The gods of metal

That Bangalore enjoys its fair share of metal-heads was amply proved recently at ‘Bangalore Open Air’, a festival dedicated to the genre which was recently held in the City.

The festival included a cocktail of metal bands, both Indian as well as Western. From well-known classics to new and contemporary numbers, the music scene at the venue gave metal-heads every reason to make sure they were there.

The festival began in the morning and by late afternoon, the Indian bands had begun to take stage. The line-up was fairly impressive: bands like ‘Albatross’, ‘Dying Embrace’, ‘1833 AD’ and ‘Kryptos’ took to the stage one after another, belting our numbers that sent Bangaloreans wild.

The energy at the venue was palpable — both from the scores of black T-shirt-clad heavy-metal fans, who were head-banging to the beats as well as the artistes on stage.

Once the selection of Indian bands had finished their portion of the festival, excitement levels began to increase. Two of the German bands — who were headlining and co-headlining the festival — were trash-metal giants ‘Kreator’ and melodic death-metal wizards, ‘Suidakra’.

It was easy to see that this was the real reason the crowd had gathered. Although ‘Suidakra’ has made a prior visit to Bangalore — they played along with ‘Opeth’ a few months back — this was ‘Kreator’s first trip to the rock capital of the country and the fans couldn’t have been more thrilled about it.

The first German band to take the stage was ‘Suidakra’ and the crowd was in for a huge surprise.

The band, which prides itself in creating ‘melodic death-metal’, creates music with a unique and seamless blend of Celtic folk and traditional metal-fare. In fact, they began their stint on the stage with a rather unusual instrument: the bagpipes. The soulful tune of the pipes began at a slow pace and was soon combined with a few riffs on the guitar, creating a practically unheard-of sort of music.

Their repertoire for the evening included a few new numbers as well as those which made them popular — such as ‘Wartunes’, ‘Auld Lang Syne’, ‘The Fall of Tara’ and ‘Stone of the Seven Suns’.

The energy on stage was at an all-time high as Arkadius, the band’s vocalist, head-banged and pushed the crowd to a frenzy. He wrapped up the first song and then said, “It feels so good to be back, my friends. You know why? Because you guys rock!”

Next up was ‘Kreator’ and by this point, the noise levels were soaring. The band was met with cheers and screams and ripped right into some of their best-known numbers — ‘Violent Revolution’, ‘Hordes of Chaos’, ‘Phantom Antichrist’, ‘From Flood into Fire’ and ‘Enemy of God’.

 They kept the tempo up the entire evening and wrapped up their stint on stage with the ever-popular ‘Flag of Hate’ from the album ‘Endless Pain’.

Raghu, a software engineer who was at the show, was visibly excited. “It’s been awesome — I’ve been here since the morning and watched all the local bands, which I thought were pretty good. I came especially to watch ‘Kreator’ and I loved it,” he stated.