From Mumbai to Bengaluru

Apart from the taste for good food, breweries and pubs in the City, the boys from the Mumbai-based thrash metal band ‘Devoid’ seem to be in awe of the metal fans here. Hence, they happily came to the City for the ‘Twisted Metal Festival 2015, Thrash Edition’, which was recently held at Pebble.

Roydon, the band manager, recalls that the venue was a fun place to play at, with high-end sound systems, and so were the fans, who were extremely responsive to their music. “It is different in every city as there are metal heads everywhere. Now, we’ve started to see more people coming in for local gigs. The local metal scene has grown and so have the DIY gigs. There is a lot of scope for growth.”

An aggressive, angry and a downright fierce band, ‘Devoid’ was formed in a decade when heavy metal was still in its nascent stage and they have come a long way by setting their mark in two international festivals, at Germany and Dubai. They have also heavily toured within the country and left their mark in several cities, with indigenous acts like ‘Demonic Resurrection’ and ‘Bhayanak Maut’.

The band members stayed in the same colony and got together because of a common interest in metal. However, they have a fierce affinity to other genres as well, as Roydon explains, “Sanjeev, our lead guitarist, was involved in a lot of jazz and funk music. He plays for a lot of Bollywood projects as well. Frank, the previous bassist, auditioned to steal our drummer but ended up joining our band. With Arun on vocals and rhythm guitars, Shubham on the drums and Abhishek on bass, we all came together and decided to play metal as we feel it’s a very underrated genre. Though there are fans, there are hardly any sponsors or venues willing to pitch for a metal concert.”

The band’s various influences and interests come together in their EP, which they released about a year ago. The band has always carried anti-establishment as the central lyrical theme and most of their songs talk about the current scenario and events in the country and the idea of blind faith and religion as an organised institution. “Not that we are anti-religion,” adds Roydon, quickly. And after this high-octave gig, the boys are ready to go back to writing music and playing a tribute to ‘Iron Maiden’, a band that brings back high school nostalgia and memories to anyone.