you, its a very good powerful song. So dont misunderstand my opinion here. If I have to say anything bad about this song its about the lyrics and probably that Sufi isnt really a heavy metal/hard rock vocalist :)
By now Arbovirus has really convinced me their true message of the album. That of being different. Together their album is like a hand picked collection of the definitive genres of rock music. Its hard to believe at some point that all these songs are done by the same album.
Shekor (Roots) - Grunge ? Alternative ? Cant really put my finger on it once again but the words "pearl" , "jam", "eddie", "vedder" comes to my mind immediately as the guitar lead and the searing vocals take the song to an unexpected crescendo. From the beginning to the end, musically this song stares right into your eye with an attitude that you cant shrug off easily. As I hear the song once again I realise however that this is the penultimate song and if only a little bit Sufi's voice in the initial part of the song is a little repetitive. He does however complete justice to the feel of the song by the second part of the song till the end and according to me this is one song that if you hear as a single it will definitely make you sit up and take notice of Arbovirus.
Shorger Shishura ( Children of Heaven) - Some of you might search for Arbovirus and their songs after reading this and please do so. Many of you who do so will land up in their Wikipedia page. Though written very well I am sad it does not mention anything about this song. To me this song is truly a creation of great creative minds. I will not be able to do justice to the song by this blog. Please listen to it folks and then tell me how you liked it. But to give you a glimpse the song starts with a tv static noise leading onto channel surfing and then settling onto a program that brings the idea that war is essentially the root and personification of all evil. This gives way to sounds of machine gun which leads to the guitar intro. By now I swear I have placed this song on the same pedestal as Civil War by GnR. The haunting lead too reminds you off Slash. Yet the song is slow, melodic focusing on the lyrics, with the music and scale changes doing an excellent job to underline what the song really wants to say. Background vocals are out of the world. Psychedelic and progressive rock influences are evident in the general structure of the song and together with the vocals the song succeeds to create what Arbovirus had probably consciously stayed away from doing - to create an ambience, a story, an atmosphere to put across a message really really well. And so it does. The song stops to a silence at 7:23 only to resume 5 seconds later with a rather innocuous guitar and vocal intro which gives way to a guitar solo that will surely impress you. I really feel guilty trying to explain this song friends because its perfect in what it set out to achieve. If any of you have heard When the Children Cry by White Lion , this song is a 12 minute version of something similar done by Guns and Roses ending with a children's choir accusing the whole manking of being selfish and filling the world with hatred and gunpowder smells. Yes. this song is about politics. It is about middle east and its a goddamn brilliant song.
Arbovirus has achieved a lot in this album according to me. I have been quite late to really understand and analyse the Bangladeshi rock scene. But I am happy that I have been right at the time when Arbo has come to the foreground. I wish I could be a journalist to see these bands evolve but I wish all the best to them and really expect a lot out of them. Someday if ever they break grounds in contemporary Bengali Music and not stop at making one good album and then go into Hindi/Bengali Movie songs I will be happy to remind my friends about this entry and how I said that they should make it really big.
I will end with two lines from their opening song Shikarokti which to me defines their attitude..
".... amar bhoy amakey shahoshi kore
amar paap amakey nishpaap kore....."
In the words of my generation .... jiyo boss!!
Next Band : Nemesis
1st January 2010
