The city now has two annual heavy metal fests.
As rock genres go, heavy metal does not enjoy much popularity in India, beyond, say, the college fest circuit, where you’ll regularly hear Led Zeppelin/Deep Purple sound-alikes belting out deep-throated guff and long, dissonant guitar riffs. It is surprising, thus, to find that there are two annual extreme metal gigs in the city now.
B S Ganesh, an IT professional and guitarist with extreme metal band Gorified, has been organising The Undergrind for five years now (it was held in January this year) while Sandesh Shenoy, who works with a pharmaceutical MNC, put together the first Trendslaughter Fest this March, through Cyclopean Eye Productions, a venture set up solely to promote new extreme metal.
Heavy metal has, of course, a small but dedicated fan base, people who fell in love with the sound in college and never quite grew out of it. The fests are reaching out to these — there were 40 fans at the first edition of The Undergrind in 2007; this year it’s gone up to 150; while some 200 hardcore fans crowded into Kyra Theatre and Restaurant for the Trendslaughter Fest.
“It’s popular, but mostly among teenagers,” says Bruce Lee Mani, founder-member of the 15-year-old rock group Thermal And A Quarter. What puts off most older people, probably, is all the talk of violence and blood and gore, not to mention the blood curdling screams and lyrics that most can’t even make out, he adds.
For the musicians and the bands, however, the two fests have meant a rare platform to strutt their stuff. After all, pubs in the city, unlike elsewhere in the world, aren’t inclined to their sounds. “They are more into electronic music,” complains headbanger Srikant G. It also makes up for the frustration of not getting the opportunity to play at live rock fests, or of being knocked about and not given enough time on stage when they do get the chance. “Festivals give no time for you to show what you are capable of,” says Ganesh.
Playing at Trendslaughter were well-known extreme metal acts — Gorified, Dying Embrace, Warhorse Chained, Culminant, Bevar Sea. The six-hour-long Fest saw a tight line up headlined by Orator, an old-school death metal band from Bangladesh. Orator is influenced by Tantra and the Aghora philosophy. It has performed with international acts such as Manzer (France) and Infernal Curse (Argentina) and played at festivals in Thailand and Sri Lanka. Also playing were Dying Embrace, Bangalore’s oldest extreme metal outfit. They came together in 1991 (as Misanthrope), disbanded in 2001 and re-united at the Undergrind Fest this year. In 20 years their music has remained resolutely unchanged — a heavy sound that combines atmospheric doom and death metal.
The star attraction at this year’s Undergrind was Putrid Pile, whom Ganesh met while on an onsite project in the US and invited over.
But, not all are satisfied. Devaiah, 40-something owner of an advertising agency, says, “Many of them are talented and good. But their instruments let them down and the poor electricals makes their music sound all noise. Most of them cannot afford to spend much on costly electrical instruments.”
However the good part with both fests is that neither Ganesh nor Shenoy is doing it for the money. “It’s just to enjoy some music in the right settings. Also nobody loses money. The venue too makes some profit from sales of food and coffee,” says Shenoy. Anything left over goes to the band and a party for the organisers.