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The Rise and Rise of Metal In India

Exploring the burgeoning metal scene in the country

Oct 08, 2008

The Indian on the street finds metal bands funny and ridiculous, even scary. Many find them culturally alien. The believers, of course, worship them. Kazi says, “People stare at us wherever we go but we are stubborn bastards. At one point we even thought of getting T-shirts made with the slogan “100 bucks for a half-hour stare; 200 bucks for a photograph.”

Sujay Harthi of Bhoomi tells the story of going to play at a college called Acharya Pathshala (APS) near Bengaluru. On their arrival, the band was accosted by ”˜linguistic rowdies’ who demanded that the band only play local music. They carried placards which said: “no english music in aps” and threatened to pelt the band with eggs. Bhoomi decided to take a chance. They began the set with a song they never play, Queen’s ”˜We Will Rock You.’ By the end of the gig, the previously hostile audience was showering the band with flowers and singing along.

Harthi tells another story about the band receiving handwritten invitations from a bunch of North-East students studying in an engineering college in a village called Tiptur. So they went there to do a gig. The circle inspector of the area loved their music. Each member of the band was garlanded with marigold flowers. When the principal of the college decided to stop the gig halfway, the inspector overruled him and the show continued into the night. Metal had successfully added a few more converts to its fold.

In metal, increasingly, the mosh pit is where the action is at. And there is already a split between the cities. Standing in the Sports Bar in Phoenix Mills in Bombay, Vinit Bharucha, bassist with Bhayanak Maut, breaks it down for me. The Mumbai Indians are playing the Kolkata Knight Riders. It’s Friday and the bar is overflowing with people chanting, ”˜Shoaib is a bastard.’ The atmosphere is a bit like a moshpit, really. Bharucha explains, “Bombay has the most brutal moshpits in the country. Dislocated shoulders, ripped earlobes, torn jeans are par for the course. Fans here understand that moshes are not about fighting. They’ve got their basics right. You hit someone in the groin, you don’t say ”˜sorry’”¦ you make eye contact and move on. In Delhi they don’t even know what they are moshing to. They like the riff, they go for it. I have seen Bengaluru moshes get very personal which is just not the way it is supposed to be”¦ pushing people into a corner and shit. Madras probably has the stupidest moshes in the country. It’s not dangerous. It’s plain silly.”

Apart from the mosh pits, Guwahati and Shillong are considered by many to be ideal venues for live gigs. Vasav Vashisht, vocalist with Delhi band Prestorika, was pleasantly surprised by Shillong, “Every second cabbie in town listens to Pantera. Their taxis are plastered with metal band stickers. In Guwahati, even the man who sells you fruit chaat does a side business selling Skid Row and Slayer CDs.” Reuben Bhattacharya, bassist with Undying Inc, once played a tribute gig in Guwahati which had more people on the stage than off it. “They were diving like there was no tomorrow. At one point this drunk man took off. We don’t know if he ever made it to the bottom.” But his favourite show happened in Shillong – an AIDS concert sponsored by the state government, “The entire football field turned into a meltdown. There were 20,000 kids shouting out the names of our songs. It was insane.”

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