SVARA TIRAS

Senmuths discography is gigantic, and it is all available for free, so it is tempting to want to take a dive into the music and see what exactly it is this man has to say that he is able to be so verbose. This is his 74th release under the name Senmuth and 113th in his career, released earlier this year, although at time of writing he has since released 4 more studio albums and a compilation.

What we have ends up being a combination of metal and ethnic music. I myself am rarely a fan of metal as an end, much preferring it as an ingredient in the musical palette as opposed to the whole thing, so the inclusion of the ethnic tones in this album has a strong appeal to me.

That being said, I feel that the two musical styles presented here are often at odds instead of working together. We have some moments here that are really great metal, some moments that are really great world music, but rarely do these two elements merge in a way that becomes more than the sum of two very disparate parts. When they do, it works quite well - just listen to the track Svaraajya for an example of this.

I think the biggest problem I have is there are a number of parts where the metal aspect of the music comes out of nowhere and overwhelms the more-interesting-to-me ethnic aspects of the music. Particularly in tracks such as Pravahaa Gayatra, where the metallic riffing really amounts to little more than repeating one note with a lot of distortion.

Nonetheless, there are some really excellent moments on this album - Nandeeshwara being an example. This one also features some female vocals at the beginning and near the end, which in my opinion make this track really stand out. Unfortunately, I cannot find any information about the vocals, whether they were sampled or real, or who the vocalist is, which is somewhat of a shame.

An uneven album, in the end, that could perhaps have been improved by a better marriage between the two different musical styles but with some truly excellent moments. Certainly, as a starting point to the massive discography of Senmuth, this won't scare you away, although neither do I expect it will make you a rabid fan.