Dethfest V3, organised by Soumick Chakraborty and hosted by Five Mad Men in Sector V, Salt Lake, saw metal action at its best. The lineup comprised some of the best bands from across the country and was headlined by Berlin-based death metal guitarist Fountainhead, aka Tom Geldschläger, and Mumbai-based quartet Gutslit. Both the acts promoted their upcoming albums — Changeling and Carnal, respectively. Fountainhead impressed the crowd with pieces like Ascension, Akroasis, Sermon of the Seven Suns, Falling in Circles and Fear is the Enemy. The lineup comprised supporting acts like Voyagers, Jammers Graveyard, Thirst of Faust and Hymns of Hadean.
“Curating metal events has always been something I wanted to do. Dethfest is not here to just bring together the best bands in the subcontinent, but all over the globe. Armageddon awaits! As a specialist senior at Deloitte and a vocalist/guitarist in the Hyderabad-based death metal band, Warmarshal, I’ve to balance the two. I guess passion will be the main motivation here. I use the principles of management that the folks at Deloitte passionately follow as their corporate culture — ethics and transparency; the same things are in my gig. The same thing goes towards strategic planning, all learnt on a corporate job... applied to streamlining some processes of curating independent events. And I guess independent bands need to share their crowd,” said organiser Soumick Chakraborty.
Team Gutslit, a Mumbai-based death metal band with members Aaron Pinto on drums, Aditya Barve on vocals, Ishwar Hariharan on guitars, Aditya Swaminathan on guitars and Gurdip Singh Narang on bass, mesmerised the metal fans of Calcutta. “We’re always excited to play in Calcutta. Big ups to Soumick and team Dethfest for putting up this gig. We look forward to another great edition,” said founding member of Gutslit and the bassist, Gurdip.
Pradyut Argha, Kazi Anindya and Robby from Thirst of Faust, a tech death quartet, played live after six months
The modern instrumental duo Voyagers with Soumik Roy aka Yonsample or Spunk and Subhajit Chatterjee aka Allmighty Gecko or Retroknot delivered some earworms
Jammers Graveyard, a Guwahati deathcore band, returned to Calcutta with a complete set comprising unreleased tracks from their new album, Man Inhumane. The band includes members Bijit Chakravarty on vocals, Pawan Damai on the lead guitar, Aman Gurung on the bass, Joy Das and Sunny Das on the drums.