The Rise and Rise of Metal In India

The metal scene in India is not homogenous. There are differences in influences and approach. One strain of Bengaluru metal is firmly old school with melodic overtones; Mumbai bands, many of whose members work day jobs in advertising, often display a playfulness: Exhumation, to take an example, has a food theme running through songs like ”˜Tandoori Chick’ and ”˜On a Platter.’

The scene within a city can be split too. Between 1991 and 1994, Ramrao Adiga Institute of Technology (RAIT) became a hotbed of metal in Mumbai. Most of the bands then came from either Chembur or Andheri. As Rahul Hariharan of Bhayanak Maut puts it, “Metal was coming out of the suburbs. The townies were into elitist stuff like jazz. At gigs you could make out which band was from which suburb just by looking at them.” Bands from Chembur were often engineering students who played a lot of death. Their uniform consisted of striped shirts, blue jeans and floaters. They could have been in the college lab. Bands from the western suburbs, especially Andheri, wore baggy shorts and T-shirts, sported long hair – there was more of a hip-hop influence. They were open to then-new international bands like Slipknot. Miranda from PDV, who won the best vocalist prize at RAIT in 2001, says, “The Chembur scene was far more fluid. Bands had short lifespans, often forming for a particular gig and dissolving soon after. Both the scenes merged once Razz [the legendary club in Bombay, Razzberry Rhinoceros which hosted many editions of the metal festival Resurrection] shut down in the suburbs. All the metalheads then started going to this place called Marine Centre in New Bombay.”

But it’s not just in the suburbs of our big cities where the scene is growing. Smaller venues like Simla have shown a hunger for live metal that has surprised many. In 2001, when Chandigarh hosted a metal gig, it got an audience of about 2000 people. In 2007, the city saw 12,000 people headbanging at a Prestorika gig. This has led to an intense debate between bands about the audience for metal: is there enough of it in India or should we go fishing in foreign waters?