Rudra

Rudra is a Singaporean death metal band. With their eponymous debut album, the band literally started a new genre of heavy metal: Vedic metal. When formed in 1992, the band was known as Rudhra, comprising of Kathi (bass, vocals), Shiva (drums) & Bala (Guitars). Eventually a fourth member, Selvam, was included to intensify the guitar department. With this line-up released a 4-track Demo entitled 'The Past' in 1994. Prior to this release, Rudhra was also featured in a few underground Death Metal compilation albums featuring several Singaporean Death Metal bands. In early 1996, the band decided to take a break abandoning a new direction it was already taking. After the break-up, the members of Rudhra got involved in several other bands. Towards the end of 1996, Kathi decided to resurrect Rudhra with a slight alteration to its name; thus Rudra (the most common English transliteration for the Sanskrit word). Immediately Kathi teamed up with Shiva and started work on the self-titled debut album. Bala and Alvin were included to complete the line up before the recording of the Self-titled debut album in late 1997, which was released in June 1998. The band played a couple of gigs and took a break for about a year before starting work on their new material. Rudra replaced their two guitarists with Selvam (ex-member) and Kannan in Jan 2000. With this present line up Rudra released their second album, "The Aryan Crusade", in September 2001. The Aryan Crusade broke new grounds and won them attention from all parts of the world. With many good reviews, this album created a cult following for Rudra in parts of the world. In July 2003, Rudra released their most intense album to date, aptly named after the battlefield featured in the great Indian epic Mahabharata, "Kurukshetra". Kurukshetra broke new grounds which further won new fans for Rudra. After many shows both in their homeland and other countries, Rudra has now released its epoch making release "Brahmavidya:Primordial I" in April 2005 which was critically acclaimed and won many rave reviews. In fact, it can be considered Rudra's most well received album to date. The second chapter to the Brahmavidya trilogy, Brahmavidya: Transcendental I was released on April 15, 2009. On 22nd June 2009, Rudra announced the departure of long time guitarist Selvam. On 3rd July 2009, Selvam's replacement, Vinod was announced. The new lineup can be viewed at http://www.rudraonline.org/Band/Band.htm