Zero Gravity are a fairly new band hailing from Indore,
India, and they released their debut album – "Holocaust Awaits" last year. The
band plays a nice mix of melodic death metal and the modern progressive death
metal intermixed with thrash sounds.
The band is sometimes referred to as “India’s Arch Enemy”,
although the only obvious similarity the two bands share is that they have a
female vocalist, as musically the two bands do not hold common ground. The
music does have the melodic death metal elements that have given Arch Enemy
their fan following, but here the melodic riffs are intermixed with thrash-ier
sections and modern chugging riffs.
“Weapon’s Edge” and “Holocaust Awaits” show
some of the finest lead work, building the tempo before the growls of Kratika
Bagora hit you with full force. The narrative sections are one of the strong points on this
record, and add their charm to the overall sound. “Blasphemy” starts with a
wonderful narration, before breaking into a thrash-groove death metal mix.
While the chuggy riffs work fine in small segments, they do sometimes sound
overused, as the band starts to venture close to the deathcore territory.
“Screaming Agony”, builds up and totally goes into a beat-down territory into
the second half. While the afore
mentioned “Blasphemy” ends with the band pushing that track a bit too long and
giving one of the weakest closing beat-down ever.
The album’s true strength lies in the faster tracks towards
the end, which bring in a nice thrash element to the music. They sound more
polished, and energetic and aggressive. The title track and “Chronicles of the
Radical Mind” keep you charged up all the way through.
The production is the ultra-clean mix, one has come to
expect from the modern death metal bands. While the clean guitar melodies sound
great, the drums do sound slightly compressed at times. I would really like the
band to try a slightly raw approach to their music in the future ventures. I
guess a little more effort and time, will definitely make this band a true
force to be reckoned with.
Although the band is not stretching the boundaries of the
genre in any manner, the album is a strong slab of no-frills groovy melodic
death metal. It also showcases how the metal community in India is spreading
further and growing with each passing day. A solid debut release overall.
