Band:	Serpents Of Pakhangba
Album:	Air And Fire
Style:	Avantgarde metal, Folk metal
Release date:	February 12, 2025
A review by:	musclassia

01. Divine Tree
02. Invocation Of Pakhangba
03. Ancient Forest
04. Carnivorous [feat. Pratika Prabhune and Mallika Sundaramurthy]
05. Wings
06. Forest Hymn [feat. Ambar Das and Arghadeep Barua]
07. Fury
08. North Of Koubru
09. Soul Of The Word
10. Air And Fire (Part I)
11. Panthoibi
12. A Wounded Leader's Last Stand [feat. Victoria Villarreal]
13. Soraren Chant [feat. Nate Miller]

With Amogh Symphony, Vishal Singh built his reputation as part of a band frequently categorized as avantgarde; therefore, it’s perhaps unsurprising that his next project would also be referred to in such terms. However, Serpents Of Pakhangba is a very different beast to Amogh Symphony.

For a country with the world’s largest population, India hadn’t received much coverage on Metal Storm until recently; there are reviews of albums from the country in the site’s back catalogue if one looks hard enough, but it’s only since 2022 that bands from India have received more consistent coverage, between the likes of Aarlon, Friends From Moon, Dirge (IND) and most notably Bloodywood. The next act to make it onto the front page is Serpents Of Pakhangba, an act formed by Singh in 2019, and fleshed out into a full six-person line-up in time for the release of sophomore album Air And Fire.

As mentioned in the opening, Serpents Of Pakhangba goes far in an opposite direction to the jazzy eccentricity of Amogh Symphony; instead, this new band’s music is heavily grounded in folk music, with a real shamanic conceptual focus, which is bolstered by elements from prog, alternative and even black metal. Folk and avantgarde metal is a combination popularized by Thy Catafalque, and to some degree Serpents Of Pakhangba’s infusion of sounds has some similarity to the works of Tamás Kátai, if one overlooks the differences in local musical inspiration. Another act that came to mind while exploring Air And Fire is Ethiopia’s Nishaiar, both for the eclecticism and also the frequently droning nature of the folk music portions of the album, as well as the chanting vocal arrangements.

Now, eclecticism can be a blessing and/or a curse for a metal album, particularly from a band early in its journey, and Air And Fire does get off to a bit of a challenging start. Conceptually, the album is told from the perspective of a shamanic tribe persecuted by corrupt government forces, and there are multiple spoken word tracks to help structure the narrative (words and lyrics across the album are conveyed in a variety of languages, including English, Japanese, Manipuri and Goalparia). However, 3 of these 4 interlude pieces are situated within the first 5 songs of the tracklist, and frontloading the record with scene-setting does somewhat bog down its introduction. On top of that, one of the other songs in that first third of the record is “Carnivorous”, a rather bold stylistic departure from much of the rest of the album in that it goes by way of alternative/nu metal and features rapping, and not particularly successfully so. The song’s not a complete dud; I quite like the bright synth melody and uplifting nature of its closing moments, and the vocal cameo from Mallika Sundaramurthy (Abnormality, Unfathomable Ruination) works better than Pratika Prabhune’s rapping.

The album starts to come alive once it hits track 6, “Forest Hymn”, however. On top of the guest vocalists, there’s multiple permanent vocalists within the band, including clean singer Hinoki and throat singer Akash, while traditional metal instruments are joined at various points by the likes of the erhu, pena and singing bowl. These vocals and instruments go well with the album’s folk focus, which emerges early on during the droning, ponderous “Invocation Of Pakhangba”. “Forest Hymn” is also rooted in folk, but distinguishes itself from “Invocation Of Pakhangba” and most of the rest of the album, not only by having an absence of metal, but by also channelling a more European-sounding style of folk music, from the tender violin to the delivery of the sung and chanted vocals (the chorus hook bears some resemblance to Fever Ray’s “If I Had A Heart”). Like “Carnivorous”, it stands apart from the rest of Air And Fire, but does so far more successfully.

From this point on, Air And Fire really hits its groove. “Fury” and “North Of Koubru” jump around quite a bit between non-metal folk and extreme metal by way of other sounds, but manage to do so without sounding erratic; furthermore, the combos of flutes with blasts at times in both songs positively reminds me of Ershetu’s albums. The latter again brings to mind Nishaiar in its tribal ambient midsection, but it successfully transitions into a rampant prog-metal ending. The chop-changing between segments and styles isn’t always perfect in its execution; I find “A Wounded Leader’s Last Stand” to be somewhat disjointed, which isn’t helped by some sections falling flat. Nevertheless, it still has some good ideas, from the interesting rhythms built early on by the drums and electronics, to a nice brief moment of vocal harmonizing around the 4-minute mark.

Still, for all its versatility, Air And Fire arguably works best when it sticks to a consistent vibe for longer. “Panthoibi” and “Soraren Chant” are both rich folk songs starting with a base of drones and textured vocals, and both of them evolve towards more metallic endings without undercutting the vibe, particularly “Soraren Chant”, whose evolution from earthen mellowness to emphatic stomping and chanting is perhaps the highlight of the album. If anything, I feel like Serpents Of Pakhangba could actually benefit from toning down some of the stylistic exploration and instead capitalizing on how effectively they bring together these particular sounds, but if Singh and his collaborators weren’t so musically adventurous, they may not have stumbled across this fusion to begin with, so who am I to tell them to slow down?