Ask any metal fan in India for the one moment that changed the country’s music landscape and they will all point you to Iron Maiden’s first show in Bangalore, in 2007. The British heavy metal band played to an audience of 40,000 screaming, teary fans, as hardened metalheads wept in each other’s arms. “Eighteen years,” blubbered one fan. “I waited 18 years to catch Iron Maiden live, but I never thought I’d see them in my own country.”

It wasn’t all hyperbole. Before Maiden, India figured nowhere on the tour circuit for any international metal band – the country had nothing to show in terms of record sales or album numbers, then the only indicator for a band’s fan base in a country. Although promoters had been trying to bring down international metal acts for years before Maiden, the bands were understandably leery of taking a chance on a country they knew nothing about. Maiden’s very well documented 2007 show – film-maker Sam Dunn’s documentary Iron Maiden: Flight 666 chronicled their Somewhere Back in Time Tour, starting with India – opened the floodgates for international bands and India was suddenly a viable metal destination. But that’s only part of the story. The real metal revolution had already been brewing in Bangalore for well over a decade.

India has had an odd relationship with metal music; there’s really no context for it in the country’s cultural landscape, which has a 3,000-year-old tradition of classical music, not to mention the juggernaut of Bollywood. Despite its cultural diversity, the rigid confines of Indian classical music and escapist Bollywood make no provision for rebellion or any form of personal expression. Add to that a cut-throat education system, a strict code of conduct, even within families, and all-pervasive religious upbringing and you have an atmosphere that’s ripe for angst. For many kids, metal fills that void. Distorted guitars, growled vocals and heady aggression have given expression to their loneliness and alienation like no other music.

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Metal is still very much an urban preoccupation, though, and has largely been concentrated in the cities of Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.

In the early 90s, the first of India’s homegrown IT companies began setting up shop in Bangalore, drawing a huge influx of young IT professionals from across the country, often fresh from their college engineering degrees. This young populace brought with it much of the college culture of rock bands and music, and a thriving subculture began taking shape in Bangalore’s many pubs and clubs, which sprung up to take advantage of the youth explosion. The result was a multicultural, open-minded city where alcohol was cheap and the offbeat was not just accepted but embraced. It was in this liberal time that Millennium, India’s first metal band, was formed. The band started out, as most Indian metal bands did, playing a mix of Iron Maiden covers and squeezing in the odd original song. The band cut their teeth on tiny gigs at regional engineering colleges and smoky barrooms till their single Peace Just in Heaven made it to MTV Asia’s Headbanger’s Ball.

Peace Just in Heaven was like every metal video ever made – a bunch of hairy dudes snarling into mics in a grimy pub, singing about war and aggression – but it changed the idea of what was possible in music for Indian bands. Still, there was absolutely no infrastructure yet. Bands that came after Millennium – doom metal group Dying Embrace, three-piece death metal outfit Myndsnare, melodic metallers Kryptos – continued to play the college-music circuit, where having even one monitor on stage was a bonus and a four-channel mixers were a luxury.

Despite truly awful sound and terrible organisation, fans began to trickle into these shows and soon college festivals were drawing crowds of more than 1,000 people.

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As numbers grew, big alcohol brands took an interest in sponsoring metal shows. In India, alcohol ads have been banned in print and broadcast media since 1995, and the only way for these brands to reach their target audiences was through surrogate advertising. In metal shows, they found the perfect fit. Money began flowing in, concerts grew bigger and tickets were ridiculously subsidised.

Bangalore was the perfect location for these shows. First, the city’s largest venue, the sprawling Palace Grounds, was smack bang in the city centre but removed enough from residential areas. Second, Bangalore's entertainment taxes were among the lowest in the country – 10% compared to Mumbai’s 25% and Delhi’s 20% – and there was minimal bureaucracy and red-tape, and no need for “complimentary” tickets for government officials. Promoters could now afford international acts, and Indian bands were soon relegated to opening slots.



But local bands were going the DIY route, putting together regular shows in underground pubs. Annual club festivals such as Trendslaughter Fest, Echoes from Beneath, Doom Over Bangalore and Impending Doom Festival have been a showcase for some of the city’s best underground bands, including Bevar Sea, Shepherd and Witchgoat. Wacken Open Air, one of metal’s most prestigious festivals, found a franchise in Bangalore Open Air and the Wacken Metal Battle India that allows one competing band to play at the parent festival in Germany. More tellingly, Bangalore bands are slowly breaking into the international touring circuit, with local metal heroes and scene veterans Kryptos landing a European tour last year as well as a slot at Wacken Open Air, and even younger bands like death/thrash act Inner Sanctum touring Germany and Poland to rave reviews.

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But it hasn’t been easy. Bangalore has battled the vagaries of the local government, including an 11.30pm closing time for pubs and an injunction that banned dancing – and consequently headbanging – to live music. And there have often been intense rivalries for gigs between the traditional “old-school” metal faction and the new crop of modern metal bands. But metal had always thrived on conflict, and metal bands in the city aren’t letting go of the genre anytime soon, even as the country is in the throes of an electronic dance music revolution that is siphoning big sponsorship money. Bangalore metal bands are putting their trust where the maximum returns are: in fans.