‘We’re serving a really nice dish called metal tikka masala,” jokes Bloodywood guitarist Jayant Bhadula. “It’s metal but with so many spices that it’ll overwhelm your senses. You will headbang and you will end up dancing with us.”
This is the tongue-in-cheek mission statement of one of metal’s most original bands. Formed in 2016, Bloodywood flavour the conventions of nu-metal with traditional Indian instruments, meaning their songs are as likely to feature crunching riffs as they are the flute or the dhol. The trio – bulked out to a six-piece on stage – became viral sensations covering pop songs and alternative hits on YouTube before writing original material. From there, their fortunes soared. Their first ever gig was at German metal festival Wacken Open Air in 2019. Four years later they drew a massive crowd to the UK’s Download festival, despite the tricky task of opening the main stage early on a Sunday. More recently, their song Dana-Dan was used in a pivotal action sequence in Dev Patel’s action thriller Monkey Man.
But there’s a political element to even their most playful material. Karan Katiyar – co-vocalist alongside Raoul Kerr, absent from our call due to a struggling internet connection – says that on social media, and more than ever in the last couple of years, he sees “a lot of bullying, a lot of hate, and I see a lot of it unchecked. I also see a lot of it aimed at ethnicity, which is why it became more important for us to tell our story.”
Bhadula discovered heavy metal through his older cousin, who showed him the music of Viking metallers Amon Amarth and then burned him a CD full of modern classics from Slipknot to System of a Down (influence from both bleeds into Bloodywood’s music). Katiyar stumbled across it while attending a battle of the bands competition: “Someone threw me into a mosh pit and I had the best time of my life.”
Bhadula says musical education in their native Delhi tends to be good – “there are a lot of places with guitar and drum classes” – and awareness of metal is widespread. “In school, when there were people playing music, it was always the people performing metal that would blow everyone’s mind,” says Katiyar. Yet this hasn’t translated into a broader Indian metal scene. “It’s strange to get our heads around the fact that there isn’t a bigger audience because we’re a very big country.”
For metal, says Bhadula, “the infrastructure isn’t just lacking in terms of shows, but also in terms of how the music is promoted. In India, working in music is basically working in Bollywood, and metal isn’t paying the bills.”
As such, Bloodywood are waving the Indian flag almost single-handedly in the world of metal. “We love representing our country and our culture in our music,” Katiyar says. “It’s no pressure at all, but one thing that does nag us sometimes is that we can’t represent our whole country. There are so many cultures and so many languages; I can’t even count the number of instruments we have. We want to try to represent everyone as much as humanly possible.”
While the band are playful with their culture, naming their 2019 documentary Raj Against the Machine and selling naan-coloured vinyl, their popular single Gaddaar punches back against politicians using hateful rhetoric to divide, and they’ve often used music to stand up against rape culture (a show of solidarity unlike almost anything shown from men in metal). “It’s a global issue and something we feel very strongly about,” says Katiyar. “It’s kind of strange that not as many [men] are speaking about it; I don’t think there’s many things that are more metal than standing up for the people you love.”
Their new album Nu Delhi is conspicuously less political than their 2022 debut Rakshak. Katiyar points out that Rakshak was released the same week Russia invaded Ukraine and, since then, the world has spiralled into constant, poisonous animosity. “People are very keen on choosing a side and fighting the other side,” Katiyar says, “and I think people need to talk to each other in a more civilised manner.”
So the band have chosen to counter the toxicity, stereotyping and bullying by celebrating stories of their homeland and history. “We’re trying to make the world an easier place to live in through music,” says Katiyar. “We want to bring the positive side of music to as many people as we can.”
Source: theguardian.com
