The year 2020 was not good for a lot of people out there, but turns out a band from the south region of the nation having big dreams and the passion to achieve them, achieved it. In late august of 2020 pineapple express dropped their second album and it shook everyone in the fusion/progressive rock scene. Their new album Passages truly opened us to the new and very unique sound.
The new album consists of 4 new songs with an unbelievable transition between the songs that makes the entire album so unique that it all sounds like a 20 minutes song, so energetic that you cannot stop head-banging. The album starts with the first song named Vultures which started with short audio and said it all about the vultures of the skies. With extraordinary vocal lines and lyrics by their lead vocalist, Kartik Chennoji vultures truly set the bar for the EP higher. As we move into the next song Arjun MPN and Shravan Sridhar started the show with a small teaser of something which truly changed their destiny and hence was called so. This song reminds you of the elements of fusion from their first album, Uplift. The best part of this song is how Jimmy Francis John delivers those lyrics and, in the way, they end it with a world-known shloka from Bhagwat Geeta.
The next song is called Relentless and it again started with Jimmy on vocals and I must give credits to Arpit Aseem for writing such flawless lyrics for the Hindi parts in the songs, truly one of the greatest lyrics. Each lyric added more value to the music the band created. The last song is called paralyse and we can hear the pineapple express elements in it.
Talking about the music, let us talk about the musicians involved in making of these songs, huge credit goes to Yogeendra Hariprasad for carrying it all together from winning in IIT Madras, Saarang to truly uplifting the music and giving them passage to being one of the best fusion bands of India, handling the keyboard, mixing and mastering he is truly an inspiration for a lot of budding producers out there in the country. A good band with an amazingly extraordinary drummer whose odd timings and drumming is so on point that it goes so well with the band that the transitions are smoother than anything. Gopi Shravan, drummer, Pineapple Express, enough said. Talking about the mind behind the greatest riffs written by these bands we have Toxic Teddy and Ritwik Bhattacharya on guitar handling the lead and rhythm of the band. The mastering of this song was handled by Adam Bentley and Walk the waves (for Paralyse) and Melrick D'Souza (for Vultures and Relentless) were given special mentions. With this unique sound of their own, I must say that it is impossible for this band to no surprise it's fans, and as they say, let's #takatakatheithei!
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