Throatlatch Records {TL} is the first full fledged Metal label in this country which caters to the talented Indian bands who’ve never yet had a chance to get their original music to the metalheads. The Cranium guys {heart and soul of TL} have taken a very bold step into the murky depths of the Indian record industry with TL as the ephemeral bands here live and die out playing just covers. But the vision shared by TL records and studio should soon take shape as some bands are already trying to break out from the vicious cycle of being a covers band. This album “DEEPTHROAT” comes as TL’s first release and was recorded during last years ‘Domination – The Deathfest’ – a 2 day spectacular dedicated to extreme music fans organized by another intrepid company InTune Entertainment. This 11-track album was completed in record time during Deathfest with the bands shuttling non-stop between the venue and TL studios. But it took an additional 4 months for this well packaged product to hit the markets early last Nov., but I guess its been worth the wait. And one listen to this and u’ll be nodding your head in agreement with me. The album has also been engineered and mixed by Ranjan {Cranium- v/g} too – phew! The album starts off with a song by Cranium [but, of course] titled “Pariah” with an added Indian flavour to it, as the drumming is reminiscent of the Bengali ‘dhak’. I guess that’s attributed to the amount of time Cranium’s core, Rajan and Jose have spent in West Bengal. Next track is by Mumbai’s black/thrash band Demonic Resurrection who contributes a relatively slower song with “Creatures of Ancient Blood” than their debut ‘Demonstealer’. But let that not fool you into thinking that it’s boring or monotonous guys. Next track “Descension” by B’lore doom/black metallers Kryptos is my second favourite of DT only to Blasphemy. The song is an absolute masterpiece if someone were to ask me, but some people felt it dragged along for too long unnecessarily towards the end. I eagerly await their future 5-song debut that is slated to May this year; again under TL records. Great solo by Nolan on this one! Metakix or rather Kix as they loved to be called re-do their groovy song “She’s the Incubus” for DT which is much improved compared to their previous ‘Consume Raw’ version! Sceptre recorded a new song of theirs “The Lost Empire” with recently recruited hotshot guitarist Amar. This song is a really nice thrashy and headbangable number but takes some time to fully grow on you. Next Pin Drop Violence, nu-metallers from Mumbai take full control of your music system with their aggressive song “Full Body Burn”. The band was themselves stumped at the amount of ferociousness this song has when the CD was released!! What really impressed me were Pradeep’s vocals and I for one will be moshing at their super charged live sets! Black Metal band Fate’s “Deathless” is a different version as on their 5 track debut ‘Lead us to Darkness’ ‘cos it doesn’t have Nitin Rajan [of Morticide, who composed it!] doing the backing growls. Also co-incidentally Fate were amongst the first to recruit the services of TL studios for their atmospheric debut. One listen to them and Roshan’s haunting shrieks will definitely prompt you to pick up their {just released} album. Arcane Ritual, another black metal band but now from B’lore raise the tempo by a notch with “Massacre of Souls” as a build-up to the last track by Blasphemy. The band spilt soon after recording this song and had a funny one too when it did but Count Vishal never fails to impress with his vocal range but Jayesh’s {session drummer from Dark Crucifix} drumming was a sorta let-down as I’d heard lots more praise for him. The song was a tad bit boring too!! Ahh finally Blasphemy with their uncompromising brutality in the death/gore genre reely have the last word as you are demolished with all the madness happening on that song. This track is well placed on the cd as it leaves mighty impressed with “Butchered and Raped” being of very high standards after their dismally sounding demo. I was stupefied by the intensity with which they belted out this song as well as Phebeian’s {also in grind band Intestinal Butchery} frenzied growling. The band recently recruited Vikram of C.T. {grind, B’lore} on the drums changing the name to Blaspheme and the deathheads are expecting more carnage with this line-up and the soon to be recorded album {not to belittle the fact that Marky reely pelted out some great blast-beats!}. DeepThroat stands apart not only in its packaging but the really good mix unlike other indie-releases in India. I guess TL studios will soon be a hot spot for future bands to record their demos! The CD could’ve been made better if they’d have included contact e- mail ids of the bands as I think the purpose of compilation cds is to either promote or popularise new bands. And thus if any international label were interested in any of the bands they’d have to constantly go through TL records. The inside mini-poster doesn’t make much sense {it sucks in fact!} and that space could’ve been used to print all the lyrics of the bands or a brief bio about them instead of just providing 4 lines of lyrical content per band. Anyhow such a release is momentous enough for the Indian scene presently and will do good to help bands securing deals abroad I’m sure. DeepThroat has been playing quite regularly on Delhi and Mumbai radio and TL records is currently looking forward to airplay in US. There are also plans to get some good international distribution label in the pipeline to help Indian metal conquer the world. Anyone who hasn’t a clue on how to get hold of this album {CD- 250, tape – 90} can visit the TL website www.throatlatch.com and have the CD delivered to their doorstep too! SUPPORT INDIAN METAL!