For someone like this writer, who has played no musical instrument since rebelling against compulsory piano lessons as a pre-teen, watching talented musicians perform is like watching a magic show.
Watching metal musicians perform at aggressive speeds is even more magical, and perhaps watching drummers is the most fascinating, because after all they’re using all four limbs doing four different things at any moment but usually without sounding like four trash cans crashing down some stairs.
And so I tend to be attracted to playthrough videos by drummers, including the one you’re about to see, which features skinsman Priyam Srivastava performing on the song “Vibora” by The Second Fovea.
If you visit our site every day (and if you don’t, what the hell is wrong with you?!?), then you saw our premiere of a video for this same song in the last week of November. If you missed it, here’s an excerpt of what we wrote then:
You can tell from the cover art for “Vibora” that it has something to do with snakes. Nasty snakes. The song’s name itself means “viper” in Portuguese or “snake” in Spanish. As the band tell us, the song is “dedicated to the Golden Lancehead Vipers, a type of snake found exclusively on an island off the Brazilian coast (Ilha de Queimada Grande, aka Snake Island).” They say, “This is one of the most dangerous places in the world and humans are not allowed to enter”.
The song tells a tale of sailors venturing through the Atlantic, and they spot something golden on a thickly forested island. Their greed makes them believe it is actual gold. They dock and walk into the thick jungle only to realize those are golden snakes. They try to escape but instead succumb to venom. Indeed, not all that glitters is gold….
As for the music, you’ll learn that it’s driven by heavy, hammering grooves (and indeed, groove has been one of the throughlines in the band’s musical evolution) and lots of pulse-punching, skull-cracking drumwork. As you might expect, it also incorporates sinister slithering guitar-leads and venomous warping electronics, and succeeds in creating an overarching aura of menace.
The vocals are remarkably wide-ranging, but you won’t hear them in this video, to enable greater ease of focus on what Priyam is doing — which you’ll be able to watch across changing angles. And so, as we wrote before, “Prepare for your muscles to start jumping and venom to enter your veins”.
Credit for the videography goes to Timothy Winslow, and to Dheeraj Govindraju for the video editing.
The studio version of “Vibora” is available on all major streaming platforms and as a download on the band’s Bandcamp page.
LINEUP FOR “VIBORA”:
Vocals: Lalit Mehta
Guitars & Bass: Naval Katoch
Synth & FX: Soumyadeep Ghoshal
Drums: Priyam Srivastava
BANDCAMP:
https://thesecondfovea.bandcamp.com/track/vibora
FOLLOW:
https://www.instagram.com/thesecondfovea/
https://www.facebook.com/thesecondfovea