Festival Review: Bangalore Open Air 2023 Keeps the Faith in Comeback Edition

There’s only one large-scale, outdoor, day-long metal festival in India and that’s Bangalore Open Air. So dogged in their quest to keep giving fans of heavy music something to look forward to each year, it survived the pandemic (founder Salman U. Syed started a fairly successful band merch company, Rock N’ Roll Originals in the meantime) and returned after four years.

When it was about to host the likes of American mind-bending metal band Intronaut and Swedish black metallers Marduk in March 2020, Bangalore Open Air (BOA) was blocked by the restrictions falling into place at the time. It was tough luck, because Intronaut were about to make their way down to the country on the back of their standout 2020 album Fluid Existential Inversions and more so for Marduk, who had struck out with BOA in 2017 for “utter lack of professionalism” leading to their failure to make it to India the first time.

After a few postponements, BOA finally took place on April 1st and while it wasn’t the same lineup, the experience of a metal festival was (more or less) delivered to about 3,000 fans in attendance at Royal Orchid Resort and Convention Centre in Yelahanka.

If you had to play metal festival bingo, you’d find everything from couples in corpse paint, gradually unusable port-a-loos and placards like “Mosh, Sweat & Blood.” While the festival made clear that the venue would remain open until near midnight after the music ended at 10 pm with food and beverage, their stalls were pretty much cleaned out, offering only limited food options and a lack of free drinking water. These are staples for any live event, let alone a music festival, so there’s a pulling up of socks needed there.

Apart from that, the entrepreneurial spirit and resilience of Bangalore Open Air was plain to see, with metalheads meeting, moshing and headbanging together like they’d seen each other after ages. A few bands made it to meet and greet desks, while T-shirts and art were also on sale.  

The music kicked off at a bright and unbearably sunny afternoon, with Kerala thrash metallers Amorphia performing off their 2022 album Lethal Dose and more material with full force. Bengaluru/Hyderabad thrash-death metallers Godless amped things up with an ominous and punishing set, enhanced by a second guitarist in Siddhartha Ramanathan (formerly of prog band Escher’s Knot). A sea of hands go up and bodies start to fly in the moshpit as Godless kicked into songs like “Fluxion.”  

The new wave of metal in India was represented in those two sets, followed by what was a final bow by longstanding death metallers Dying Embrace. With a banner that read like a gravestone, it aptly declared that this set was their last gig. Between 1991 and 2023, Dying Embrace have been on and off with frontman Vikram Bhat and guitarist Jimmy Palkhivala. Their final set brought some of their signature putrid energy, mixed with a bit of rock and roll too. Bhat was putting away his puerile growl once and for all, shredding his vocal chords on songs like “Grotesque Entity” and “The Passing Away.” They bowed out to the chants of Dying Embrace, so the following might just keep going.

Right after them was another reminder of Bengaluru’s diehard allegiance to metal, in globe-trotting heavy metallers Kryptos, who came out to an even larger crowd. With Amorphia’s Vasuchandran M.V. jumping around and handling bass duties, Kryptos looked more confident than ever on keeping the flag flying. After all, they’ve been around for 25 years as well, churning out album upon album of steely old-school metal, from “Blackstar Horizon” to title tracks off their most recent albums Force of Danger and Afterburner.

With Kryptos walking off stage to a sea of metal horns, Dutch death metal band Pestilence arguably held the attention of the largest portion of the crowd at BOA. Bandleader Patrick Mameli said he was happy to see all the smiling faces, but there were plenty of moshpits too, as the band dug into songs like “The Process of Suffocation,” “Lost Souls” and “Land of Tears.” Bolstered by dazzling solos and plenty of cutthroat death metal, Pestilence lived up to the hype.

American metallers Born of Osiris did more than that, despite all the usual naysayers one might find for modern metal at a festival featuring extreme, veteran bands like Pestilence and Mayhem. With a wide-as-canyons sound and double vocal attack, heapfuls of colorful synth lines, they were showcasing why they were among the best modern metal bands in the world right now. Euphoric, brutal, anthemic, crushing and everything in between, it was still a set for diehard fans, specifically anyone who loved a good bag o’ breakdowns. Songs like “Bow Down,” “Poster Child,” “Machine” and “Abstract Art” made Bangalore Open Air bounce is seismic proportions.

People took a breather and sat down on the lawns before Mayhem got on. After all, the Norwegian black metal legends were about to deliver one intense 90-minute performance. With the theatricalities of Attila Csihar (who went through costume changes with the band and had several different props to gesticulate with) and backdrop changes, Mayhem had a career-spanning set that was raw and primal.

Attila’s shrieks, gravelly vocals, growls and all were enhanced by his ghoulish appearance, complete with robes, masks and bones for a cross. Like a man possessed, he moved across the stage as Mayhem launched into pulverizing, destructive cuts like “My Death,” “Symbols of Bloodsword,” “Freezing Moon” and “Buried by Time and Dust.” As they steadily descended into blastbeat hell, songs like “Deathcrush,” “Carnage” and “Pure Fucking Armageddon” were staged, making for a terrorizing headline set that capped off a mostly successful return for Bangalore Open Air. With the next edition intending to move venues and scale up to two days, here’s hoping the fundamentals remain strong as ever.

Photos: Mohit Sharma/Courtesy of Bangalore Open Air