Mumbai’s Heavy Metal band, rather “funny band”, ‘Workshop‘ is out with their latest Album- ‘Made Love To The Dragon‘,
playing straight-forward Heavy Metal, in the vein of NWOBHM bands, such as Iron Maiden and Angel
Witch. They, although, do describe their music as is a “subtle blend of rock, pop, jazz, fusion, metal and hip hop and all rolled into a humorous ball and baked at 355 degrees in a musical oven!”
The album starts off with the title track, which has a catchy main riff, played in a typical
traditional metal style with single note gallops. The chorus is catchy, however, lacks energy, hence
the capability to induce sing-along in a live situation. Although I’d rather avoid track-by-
track reviews, I cannot help but point out the excruciating cheesiness (intended, I’m guessing) of the following track,
‘Down to Dahisar‘, barring the good solos churned out every now and then. The band shows some Progressive Metal tendencies in the track ‘Munni Badnam vs Sheila Jawan‘, with little use of odd time signatures. And then there is
‘Naagin ki Nazar‘, probably not one of their better compositions, let alone the lyrics. I choose not to discuss
the song titles, considering how ballistically “80’s” the band’s music is. The lyrical themes
convey no serious message and are purely meant to be “fun”. Musically, everything on the album is
tightly played, and that comes as no surprise, since the musicians have tons of experience, but
the same cannot be said about compositions or songwriting. There were moments on almost every song
that made me want to skip it, either due to awfully corny lyrical-vocal combination, or simply
meandering work on the instruments. Between the title track and ‘Blues Motion’, which happens to be a rather good track, there are instances where things get a bit hilarious, specially the part that goes…”And I ran”. The entire album, else, feels like a complete filler, with random riffs thrown around. Despite the
employment of structures and songwriting, the intermediate songs never managed to grab my
attention. A redeeming point would have to be the tasteful guitar solos, executed perfectly,
keeping up with the reputation of traditional metal, this is especially heard in the closing
track, the bonus..oops!… ‘The Bonuts Song’.
If ‘Workshop’ exponentially reduces the cheesy-ness and works out their vocal patterns and
songwriting, their music is worth digging into. Not to forget, with the entire concept of “fun” that
‘Workshop‘ screams out LOUD, it’s certainly not a ‘rice-plate-eating’ kind of thingy in Metal,
* Thumbs Up-to-them* on that note. Good production! I can’t imagine the jam-sessions and live-
concerts (provided the audience knows the music), it could possibly be rad or real pissing.
However, “Made Love to the Dragon” turns out a rather loose collection of songs that could easily
be discarded, because I’m not sure how seriously am I supposed to take it..after all they mean serious funny business!
Reverbnation page: www.reverbnation.com/workshopindia
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