The path to the 8th Silence Festival is all paved. And this year, Nepal’s biggest metal music fiesta features a heavy line-up of international artists, including the legendary ‘Testament’ from the US. Slated for December 14 at Tangalwood, Kathmandu, the Silence Festival has already sold out the limited number of early bird tickets it issued. But the audience can still buy tickets priced Rs 2,500 at the door. It’s an all-day concert and with the limited audience capacity you might want to get to the venue early.
Here we bring you a compilation of the international artists scheduled to perform.
Testament is an American thrash metal band from Berkeley, California. Formed in 1982 under the name Legacy, the band's current lineup comprises guitarists Eric Peterson and Alex Skolnick, lead vocalist Chuck Billy, drummer Gene Hoglan, and bassist Steve Di Giorgio.
Since its inception, Testament has had numerous lineup changes, leaving Peterson as the only constant member. In 1986, Billy replaced original singer Steve “Zetro” Souza (who left the band to join Exodus as the replacement for Paul Baloff), just before recording their first studio album, “The Legacy,” and has been a member since.
Testament is credited as one of the most popular and influential bands of the thrash metal scene, as well as among the leaders of the second wave of the genre in the late 1980s. They have also been referred to as one of the “big eight” of thrash metal, along with Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Exodus, Overkill and Death Angel. The band has sold over 1.4 million albums in the US since the beginning of the SoundScan era and over 14 million worldwide. To date, Testament has released 12 studio albums (one of which is a collection of re-recorded songs), four live albums, five compilation albums, 12 singles and three DVDs.
Burgerkill is an Indonesian metal band, originally from Bandung, the capital of West Java. Named after the fast food restaurant, Burger King, as a prank, the band was founded in May 1995 by Aris Tanto a.k.a. Eben, sometimes called ‘Ebenz’, then a young man from Jakarta who came to Bandung to continue his study. In Bandung, Ebenz met Ivan Scumbag, Kimung, and Dadan. These four comprised the first line-up of Burgerkill in 2013 and won Metal Hammer Golden Gods Awards in “Metal As F*ck” category.
Burgerkill was formed in Ujungberung region, located on the east side of Bandung city. Ujungberung is not only known as Metal Village, but also the center of Sundanese traditional art and culture, such as bela diri benjang, angklung, and kecapi suling.
Queso are a Filipino Rock band that enjoyed mainstream success in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The band eventually broke up after the release of their third album but reunited in 2012. At the height of their popularity, Queso (previously Cheese) were considered part of the Filipino Nu Metal genre. The band is best known for the single “Mottaka,” a song about friendship, from their second album “Pilipinas.”
The band’s former and current members all grew up in the local rock and metal scene. The band’s singer Ian Tayao and guitarist Ocho Toleran each has background in other projects and with different artists. Queso’s sound, especially in their final years before disbanding, evolved and became more experimental, blending Rock, Reggae, Funk, Folk, Dub, and Jazz.
Trainwreck is an American southern and comedy rock band, formed in LA, California in 2002. It was founded by Tenacious D guitarist Kyle Gass and actor JR Reed. The band originally started out as a three-piece, with Reed on vocals, Gass on guitar and friend Kevin Weisman as the drummer. The band had pseudonyms for its members. Reed was “Darryl Lee Donald”, Gass was “Klip Calhoun” and Weisman was “Kenny Bob Thornton”. Gass and Reed began to search for backing musicians, as they felt Trainwreck’s musical style was “too close to Tenacious D”.
The band met electric guitarist John Konesky and bassist John Spiker in Ohio through a mutual friend. The two Ohio men relocated to Los Angeles to form Trainwreck as “John Bartholomew Shredman” and “Boy Johnny” respectively. Nate Rothacker replaced Weisman as the drummer in the mid-2000s, going under the pseudonym “Dallas St. Bernard”. The band released one studio album, one live album, one EP and a single before splitting in 2010. It would reform in 2018 and announce a reunion tour, as well as a second studio album.
Godless slowly rose to the very top of India’s death metal class from their inauspicious origins in an exotic metal music scene. Interestingly, through this gradual but inexorable climb, the members band didn’t distinguish themselves so much for their innovations as for their unapologetic commitment to pure, unadulterated, lightning-fast, ear-shredding, thrash-influenced death metal.
Since their formation in mid-2015 by musicians who have been part of the Indian metal scene for years, the Hyderabad-based band has also broken into other old-school metallic forms.
Slowly developing their craft over the next year, singer Kaushal LS, guitarists Ravi Nidamarthy and Rohit Nair, bassist Abbas Razvi, and drummer Aniketh Yadav eventually recorded a four-track EP with the mission statement-like title of “Centuries of Decadence,” which was mixed and mastered by Joe Haley of Australian technical death metal band Psycroptic. After being brought under the Transcending Obscurity Records fold, Godless launched their EP in May 2016, which was met with rave reviews in media, including features in Rolling Stone India, Metal Hammer, Terrorizer, and XXL Rock.
