MESHUGGAH Confirmed As Headliners Of The Great Indian Rock Festival 2010

Meshuggah

All those rumors actually turned out to be true, for a change! This really is happening! MESHUGGAH have finally been confirmed as headliners for The Great Indian Rock Festival 2010. They will play Pune on 17th, Bangalore on 18th and New Delhi on 19th Dec.

MESHUGGAH join ENSLAVED, TESSERACT and PURIFIED IN BLOOD as the international headliners for the 2010 edition of the annual Great Indian Rock (GIR) Festival. The festival which RSJ describes as “The Definitive Indian Rock Festival Since 1995″ has previously been headlined by many international acts including SATYRICON, ENSLAVED, FREAK KITCHEN, SAHG, JOHN MYUNG (DREAM THEATRE), BENEA REACH, INTRONAUT, SOLSTATE and YOUR CODE NAME IS: MILOalong with several other Indian bands.

Although many recent festivals in India like ROCK IN INDIA (IRON MAIDEN, MEGADETH, MACHINE HEAD and who can ever forget – the BACKSTREET BOYS & RICHARD MARX), DECCAN ROCK FESTIVAL (AMON AMARTH, TEXTURES), METAL FEST (SEPULTURA) and the very recent SUMMER STORM (LAMB OF GOD) have, in a way, stolen the thunder from GIR, the festival still holds a place of its own in the Indian Rock & Metal scene.

The festival started off and continued for many years aiming to provide budding Indian bands with a platform to showcase their talent and took the form of a competition. However, recently the organizers have done away with the competition, focusing solely on showcasing the best that Indian rock & metal has to offer. “Over the years, bands like Indian Ocean, Parikrama, Orange Street, Euphoria, Them Clones etc have been launched via this platform.”

Here are the dates for the 2010 edition of GIR:

Bangalore: 18th & 19th December, 2010 – Palace Grounds

Delhi: 18th and & 19th December, 2010 – Hamsadhwani Open Air

Kolkata: 17th December, 2010 NICCO Park

Pune: 17th December, 2010 Oasis.

ENSLAVED: “Axioma Ethica Odini” Track Listing Revealed

Axioma Ethica Odini

Norwegian progressive black metal band ENSLAVED revealed the track listing for its upcoming album“Axioma Ethica Odini” today. The album is the band’s eleventh studio album with a release date of  September 27th in Europe through Indie Recordings and September 28th in North America through Nuclear Blast Records. The album was produced by Bjørnson, Kjellson, and keyboardist/backing vocalist Herbrand Larsen.

“Axioma Ethica Odini” track listing:

01. Ethica Odini
02. Raidho
03. Waruun
04. The Beacon
05. Axioma
06. Giants
07. Singular
08. Night Sight
09. Lightening

ENSLAVED will soon embark on their European “Circling Above and Within Tour” in October to promote “Axioma Ethica Odini” and will be supported by NEGURA BUNGE. As revealed on Polyrhythms earlier ENSLAVED has been confirmed to headline the 2010 edition of the GREAT INDIAN ROCK FESTIVAL.

ENSLAVED Reveals New Album Artwork

Axioma Ethica Odini Artwork

Norwegian progressive black metal band ENSLAVED revealed the artwork for its upcoming album “Axioma Ethica Odini” today. The album’s cover artwork was created by Truls Espedal, who has painted every ENSLAVED album cover since 2001’s “Monumension.”

Bassist and vocalist Grutle Kjellson comments: “On every new album cover, me and (rhythm guitarist/songwriter) Ivar (Bjørnson) come up with the idea of what the cover art shall include in terms of elements, symbolism and so forth. After that, we contact Truls and tell him about our ideas for the cover art. Then we arrange a meeting where we sit down for a couple of hours making sketches. Truls also has the opportunity to come up with his own ideas of how we can transform our original ideas the best possible way. He has made a masterpiece this time as well! The cover art is simply amazing! Amazing…”

Artist Truls Espedal comments: “I’m always excited about working with ENSLAVED, which is the reason I feel that too much time goes by between releases – ha, ha! But once again I sat down with Ivar and Grutle, and their ideas were more complex and interesting than ever. Also, their expectations and confidence that I’m able to come up with something better than before pushes me to set the bar even higher. This time around, we set out to expand further what we have done on earlier works: mixing the figurative paintings with the ‘symbolic’ design even more. By doing this, I feel that we are able to convey a lot more atmosphere, story, and a visually more interesting cover throughout. Hopefully other people will think the same. Good times.”

“Axioma Ethica Odini” is the band’s eleventh studio album with a release date of  September 27th in Europe through Indie Recordings and September 28th in North America through Nuclear Blast Records. The album was produced by Bjørnson, Kjellson, and keyboardist/backing vocalist Herbrand Larsen.

“Axioma Ethica Odini” is the follow-up to 2008’s “Vertebrae” which became the third consecutive ENSLAVED record to win the Spellemann award (referred to as the Norwegian Grammy) after 2004’s “Isa” and 2006’s “RUUN.”

ENSLAVED will soon embark on their European “Circling Above and Within Tour” in October to promote “Axioma Ethica Odini” and will be supported by NEGURA BUNGE. As revealed on Polyrhythms yesterday ENSLAVED has been confirmed to headline the 2010 edition of the GREAT INDIAN ROCK FESTIVAL.

Enslaved

More About GIR – 2010 Headliners

This is what the guys at RSJ have to say about the Great Indian Rock Festival 2010 headliners:

Enslaved

Enslaved was formed in 1991 by Ivar Bjornson and Grutle Kjellson, and released their first demo “Yggdrasill” in the summer of 1992. Enslaved also put out the legendary mini album “Hordanes Land” in 1993 (this was released also as a split-CD with Emperor’s s/t MLP). Enslaved’s debut album “Vikingligr Veldi” came during the spring of 1994, while the historically successful second album “Frost” was released already late 1994. “Eld” in many ways marked the opening of a horizon-widening era for the band in 1997. The following year saw the release of “Blodhemn”; perhaps surprising for some with its fury and blacker edges. Enslaved have already played to fans before in India and this will be the black metal behemoths’ second time here.

TesseracT

TesseracT is a British progressive metal band from Milton Keynes, England. It began in 2003 as a solo writing project for guitarist Acle Kahney, and in 2007 TesseracT developed into a five-piece band fronted by vocalist Abisola Obasanya, who has since been replaced by Dan Tompkins. TesseracT play a technical and polyrhythmic brand of progressive metal, which has been likened to bands such as Meshuggah, Textures, and Sikth.

Purified in Blood

Purified in Blood (PiB) is a Norwegian band from Hommers, near Sandnes. They started up in the winter of 2003, and dissolved in January 2007. April 25 2008, PiB though announced that they now are back. They play metal with roots in hardcore, (Though PiB have strong thrash metal influences as well).Do not miss the metalcore assault of Purified in Blood.

I’ll add some more posts about the three bands soon.

In the mean time, check out more at:

http://www.myspace.com/enslaved

www.tesseractband.co.uk

http://www.myspace.com/tesseract

http://www.myspace.com/tesseract

Headliners for Great Indian Rock Festival 2010 Announced

Rock Street Journal (RSJ) recently confirmed that ENSLAVED, TESSERACT and PURIFIED IN BLOOD will headline the 2010 edition of the annual Great Indian Rock (GIR) Festival. The festival which RSJ describes as “The Definitive Indian Rock Festival Since 1995” has previously been headlined by many international acts including SATYRICON, ENSLAVED, FREAK KITCHEN, SAHG, JOHN MYUNG (DREAM THEATRE), BENEA REACH, INTRONAUT, SOLSTATE and YOUR CODE NAME IS: MILO along with several other Indian bands.

Although many recent festivals in India like ROCK IN INDIA (IRON MAIDEN, MEGADETH, MACHINE HEAD and who can ever forget – the BACKSTREET BOYS & RICHARD MARX), DECCAN ROCK FESTIVAL (AMON AMARTH, TEXTURES), METAL FEST (SEPULTURA) and the very recent SUMMER STORM (LAMB OF GOD) have, in a way, stolen the thunder from GIR, the festival still holds a place of its own in the Indian Rock & Metal scene.

The festival started off and continued for many years aiming to provide budding Indian bands with a platform to showcase their talent and took the form of a competition. However, recently the organizers have done away with the competition, focusing solely on showcasing the best that Indian rock & metal has to offer. “Over the years, bands like Indian Ocean, Parikrama, Orange Street, Euphoria, Them Clones etc have been launched via this platform.”

Here are the dates for the 2010 edition of GIR:

Bangalore: 18th & 19th December, 2010 – Palace Grounds

Delhi: 18th and & 19th December, 2010 – Hamsadhwani Open Air

Kolkata: 17th December, 2010 NICCO Park

Pune: 17th December, 2010 Oasis.

More about the three headliners in my next post.