Metalheads of today don't know how lucky they are. I remember a time when good modern hardcore was as tough to find as a good bag of dope, and you had to track it down in much the same way: get to know the Right People and wait patiently until they introduce you to the seedy elements of the underground. I would have been ecstatic to have known about Today Is The Day and their quality ilk in the mid 1990s, but I wasn't a record-store nerd back then, and I didn't have many cool friends. So, as scary as it sounds to the digital-generation young, I, for the most part, HAD TO RELY ON COMMERCIAL RADIO FOR MY MUSIC.
Listeners raised with internet access will never have to stoop so low; I was a metal whore, desperate for what Ministry called "just one fix." JUST ONE FUCKING HIT man, just one. So allow me to vent a little; metalheads of today have it SO easy. Not only is metal enjoying yet another rebirth, both commercially and otherwise, but it's easy to jump online and cycle through a million candidates for Best New Hardcore Discovery. I could only imagine getting home from a shitty day of high school and sitting down to a never-ending galaxy of easy-to-access heaviness, from more above-ground thrashers like Mastodon to mid-level mashers like Fear Before The March Of Flames to sub-level rag-taggers like Asunder. It must be grand, I tellsya.
I NEVER would have known about a band like Indian back in the diz-ay. If not for the indie-footsoldier status I enjoy these days, I'm fairly positive that Slights and Abuse / The Sycophant would have trickled right past me as I paddled against the waves of commercial crap. And if a frog had wings, it wouldn't wear itself out a-hoppin', right? Well, I'm trying make a point here (in fact I've been trying for most of three 'graphs), namely that it's a great time to be alive if you're a headbanger, and releases like Slights and Abuse, which rule all sorts of ass while no one's watching, are the reason. Don't look for Indian on MTV2 or Late Night with Jools Holland, just treasure them for what they are and feel lucky that you've witnessed their capillary-crushing, crusty music in the first place.
When you study a genre long enough, you start to see a band's sound as a series of events building up to an unavoidable confluence of styles. Like the myriad physiological happenings that contributed to the earth's formation, there's always a laundry list of reasons a group approach their craft the way they do. In the case of Indian, I'm guessing they listened to a lot of Bloodlet in the incubator, took notes when they first heard the ‘zing’ of Lightning Bolt's bass buzz, made a point to observe Training For Utopia, and, to wrap it in a knot and tie it with a bow, ingested the fallout of Sepultura's prime years as much as humanly possible. They also may have taken in a little Entombed, Carcass, and/or Melvins in the process; it's all part of a patchwork.
What's more important than their alleged influences is how they wield them; in this department, Indian put the ‘mettle’ in their metal, using the means mentioned above to create a superior end. The production is stellar, the guitars guttural, the bass bulbous, the vocals venomous, and each song carries with it a unique feel, even as they're inextricably tied to one another. Indian haven't rewritten the metal rulebook with Slights and Abuse / The Sycophant, but they come closer than most of their peers, many of whom receive a lot more attention across the board. If the distinct ruckus Indian conjure ever takes on a fully original form, well, look the fuck out. They won't be a small-time band forever.
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