This is the second album from Indian avant-garde metal band Serpents of Pakhangba.
Air and Fire is an ambitious album, in more ways than one. Across 54 minutes you’ll find a wealth of creativity and ideas, all delivered with skilled performances and detailed songwriting. Serpents of Pakhangba are resolutely not your average band.
How to describe this one? Loosely, you could call it an avant-garde metal album, one that takes folk and progressive rock/metal elements into itself, to produce a shamanistic interpretation of metal.
A lot has gone into the crafting of Air and Fire. A huge cast of band members and guest musicians has forged an album with a distinct sound of its own, using a range of instruments and sounds, with multiple singers. The former include not only the usual instruments, but additional percussion, synth, singing bowl, violin, orchestral elements, and more. The latter is just as varied, with everything from clean and harsh vocals, to rap, chanting, operatic, and Mongolian throat styles, and more. It’s also great to hear the formidable growls of Mallika Sundaramurthy on one track, (current/ex -member of Abnormality, Emasculator, and Unfathomable Ruination).
Air and Fire offers up a compelling mixture of old and new. Folk and cultural ingredients are tastefully blended with contemporary rock and metal ones, giving rise to a collection of tracks that deliver an atypical listening experience. Serpents of Pakhangba have an individual voice of their own, and on Air and Fire it is clear and potent.
The well-written songs are awash with sounds, styles, and influences. It’s a diverse record, one that has a stylistically centred heart, but spreads out around this into so many different areas that Air and Fire requires many spins to really start to get to grips with. The songs shift between multiple styles and genres with ease, never staying too long in one, while somehow remaining remarkably coherent throughout. Everything from progressive rock, nu-metal, drone, tech metal, folk, death metal, and more can be heard, all while retaining a consistency that’s impressive. Contrast the metallic and genre-jumping Carnivore against the ritualistic folk immersion of Forest Hymn as just one example of the album’s breadth.
At various points throughout the album bands such as Saor, Periphery, Dub War, Breed 77, Om, Orphaned Land, and Sunnata all came to mind at one point or another. Yep, there’s a lot going on here.
My only complaint, (a common one for me), is that there is too much spoken word, (the correct amount on any album is zero). It’s well-performed for sure, but like all spoken word I find it breaks immersion and ruins the atmosphere and underlying music. As always, your mileage may vary. Still, this is thankfully confined to a series of four interlude tracks, so once removed, the album flows better.
The sheer scope of styles and influences that Serpent of Pakhangba cover means that Air and Fire won’t be for everyone. But, if you have varied and refined tastes then there are many rewards to be had by spending time with this striking record. It’s by no means perfect, but it is very enjoyable.
Very highly recommended.
Wonderbox Metal 