Brutal Fest Gig Review

Brutal Fest was organized by Brutal Pokhara on July 02 Saturday.

Day I

Google gave me the meaning of “brutal” as “extremely ruthless or cruel”. And, it became exactly the intolerable brutal for me during my tour to Brutal Pokhara - Brotherhood of Mayhem gig on 2nd of July, Saturday. We headed to Pokhara at around 12 P.M. from Kathmandu by 17 seated MicroBus. We were stuck at AbhuKhairani at around 4 P.M. because of brutal landslide. But our team did not lose hope to attend that gig. Around 12 AM midnight, the road blockage was cleared and then we resumed our trip. We reached at Prithivi Chowk at 2:45 am ( 3rd of July). By the help of taxi we luckily reached our hotel at 3.15 a.m. and we slept.

Day II

This day was Brutal Fest. We were very much excited to slake our brutal thirst for metal. We entered the venue Thakali Samaj Ghar at 2 P.M. The location was pretty cool, sunlight was banned in venue. I could not see enough sound system as we normally see in even small gigs in Ktm.

I was unfamiliar with most of the bands playing in Brutal Fest except Hatebook. Right from the start of gig, I was very unsatisfied. Some three bands (I could not remember the band names except Dark Murder Scheme) spent more than 1.30 hrs on checking sound system. It was already past 3 PM, even though the gig was supposed to start after 12 PM. On the stage, these bands came and went off after checking their sound – and it was like a boring child game for us. I had never seen those type of sound system checking till now.

Finally, the gig was kicked off by Pokhara’s Dark Guree Amort. This band was in compilation of Brutal Pokhara. They just roughly tried the sound and started playing. They started the show by covering legendry band Slayer's South of Heaven. Fuck the noise produced. I could not distinguish vocal and lead but it was just drum eating the whole sound and other noise from guitar feedback. Yet, the band did not try to adjust the noises before playing another track which was also Slayer cover.

Then 2-3 bands came and played but all were like the same for me. I did not even notice the band's name. Almost all bands played cover songs of Slipknot, Lamb of God, Pantera and so on. No one gave fuck to sound but I could see their face charming for playing. Next it was Narsamhaar on the stage. This was the only tight band from Pokhara. They did three originals and one cover along from Brutal Compilation. Vocal was strong part of Narsamhaar. They left stage after covering Born to Be Wild. Then it was Hatebook on stage.. Hatebook is a rising death metal band from Kathmandu. I am a big fan of Hatebook esp Navin's growling. But Pokhara became unlucky for Hatebook. They did only three tracks and left the stage because of sound problem. They were talented but it was organizer who did not manage good sound system and other crucial part to make a gig like gig. After Hatebook, I left the show and don’t know what happened after that.

Overall, for me it was not like gig. It seemed to me that multiple bands were practicing on same hall. The venue was good , audience were satisfactory but the sound system was fucked up. Plus I noticed that most of the people in the crowd loved covered songs, as they were yelling for Lamb of God cover most of the times. There were only few metal freaks to listen to the band’s originals. Most of bands did cover and few bands Narsamhaar and Hatebook did original in Brutal Fest.

I am very much disappointed with Brutal Pokhara for organizing such a low quality gig.I had a lot of expectation from the gig, especially because of the way it was promoted in Facebook.

Suggestion for Brutal Pokhara for another Gig.
Hire good quality sound system.
Represent few bands rather than many bands.
Do some homework for Gig also as in Promotion.

[Picture Credit: Narsamhaar Facebook]

[Note: I do not belong to any groups/bands.This is my own Personal View of gig.]