Brahma, a Mumbai based metal quintet released their debut “The World Beyond” at Independence Rock back in ’98 through Virgo music, their record label also responsible for Agni’s debut too. Brahma has Devraj Sanyal on vocals, Dean Lazarus on lead guitar, John Ferns handling the rhythm section, Vince Thevor on bass and Cyrus Gorimar on drums. The band is reputed for their excellent stage presence apart from their metal oriented sets. The album “The World Beyond” has a lot of variety, which is probably due to the fact that they’ve tried to pay respect to all of their cumulative influences which may appeal as boring to some though! The album opener is a highly impressive and instantly likeable song “Destroy the Destroyer” which has a very punchy rhythm and is reminiscent of old Metallica. The song has a very good solo too, which takes you higher and higher before finally merging perfectly with the rhythm with every member chipping in excellently. The next in line is the album title only “The World Beyond” which is relatively softer and slower and has Devraj singing like the legendary Jim Morrison and it’s really hard to digest that it’s the same band as the one who’d just played the previous song. Another angry composition is “Get Angry and Get Even” which has the vocalist venting out his anger with the lyrics propagating people to fight and settle their scores!! The album has a couple more of hard rockin’ songs like “Psychopath” and “Second too Late” and finally comes to a grand finale with “You Must Die”. This song about fate has Devraj at his guttural best in tune with the chugging and bone-crushing riffing on this doom/death composition. The song alternates from an angry death chant to sheer melody and is certainly a treat for all the ‘heavier’ metallers. The tape is a very good buy as is its moderate price at 65 and can be obtained from local music stores nowadays. The lyrics are very poetic and the music good. The album though could have been better produced which due to the bad mix on it mainly attributed to the total lack of sound mixers in this god-forsaken country who listen to rock let alone metal. The record label, Virgo Music on the other hand seems to obsessed with fire as in the case of the Agni album here too there’s a raging fire in the backdrop with the five band members in front of it! Brahma who proclaims themselves as the “Gods of Metal” have done a decent job [8 on 10] on their debut, though we should expect much more heavier music from them in the near future before that title really has some meaning.