Here are my five favourite albums of 2011.

Fleshgod Apocalypse
Agony

Decapitated
Carnival is Forever

Goddess Gagged
Resurfaces

Opeth
Heritage

Origin
Entity

Check out what 2011 was like for other scenesters here.

Mumbai alt-rockers Aftertaste won the competition this year, beating Pip of the Fourth Mother (Kolkata), Life (Pune), Escher’s Knot (Bangalore), Arcane Deception (New Delhi) and Zepheroth (rather, RedEnergyZepheroth).

We spoke to Keegan Pereira, frontman of Aftertaste, about winning the legendary Mumbai rock calendar fixture

It wasn’t so much about the winning as it was about playing the stage – it’s always been a childhood dream. You know, since when we were 14-15 year-olds, we would go to Rang Bhavan, and see this happen. Headbang and mosh our asses off, but playing there was special.

On talking about the band’s hiatus, coming back to play for I-Rock XXVI, and future plans

The drummer of our band called one day, to ask if we’d like to jam. Just for the heck of it. Our manager signed us up for I-Rock, and none of us even knew about it. It was good to be playing though. We went in with no expectations, nothing at all. There’s nothing on paper right now, no plans at all, we’re just waiting to see what happens.

Of course, when we were active, we did give I-Rock a shot. In fact, two years in a row. Then, it was about playing. But this time it was more about the experience.

Also, check out this clip from the I-Rock press conference last month.

Check out photos from last year’s I-Rock here.

Skyharbor
New Delhi djent auteur Keshav Dhar took his bedroom-based Skyharbor project to the stage for a highly anticipated debut performance. A sizable portion of the crowd was particularly interested in this specific set, so an hour long delay helped people gather before the band began. Skyharbor played an entirely instrumental set, opting not to interact with the crowd and let the music flow seamlessly. From a technical standpoint, it would be no stretch to say Skyharbor sounded fucking brilliant. The project however is still not a fully-developed entity. With Dhar still in the process of putting the pieces together, this was honestly no indication of how a future Skyharbor set would sound like.

Skyharbor

Goddess Gagged
Mumbai progressive metal act Goddess Gagged’s set served as an album launch of sorts, with them putting out their debut full-length Resurfaces in conjunction with their performance. The band stuck to cuts off the album but played one new unreleased track somewhere in between. While slightly fuzzy, the band did sound great – executing their brand of tempestuous, atmospheric prog with finesse.

Goddess Gagged

Bhayanak Maut
Halfway through the Bhayanak Maut set, I left the stage for an interview behind the Pepsi Dub Station. I could faintly hear Vinay request the crowd to make way for something. A moment later I saw two security guards carrying a mangled dude all beat-up on a stretcher. ’nuff said.

Bhayanak Maut

Scribe
By now we’ve evolved a consensus on there being no such thing as a ‘normal’ Scribe set. The Mumbai band proved us right by unleashing their contorted brand of metal from amidst a courtroom-esque stage set-up. Scribe are as good showmen as they’re musicians, as the manner in which they engaged the crowd was perhaps the most effective that night.

Scribe

Demonic Resurrection
At the moment, Mumbai blackened death metal act Demonic Resurrection is the biggest of its kind in the country. Despite the slight drop in occupancy, Demonstealer and co. played an efficient set that managed to satisfy longtime fans. Although the particular vein of metal Demonic Resurrection concern themselves with isn’t as immensely popular in India at the moment, they did manage to keep the crowd interested.

Demonic Resurrection

Motherjane
Kochi alt-metal act Motherjane might have fallen behind the times a bit. But by consistently making music as they please, they’ve managed to maintain a large, devoted fanbase. They kept the Bacardi Black Rock Arena considerably packed despite a performance by the NH7 All-Stars running parallel to their set. They played a fairly staple set but it wasn’t hard to notice how much the crowd loved them regardless.

Motherjane

Photos by Prateek Biswas and Kunal Kakodkar

Follow all our coverage of the Bacardi NH7 Weekender 2011 here.

All-Star Bassists
- Ashwin Shriyan (of Blood Meridian)
- Orenstien Woner (of Atmosfear)
- Frank Pawar (of Devoid)
- Riju Dasgupta (of Albatross)

All-Star Vocalists
- Sunneith Revankar (of Bhayanak Maut / Providence)
- Gareth Crudus (Spiked Crib)
- Karan Pote (Abraxas)
- Nitin Rajan (Ex-Reptilian Death/Morticide)
- Jugal Jagwani (Ex-Chronic Phobia)
- Arun Iyer (Devoid)
- Pratika Prabhune (Chronic Phobia)
- Siddharth Basrur (Goddess Gagged)
- Biprorshee (Albatross)

Vizia, an upcoming metal band from Mumbai, and Arihant, a death metal trio from Guwahati, won the Open For DR contest (the deets of the contest are here). We asked frontman Sahil Makhija aka The Demonstealer what fans can look forward to at this show

Basically this is going to be a different kind of Demonic Resurrection show where I won’t be actually be doing vocals or rather I won’t be the main vocalist at least. We have got seven guest vocalists to sing with us and everyone will sing one or two songs. We’ve also got four different bass players, who will be joining us on stage because our original bass player, Hussain is not going to be available for the show. So its going to be quite a different experience for DR (Demonic Resurrection) fans.

We actually picked the songs that the guest performers would like to play or sing. So when we were doing this we basically asked these guys “Is there any particular song you’d like to play or sing” and taking those inputs into mind, we’ve come up with the setlist that is going to be played at the show.

Stream some of Demonic Resurrection’s music below
[trackplayer 3358,3359,3360,3361,3362]

Tickets for the show are priced at Rs. 99, and Headbanger’s Kitchen will be catering the show. Demonic Resurrection will play the Bacardi Black Rock Arena at the Bacardi NH7 Weekender on Sunday, November 20. Tickets are available now!

Frontman Sahil Makhija, aka The Demonstealer, fills us in

With the Bacardi NH7 Weekender coming up, the excitement is growing and this gig of ours is going to be completely different from what you’ll see from DR at the festival. The pre-party is going to be a Demonic Resurrection All-Stars gig and we are going to need a killer band to open the show so we figured we’d throw open the chance to a new band. So, what we’re looking for is a band with some great extreme metal music and an ass-kicking live performance that can match up to that. (The) last time we did this, we got tons of demos and we’re hoping for the same kind of participation from bands this time as well.

Bands interested need to send a short profile and links to their music to demonic.resurrection.online at gmail dot com by Sunday, October 23.

Stream some of Demonic Resurrection’s music below

[trackplayer 258,245,240,3361,242]

Demonic Resurrection will play the Bacardi Black Rock Arena at the Bacardi NH7 Weekender on Sunday, November 20. Tickets are available now!