Bevar Sea, Invoke the Bizarre: Move into Alignment
“All roads lead to the Sabbath,” intones Bevar Sea vocalist Ganesh Krishnaswamy on “Bearded and Bizarre,” the opening track of Invoke the Bizarre. That may well be the case, at least as far as heavy rock, sludge and doom go, but it hardly speaks to the full scope of the Bangalore five-piece’s sophomore outing. Released in India via The Mighty Riff Records, the six-track/47-minute offering is the follow-up to their 2012 self-titled debut (track stream here) and finds the band engaged in multi-tiered progression, guitarist Srikanth Panaman pushing the material into more aggressive instrumental territory while Krishnaswamy executes a central lyrical theme through his gruff vocals, moments like the big slowdown of “Bearded and Bizarre” or “Sleeping Pool” calling Obituary to mind more than most doom, even as Avinash Ramchander seems to be nodding at Black Sabbath‘s “Heaven and Hell” in his bassline for the latter.
That lyrical theme is less narrative than would put Invoke the Bizarre in concept-record territory, but suffice it to say there are a couple wizards around. With Panaman and Rahul Chacko (also visual art) on guitar, Ramchander on bass and Deepak Raghu on drums, the tracks sound full and weighted when they’re supposed to — which is pretty much everywhere except the penultimate “Heathen” — but there’s a prevailing rawness in the tones, and though layered, in the lack of effects on the vocals as well, that keeps a naturalist thread running through the opener as it seems to dirge-march further and further toward its own oblivion, finding some acoustic strum to go along with its fervent chug when it gets there. The upshot? It is not long into the proceedings before Invoke the Bizarre lives up to its name.
It works because of an overall cohesion of sound — Nikhil Pai recorded at Adarsh Recording Studio, while Snail bassist Matt Lynch mixed and mastered at Mysterious Mammal — and because Bevar Sea are clear in their sonic intent. Invoke the Bizarre breaks more or less into even three-song sides, each comprising a shorter song sandwiched by two longer ones. The songwriting varies between tracks, and “Bury Me in NOLA” bears surprisingly little resemblance to Down as the midpoint of what would be a vinyl’s side A, instead taking on more doomed impulses as it calls for more moonshine at its apex, Krishnaswamy echoing out a few obscure lines after the instruments have finished, as much setting a sparse foundation for “Sleeping Pool” to begin as rounding out “Bury Me in NOLA” itself. The chug runs strong in the initial moments of “Sleeping Pool,” but there’s a sense of melody in the guitars and layered vocals of the verse as well.
Those vocals are a bit forward in the mix, but there’s plenty of dense tonality surrounding, and Raghu‘s drums hold the track together fluidly, dropping out momentarily as the song approaches its midsection only to return for an especially satisfying, swinging push around the five-minute mark. How it might tie into the lyrical theme, I don’t know, but “Sleeping Pool” does seem to feature the line, “All aboard the whisky train,” sort of spat out in rhythmic layers before and after a standout dual-guitar solo, so one way or another, Bevar Sea immerse themselves into a rippling morass of sludge rock, dense and punishing in kind, but still accessible for the already-converted. Effects in the aforementioned end-section of “Sleeping Pool” add monstrous edge to the creeping central riff, and the band seem well in their comfort zone riding that progression to the track’s finish, some 10-plus minutes after it began.
Side B is given a somewhat more melancholic instrumental beginning with a guitar solo at the start of “Where There’s Smoke (There’s a Pyre),” but the bulk of the song itself is geared more toward Iommic metal than emotive positioning. The drums offer liberal double-kick, and Krishnaswamy sneers out verses early in single layer as a faster guitar push veers away from some of the more riff-led fare — an even bigger shift when one considers the first album — into more of a full-band straight-ahead approach. At 7:54, “Where There’s Smoke (There’s a Pyre)” both mirrors the opener “Bearded and Bizarre” and has its own personality, later doubled vocals calling to mind Ronnie James Dio in hyperenunciating the word “fire.” A turn into acoustic strum and backing percussion is immediate for “Heathen,” which is less than two minutes long but more than an interlude as a precursor to “The Grand Alignment” for its melodic pulse and overarching adventurousness.
The closer is the longest inclusion at 11:45 and embarks on a grander feel in its chorus that’s a further show of the growth Bevar Sea have undertaken in the last three years. One would expect “The Grand Alignment” to build to a formidable crescendo before it’s done, and it lives up to that promise, but it’s worth pointing out that’s not actually how Invoke the Bizarre concludes, the band instead pushing through the chugging plod and almost sneaking in a break of jazzy psychedelic noodling before riffing out another couple measures at full assault and calling it a day with a final semi-chorus, sustained guitar noise being the last element to fade out. Even in this final moment, the fivesome don’t let an opportunity pass to make the name of the record a reality, but that impulse is also one of the strongest aspects of Invoke the Bizarre, since it’s that willingness to break with genre convention that underlines the development in Bevar Sea‘s approach. Combined with the sense of attack that Invoke the Bizarre has at times, it puts the band in a place all the more their own.
