“Make metal great again.”

That’s what Bloodywood, a four-member metallic band primarily based in India’s capital Delhi, needed to do once they first started making music in 2016.

Bloodywood started their journey as a “parody band”, importing metallic covers of well-liked Hindi songs on YouTube. Six years on, they’ve toured about 90 nations, performed in a few of the most iconic venues – together with Wacken Open Air – and have change into the primary Indian metallic act to characteristic on Billboard charts.

The band’s music is strictly headbanging – however it’s their capacity to introduce folksy sounds and textures into the traditional chug of heavy metallic that units them aside. A beautiful flute crescendo pulls you in a trance earlier than an surprising blast of dhol (a percussion instrument), adopted by a gnarly riff, shatters you out of it. Rolling Stone journal describes their live shows as “an aural assault”, and followers name it a “violent sensory overload”.

The band has additionally made waves in India, the place it headlined a number of huge music festivals this 12 months, together with Lollapalooza, and Nh-7 Weekender. Their recognition has sparked hopes of reviving metallic in a rustic the place the style nonetheless options on only a few playlists.

“We played on some of the biggest stages in the world but home hits different – it’s where we want to grow,” says Raoul Kerr, the band’s vocalist.

India’s metallic scene dates again to the Nineteen Eighties when heavy metallic bands like Millennium broke on the scene. While rock jazz shortly discovered new listeners, metallic continued to be seen as an “underground movement”, current on the fringes of the mainstream. Listeners had been few, file labels had been laborious to come back by and touring largely meant performing in faculty festivals.

But regardless of the constraints, listeners say it was all the time a vibrant neighborhood.

The hole-in-the-wall venues had been bursting with power. The viewers, though categorised as area of interest, had been a loyal bunch. The live shows had been attended largely by college students who – sporting their goat-like beards, devil-horn gestures and black metallic t-shirts – headbanged by way of the evening.

“You had to be there to exactly understand how the scene rocked back in the day,” says Sahil Makhija from Demonic Resurrection, a heavy metallic band based in 2000 and sometimes credited with popularising metallic within the nation.

Much has modified since. Bands had been disbanded as lack of venues, revenue and audiences pushed them to obscurity. Over the years, quite a lot of metalheads from Makhija’s technology additionally acquired different jobs and “ended up living completely different” lives.

“Suddenly, our favourite black metal shirt was relegated to a corner of the wardrobe,” he says.

A resurgence of kinds occurred within the late 2000s when web and social media opened an entire new world of alternatives. In 2011, when American metallic band Metallica carried out in Bengaluru (previously Bangalore) metropolis, over 50,000 metalheads from all around the nation attended the live performance and spotlighted the style’s presence like by no means earlier than.

More than a decade on, metallic’s integration into the cultural mainstream appears considerably full.

International legends, together with Megadeth and Karnivool, tour the nation. And Indian acts like Bloodywood now play for an viewers that features a recent crop of younger, first-time listeners. “At every concert, we see new faces. Sometimes, people show up with their entire families,” says band vocalist Jayant Badhula.

Makhija says the scene has benefitted rather a lot from India’s burgeoning live performance tradition. “People associate metal with aggression, but the energy at a metal gig is infectious and just watching an act live can completely alter opinions.”

Bands like Bloodywood have additionally pushed their music to newer instructions which have modified the best way individuals perceive metallic.

Metal has lengthy moved away from the notion of being an “apolitical” counterculture of rebellious music. From battle to corruption to authorities failures, bands like Black Sabbath and Nuclear Assault – to call just a few – have tackled socio-political topics by way of their songs for many years. However, the style’s informal reference to violence and controversial themes like Satanism or cannibalism proceed to make listeners uncomfortable.

Sporting beards, a map of tattoos and waist-length hair, of us at Bloodywood actually give off that power. But their music is extra meditative than violent.

The demons of their songs aren’t actual. Instead, they’re resounding metaphors reflective of the societal ills that plague our world. The band roars towards sexism, non secular violence and political corruption in anthems that information you thru each darkness and light-weight.

“I think there is a bit of metal in all of us. Our goal is to channel that angst for the right causes and make people want to do something about them,” says Kerr.

But whereas Bloodywood’s success is a reason for celebration, many followers say the scene in India continues to be removed from good.

“Apart from Bloodywood, no other Indian metal band is still performing at a grand scale,” says Deep Bhattacharya, a Delhi resident.

Growing up within the capital within the late 2000s, Mr Bhattacharya has fond reminiscences of attending metallic gigs at homegrown cafes.

But he says the consumption of metallic dropped significantly, forcing a few of the favorite acts on the scene – corresponding to Scribe and Makhija’s Demonic Resurrection – to cease making music. “The popularity for international artistes has grown, but Indian bands have reached a dead end. People just don’t want to spend money to watch them.”

Mr Bhattacharya provides that Bloodywood was in a position to overcome this drawback solely as a result of they managed to faucet into an unlimited worldwide viewers. The band first grabbed eyeballs in 2019 throughout their debut tour to Europe. But it took them one other six years to carry out in their very own nation.

The band agrees with the evaluation. “From the start, we knew we had to make it big globally before we would get a chance to do it in India. Metal here is a tight-knit passionate community, but there aren’t a lot of us,” Kerr says.

Makhija says the seeming vacuum has one thing to do with the style itself.

Over the years, metallic has metastasized into many subgenres which can be always discovering new takers and incomes real reward. But it’s nonetheless not the most important promoting style anyplace on the planet. “When you compare it to pop music, metal is still an underground subculture. The difference is even more stark in India where only a handful of urban listeners consume the genre,” Makhija says.

But that additionally doesn’t imply the scene is over.

“Metal is alive in India,” Makhija says. “There are children doing what we did 20 years ago.”

Additional reporting by Bimal Thankachan