Snarm - Till the End (2024)

Country: India
Style: Hard Rock
Rating: 7/10
Release Date: 29 Jul 2024
Sites: Facebook | Instagram | Official Website | YouTube

Here's another submission from India. I'm always happy to see these, given that it's a huge nation with a huge musical heritage, but so little of it ever seems to fit into the rock and metal vein. This particular band are Snarm, from Guwahati in Assam, and they call what they do progressive glam/arena rock. It's especially heartening to see a female drummer, which feels odd to call out in 2024 with so many entirely female bands or female musicians playing every instrument imaginable in a wealth of different genres, but is still pioneering in India. So kudos to Arju Begum; may you break that glass ceiling.

Unfortunately, she's part of the most obvious flaw but it isn't her fault. Every time the first track proper, Someday Somewhere, kicks in, my brain screams at me that the production is too thin. Her drums ought to be much beefier than they are and so should the bass of Anurag Gogoi. However, I do have to acknowledge that I'm listening on YouTube, because I don't have an album download. I have no doubt that there's compression involved so this isn't quite how the album should sound, but I found it relatively easy to adjust anyway. By the time that Sky High arrives at the very heart of the album, I've almost forgotten the thin production and I'm just listening to the music.

Initially, it's the arena rock aspect to their sound that's most obvious. Someday Somewhere plays in radio-friendly territory, even at five minutes in length, with AOR vocals from Tsooraj and a tasty fluid guitar solo from the band's founder, Shihan Bhuyan. Rarest of Pearls follows suit with softer vocals and a seventies rock feel. Till the End is good old fashioned hard rock that doesn't seem to do anything flash but flows really well and seeps into our soul because of that. It's the title track and it's the first obvious highlight the album has to offer. No Rain Can Wash Away is a ballad that shifts from delicate piano and soft orchestration to power ballad midway through. Again, there's some tasty guitarwork when it's time for Bhuyan to solo.

Sure, there's a little of their progressive edge late in Rarest of Pearls and there's definitely some glam rock on Someday Somewhere, but these don't come close to dominating the album, at least until One More Lonely Night shows up as the bonus track. That's pure glam rock with metal edges. It's a slick and commercial single but it doesn't really do anything that any other slick commercial glam rock single does, so it ends up feeling like a single that would surely get airplay but wouldn't be particularly remembered after its moment in the spotlight is up.

Mostly, this plays to me like good old fashioned hard rock, mostly seventies but with touches that are pure eighties, and enough AOR to make it totally viable as arena rock. And, while the first half is pretty solid, the second half ups the ante considerably. While Till the End is excellent and all the more memorable with each further listen, Sky High is easily the album's highlight for me. It starts out like another piano-driven ballad, but kicks in hard after a minute to become a seventies hard rock stomper. Sure, I'd like a beefier sound for the bass and drums on one, but it's a gem anyway, right down to a delightful drop into flamenco guitar with handclaps during the second half. Other than that section, somehow it feels Japanese to me, like Bow Wow covering Iron Maiden.

I didn't identify any particular influence on Till the End or Sky High, though there are elements of a lot of different bands discernible. The overt influences kick in after them. This Rock 'n' Roll Ride opens up with a guitar riff that's surely borrowed from Maiden's Back in the Village, but it has a strong Deep Purple sound otherwise. Rain and Thunder features lots more eighties metal guitar, but then it gets Michael Jackson funky and then shifts into European power metal, just in a hard rock framework. It's like Uli Jon Roth covering Helloween. Then there's Reignite, an interesting ballad that's not only folky because of an overt flute. Its sweep is reminiscent of Rainbow Eyes by Rainbow but with Mark Knopfler guitar and a vocal melody that I know I should recognise.

Oddly, while these three songs are the easiest to locate sources for, they're three of the best that the album has to offer, Sky High and Reignite above Till the End and Rain and Thunder for me and This Rock 'n' Roll Ride and No Rain Can Wash Away behind them. That's a lot of songs to call out on an album that's an intro and eight songs, plus a bonus single, which bodes well for Snarm's future, as they develop their own style and hopefully lead the way for Indian hard rock in the 2020s.

This is an easy album to like and also a comfortable album to listen to a lot. There are albums that sound amazing on a first listen, only to fade away after a few more times through; and albums that don't sound like much at all until we dig into them and realise just how amazing they are. This is an album that sounds good immediately and continues to sound good however many times we listen. I doubt it'll top anyone's lists of the best albums of the year, but it's an album even jaded critics are likely to pull back out every once in a while as a reliable old favourite. Thanks for sending this one over to me, Shihan!