The Rise and Rise of Metal In India

So what is behind the Indian love of metal? Is it anger? Frustration? Or is it less about the lyrics and more about the seductive power of the music? Opinions are divided.

In Bengaluru, a guitarist at the Jam tells me that metal is an outlet for a million frustrations: you want to grow your hair but the college principal doesn’t let you; you want to go out at night but your parents won’t let you; you want to marry a girl of your choice but society won’t let you; it could be a boss you hate or a tuition teacher whose making life miserable for you. Metal, in this context, becomes a tool of resistance. Songs like ”˜Mindwarp II,’ by Delhi’s Acrid Semblance, drip with rage, “What use this lifeless lump?/What use thy open casket?/As we fight against the will/Of the one that still controls”¦” Or there is Undying’s ”˜Chaotic Impulse’ which ends with the mother of all growls, ”˜When you take a look at me/Is it hate you see/Does it seem strange to you/That I don’t give a fuck about you.’ But not all rage is of the me-against-the-world variety. Bangladesh’s Severe Dementia, in a brilliant EP called Epitaph to Plassey sing about the shared colonial past of the subcontinent. In songs with names like ”˜Howls of Murshidabad’ and ”˜Credence of Fort William,’ Shawki Ahmad, the vocalist, rails against the traitors and backstabbers who let Bengal pass into the hand of the British, “O Man of the Artillery/Open the onslaught against the Firangi/I witness the aloofness of the/Bishash Ghatok Mir Jafar.”

Bhattacharya of Undying insists that metal teaches you to question everything, “We want more things to piss us off. We might just write a song about the way Delhi cops messed up the Arushi murder case. Sepultura has done stuff like that; they have a song called ”˜CIU (Criminals in Uniform)’.” Heretic’s Unnikrishnan has a similar take, “We are not anti-Christ or anything but, at the same time, we are not afraid to move away from society in the pursuit of what we do. Metal is an art form like any other and art deals with the world around you. One of our songs is about a guy who is feeling suicidal because he left his girl – his parents didn’t like her. We’re saying, hey, you had a choice! It’s just that you didn’t make it. If you felt strongly about it, you should have backed yourself and chosen the girl.”

IIIrd Sovereign’s Vedant Kaushik Baruah speaks of the violence in Assam, the state from where many of the band members come from. “Assam had plenty of natural resources: coal, tea, silk, gas, whereas all you hear about now are pipelines being blown up, people being illegally detained, shops shutting down by half six in the evening. We put that in our lyrics which often revolve around themes of mortality.” In a song called ”˜Pathetic Ignorance,’ he spits out the following: “They die in the streets of massacre/And no one knows where they belong.” In another one called ”˜Funeral Rites,’ he writes about the troubled North-East region. “As your sympathy mingles with lies/And your sweet words with poison ties”¦/Your art filled with venom of destruction/Your love is fake, filled with extortion.”

Nitesh Vasandani, the bull-necked drummer of Delhi’s Prestorika, says he can identify with the anger in the moshpits: “When I’m on stage playing, I’m an angry man smashing mikes, banging cymbals”¦ once in Madras I played so hard the mikes went flying into the audience. I drink hard, I play hard, and when I’m in the middle of a show, I’m in touch with a different god. And trust me, he is very, very evil.”

Aditya Gopinathan who plays guitars with Mumbai’s Amidst the Chaos, and is a psychiatrist by profession, points out that a lot of kids who listen to metal are in their mid-teens. He talks of a “hormonal surge” which combines with the pressures of a conservative society. “When you start out, metal is all about the outlet, the catharsis. Even in engineering colleges, there is plenty of frustration. Nobody’s getting laid, for one. It’s got to come out somewhere.” Anubhav Misra, the soft-spoken frontman of Acrid Semblance, is also convinced age has a lot to do with it. “When you are younger your emotions pull you in different directions. You develop the ability to be articulate only as you grow older. You become more direct. Growling is a sign of not being clear about things. When you growl, you pull back. When you sing clean, you bare your soul.”

Pradeep Miranda, vocalist with Mumbai’s Pin Drop Violence (PDV), feels it’s the music that attracts Indians to metal. “Many of the scales we use don’t come from metal but from South Indian music. Three of us in the band hail from Mangalore; I think it shows in the guitar playing.” He is willing to stick his neck out further: “These are mysterious things”¦ but there is something common between metal drumming and Maratha drumming. We were in Hyderabad for a gig once. Our taxi driver was from Maharashtra. This guy was into Slipknot by the end of the trip.” Another time the band was practising in Bombay, they ended up attracting the attention of the local Koli fisherfolk who turned up at the practice-pad with bottles of country liquor and fell in love with the band. By the end of the session they had identified their favourite instrumental bits and were demanding to hear them again and again.

Heretic’s Unnikrishnan is also inclined to believe that Indians and metal might share a deeper musical connection. He knows plenty of kids in his college in Kerala who do not listen to any Western music, but who listen to one metal band: System of a Down. This, he reckons, is because they can relate the rhythm patterns of metal to the local music they are already familiar with.