Inside the Circle Pit

Inside Richardson & Cruddas, the 12-acre century-old (157-year-old to be precise) foundry in Mumbai, one of India’s most popular genres was being celebrated last week at the Big69 music festival. Fittingly for the venue, it was metal. The female security guard at the entrance did a more thorough job than any airport security check including the one at Newark Liberty International Airport, which has been my most awkward yet. At one point, she grabbed my ankles, which is when I asked her whether she had confiscated some really potent substances that day. She said, “Haan, socks mein thha (It was in the socks),” without really letting on what she found on an audience member who was attending the two-day fest. But in defence of metal and its ever-growing audience, the crowd at Big69 was the most well-behaved I’ve seen in years. For one, nobody had turned their backs to the stage for a selfie. There were no selfie stick-wielding fans selfishly obstructing anyone else’s view, no drug-abuse deaths or even casualties. Still, metal has undeservedly gained disrepute and metal musicians have been accused of everything from Satanism to baconism. Trust me, as menacing as they look and as much as they growl and grunt on stage, they’re some of the most polite men I’ve met off stage. Their only crime could be buying an illegal amount of pork to cook up the best bacon bombs known to mankind. Yet, they’re always an easy target.

A group of policemen turned up just as the audience at Richardson & Cruddas was warming up, asking the sound engineer to pull the plug on the show. A middle-aged female resident of Byculla had complained about the noise levels at the venue. I’ve been to three other concerts at the venue and have never witnessed cops barging in to stop the show. Lead vocalist Abijith Rao of Bengaluru-based progressive metal band Escher’s Knot, was stopped mid-growl. Once the organisers pacified the cops telling them that they had obtained all the relevant permissions, the show went on. Rao continued his performance by screaming, “Fuck the Cops,” soon after the policemen were out of earshot. Not a clever move still, but metallers are naïve like that. One audience member decided to taunt the cops by calling them “pandus”, a commonly heard pejorative, and the cops took him along when they left. Maybe he’ll go on to write ‘Stay Brave, Stay Foolish’ next.

Metal music has produced the most number of bands than any other genre in India for over three decades now. Even places like Indore in Madhya Pradesh, still known as the seat of an influential school of Hindustani music that is named after the city, are now home to young metal bands. Elemental is one such band that won a talent hunt organised by Pepsi MTV Indies and performed at Big69. Mumbai-based Srinivas Sunderrajan, bassist with Scribe, one of the most talented metal bands in the country, attributes the overarching appeal of metal to engineering colleges. The bassist points out that some of the best Indian and international metal bands are invited year after year to perform at engineering college fests, known for their severely rigorous and often dreary learning environment. Says the bassist, “There is no denying the raw energy and the rush that one gets on hearing pounding drums, distorted guitars and growling vocals; almost cathartic for people with a mundane or monotonic existence.” I must also point out here that it’s extremely difficult to decipher the lyrics when the vocalist is growling. Take, for example, when the vocalist of Underside, a metal band from Kathmandu screamed out the title of their track Welcome To The Underside, I heard ‘Jimmy On The Shore’. Now, I can only imagine young engineering students hard at work at night, playing tracks over and over again just so they can crack the lyrics and finally go sleep.

Scribe’s bassist adds that the facts that metal musicians are being spotlighted globally and more metal festivals are being organised in the country are also reasons for the genre’s boom. Five international bands and 17 Indian bands firmly planted the flag for metal in Mumbai last weekend. Next stop, Bengaluru. The city will host Cultfest in April, another landmark on the metal calendar considering American death metal heavyweights Cannibal Corpse will be playing at the show. And the year has just begun.

About The Author

Lalitha Suhasini

Lalitha Suhasini is the former Editor of Rolling Stone India

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