The heavy metal bigwigs rocked the capital recently. The metalheads in New Delhi have a reason to smile. Some heavy guitar riffs,rasping vocals and sub-sonic beats at the 14th edition of Fuel Great Indian Rock Festival,held from December 18-19 in the capital,gave them enough opportunity to get in to groove and do some heavy duty head-banging. While the festival is a tribute to rock music,this year,metal bands dominated the line-up of the two-day event that took off at the Hamsadhwani in Pragati Maidan. The star attraction of the festival was Meshuggah,the popular experimental metal band from Sweden,which has enjoyed a considerable fan following in India since its inception in 1987. Its album Destroy,Erase,Improve was lapped up by the not-so-hungry metal crowd in India in the early 90s,a time when pop music was still dominating music charts. The band is known for its poly-rhythmic music and its experimental tweak to metal. India has always had a lot of metal takers despite having a very diverse musical tradition otherwise. We havent really thought of collaborating with Indian bands, said Tomas Haake,drummer and the main lyricist of Meshuggah. Other international bands that performed at the festival include UK-based TesseracT,Norwegian band Purified in Blood and metal giants Enslaved. This was our first trip to India. We loved hearing out some local bands too, says Sander Leon,lead guitarist,Purity of Blood,a band billed as the killer thrash metal band. A series of Indian bands also shared the stage with the foreign metal bands,most of which came to India for the first time. It is a great opportunity for Indian bands to perform alongside these international bands that have inspired us otherwise. Meshuggah is the reason why we started playing music in the first place. The festival offered a good blend of various sub-genres of metal music,which is rarity. There was music ranging from hardcore to black metal to more progressive metal, says Reuben Bhattacharya,bass player of Delhi-based metal band Undying Inc,who performed t on the last day of the festival. Indian band Undying Inc was also excited about performing alongside the foreign metal giants,while October,a Mumbai-based band was the only one who tried to be a little different and made their modern rock heard amidst a range of metal sounds.
