Lawma plays an ordinary guitar, apparently an ordinary multieffects processor and to round things up, even plays in a very ordinary jumpy 'nu' band from this one video of theirs that I saw. Seemed like easy picking to me. But, and it's a big but dear readers, this isn't ordinary at all, not even close and not even during the weakest moment of this album. Obliged to give him the kvltblog treatment.

As far as influences go, he comes from the post-shrapnel-records style of guitar playing. There are familiar big name influences all over this album. You can hear Joe Satriani-like song structures and the sweet legatos, the Yngwie school's staccato style during its more manic moments, Petrucci's rhythm and shred antics and definitely a fair bit of Marty Friedmanesque phrasing thrown in. Maybe a few more, but I think I've nailed the more obvious ones.

About the ordinary guitar and processor I was telling you about earlier, it's one of the things that really impressed me about Lawma. He manages to get a really cool bunch of tones even with not-so-pro setup of his. My favourite lead tone of his is that clean and phat with a nice little overdriven sound he gets during the more mellow moments in the album. A variety of clean tones and some really cool rhythm tones too.

It's not just your give-me-a-beat-I'll-play-a-riff-and-wank-over-it thing that most shredders fall into just to show-off the hours spent everyday studying their favourite guitarists' licks, taking it to a robotic and inane unmusical level. This isn't your insanely talented bedroom guitar playing geek playing all the impressive Vai, Yngwie and classical pieces and some of that shit on youtube that gets passed on for awesome because the guitarist is pulling off complex Bach compositions with all the fingers tapping the shit out of the guitar. Go play a fucking piano you asshole. It's not just your regular cliched shredder who's trying to showcase an album full of various styles of guitars he can play.

Sure, he has various styles too but it's all tastefully done here and all in the context of well structured songs. He has rockers and he has ballads. Let's take, for example, the grab-your-girl's-ass-and-slow-dance ballad of the album called Always Here For You (Cheesy youtube video). It begins like trademark Joe Satriani and ends quite like what Marty was doing on the Scenes album especially. Very tasteful with the right dynamics and enough elements added in the song to sustain repeat listens. In a nutshell, he takes the influences and writes good songs.

And it's not even the best song on the album.

The album has its mellow moments and its heavy moments when the rhythm guitars either occasionally feature a bluesy riff or more frequently the prog-metal style chuggy rhythms. He takes his chances with bluesy licks, neo-classical and exotic scales, shred-your-ass-off-moments when the songs peak and never overplaying, smart use of harmonies and effects like volume swells, harmonics, occasional whammy divebombs and the wah, has great feel for the instrument and a good ear for tones and obviously has a truckload of cool ideas to bring out the best in any given song he's written and produced here.

This is a damn good home produced album with very competent drum programming and keyboards, sometimes cheesy but overall good, added for accompaniment.

A little bit more originality, which I bet is going to happen as he grows as a musician considering he's still around his mid-twenties, and better production values, this guy is ready for the big league. Lawma comes from the north-eastern state of India called Mizoram and is obscure even in the perennially stale (and pretty much non-existent) rock scene in India. (Don't even try. He's better than your favourite Indian rock guitar hero, especially that guy you have in mind who's played for years, won the best guitarist prize in a competition or two, had a lot of online friends sucking up to him and maybe even that guy who teaches guitars, he's better than almost anybody you might probably want to namedrop here.)

Since he's unsigned and this is an unreleased album, Lawma was kind enough to send me the artwork for the planned tape release and also some sound bytes for your listening pleasure. These few seconds don't do justice to what he's capable of but check them out, links below.

Soundbytes:

Above the Sky

After Death

Daydream

Rock Symphony