Bangalore-based progressive metal band Fallen Letters – featuring Vishal Naidu (vocals, guitars), Aditya Ramesh (lead guitar), Abhay Prakash (bass), and Mukund Narasimhan (drums) release their debut full-length Mindfractures (Alterfate Records, Sept 26, 2025), marking their transformation from a studio project into a cohesive, evolving force.
Their music leans into the melodic melancholy of Sweden’s progressive traditions (Opeth, Katatonia) but also channels the weight of Agalloch and the rhythmic playfulness of Dream Theater. Across eight tracks, Fallen Letters explore mindfractures as both a sonic and emotional condition – voices splintering, rhythms breaking apart, and dissonant melodies searching for resolution.
Mixed and mastered by Johan Martin at Punch Sector Studios in Sweden – a disciple of Jens Bogren Mindfractures feels strangely delicate. There’s polish, yes, but not at the cost of the record’s raw undercurrent. It’s a debut that doesn’t hold back; instead, it insists on plunging you headfirst into turbulence, dissonance, and fleeting moments of clarity.
A Fractured Monologue
The record begins with unease. Dissonant textures – setting a mood that feels unstable yet deliberate. The weight builds gradually, not through volume but through tension – layers of sound tightening, rhythms pressing in, and melodies edging toward collapse. It’s an unsettling invitation, preparing the listener for the fractures and intensities that follow.
Distant Lines
Here, melody seeps through the cracks. The song proceeds on rhythmic sleight of hand: the drums slip into off-beats and then snap back, making a simple groove feel elusive and complicated. The track here reveals its progressive edge. Beneath the complexity lies a bittersweet pull, trying to grasp a memory that’s out of reach.
Everdream
Softly whispered vocals drift over the steady pulse of the drum’s double bass and soaring guitars, pulling the record into its true reflective moment. There’s a fragile hope woven into the track, reaching for light as the shadows linger. The melody repeats with a hypnotic weight drawing the listener deeper. It carries a fullness that recalls prog rock at its most serene, yet it never settles into pure comfort – a tinge of tension runs through every phrase.
Submatrix
The storm returns with immediate impact. Crashing drums propel the track forward, while vocals swing between screams and layered harmonies. The lyrics speak of entrapment – a cage, a refusal to escape, a dream shared by many. The music mirrors a psychological tug-of-war, dense and aggressive, which is broken by surges of melodic relief. It feels like one of the band’s most cathartic tracks, translating frustration into sheer sonic weight.
Drenched
This is where Fallen Letters expand their palette. Static sound effects, bell-like cymbals, and horns carrying the melody give the track a dimension beyond metal’s usual boundaries. It leans into prog’s atmospheric side. It settles deeply, leaving a resonance that stays after it ends.
Monochrome Visions
Cinematic in scope, Monochrome Visions feels like watching a dream dissolve in grayscale. The opening gives way to riffs, reverb-soaked vocals, and an instrumental narrative that does most of the storytelling. For much of the song, the instruments feel like they’re sketching out landscapes. The closing metric modulation twists the rhythm into something alien, disorienting but strangely beautiful.
Beneath the Opaque Veil
If there’s one song that embodies the record’s sense of Mindfractures, it’s this. Whispers of wind-like vocals create an unsettling presence, while the drums shift tempos in ways that constantly unseat the listener. A faint, consonant string of hope threads through the chaos, only to be buried again and again under waves of heaviness. It feels mysterious, unresolved, until the final moments when the music finally settles but with a sense of exhausted acceptance. It’s both terrifying and human.
The Farthest Window
The album’s closer is powerful and calm, an anthem that rises steadily through surging drums, chant-like choruses, and scream-laden vocals that declare defiance. The themes of inevitability and distance come across not as surrender, but as a stance of strength. Its final buildup doesn’t settle into resolution; it keeps climbing. As a closing statement, it feels less like an end and more like transcendence.
With Mindfractures, Fallen Letters have delivered a debut that refuses to play it safe. It’s intricate without collapsing into self-indulgence. What holds it all together is vulnerability – each song feels like an attempt to wrestle with something deeply personal, turning private tension into sound.
Within India’s evolving metal landscape, Mindfractures stands less as a first step and more as a statement of intent. It’s an album built on precision and emotion in equal measure. By channeling their own turmoil into music, Fallen Letters have created a record that resonates inwardly with intimacy and projects outward with undeniable force.
