Bloodywood is the music you get when a dhol enters a mosh pit

Try to visualise what a crossover between MasterChef India and WWE would look like, and you’ll probably come up with something like the music video for ‘Tadka’. In the latest single by New Delhi folk-metal outfit Bloodywood, kurta-clad metalheads give each other death stares over a Last Supper-style dining table. Meaty guitar riffs duel with a Punjabi dhol. Vocalist Jayant Bhadula belts out metal qawwali vocals standing over an industrial kitchen sink, while rapper Raoul Kerr insouciantly dishes out foodie wordplay (“the stove is lit/We chopped the bits”). There’s the inevitable food fight, including a well-executed Stone Cold Stunner, over a groovy, nu-metal breakdown.
The Bloodywood formula—brutal heaviness, tongue-in-cheek humour and wholesome fun—is a recipe that has reaped handsome dividends for the band, taking them from their New Delhi bedrooms to some of the world’s biggest metal stages. They’ve played at Wacken Open Air in Germany and Download in the UK, and secured a coveted spot on Billboard charts. They’ve received shoutouts from rapper Panjabi MC and guitarist-singer-songwriter Tom Morello, and collaborated with Japanese kawaii metal superstars Babymetal. Not bad for a band that started out making “metal versions of shitty pop songs.”
“That was just a means to an end. We wanted to build an audience before we started putting out original music,” explains guitarist Karan Katiyar, who started off recording and uploading metal covers of Bollywood and pop songs on YouTube, first under his own name and then—after teaming up with Bhadula in 2015—as Bloodywood. “We always had an Indian twist to the covers, so it also became a way for us to fine-tune our sound and test our music on the internet.”
Songs that received the Bloodywood treatment include: Luis +Fonsi’s ‘Despacito’, Michael Jackson’s ‘Bad’, and Panjabi MC’s ‘Mundian To Bach Ke’. But it was a reimagination of the Punjabi folk song ‘Barsi Barsi’ in 2018 that pushed things to the next level. Titled ‘Ari Ari’, the track racked up over 10 million views across YouTube and Facebook, convincing the band that it was time to start making original music.
Their first original composition, ‘Jee Veerey’, was a stirring flute-metal cut about grappling with mental illness, inspired by a fellow musician’s suicide. For the song’s release, they partnered with online counselling site HopeTherapy to offer 60 counselling sessions paid for by the band. “Those 60 sessions turned into an eight-month drive because people kept donating money,” Bhadula recalls. “It made us realise how much potential there was in making music with a message and a purpose.”
That was the final piece of the Bloodywood puzzle. The band’s infectious folk-metal sound and irreverent humour became a vehicle for more serious commentary on bullying (‘Endurant’), rape culture (‘Dana-Dan’) and politics-driven polarisation (‘Gaddaar’). They even titled their 2022 debut album Rakshak to signal their belief in music’s power to save us. This newfound earnestness doesn’t take away from the band’s goofball energy though. They love their puns—calling their tours ‘Raj Against The Machine’ and ‘Return Of The Singh’—and often tease new announcements with funny skits and oddball memes. They even put out a golden-brown vinyl LP for Rakshak (which they call the ‘Nine Inch Naans’ edition).
Although they intersperse more thoughtful responses with in-jokes and gentle ribbing, Katiyar, Bhadula and Kerr are just three friends who set out to have fun and somehow became trailblazers in the Indian metal scene. Currently on their EU/UK tour, Bloodywood is playing at sold-out venues, posing with fans cosplaying Indian goddesses and bringing out giant duck plushies in the middle of a mosh pit. From here, they want to take the rest of the Indian metal scene with them. And their sophomore album, Nu Delhi, is a testament to that intention: a tribute to the music and culture of their home city, and the country at large. “There are so many good Indian acts now, not just in metal but also indie and rap artists like Hanumankind,” says Bhadula. “The quality is unreal. Which is why I think we’ll achieve global domination in the next five years. And then, maybe we’ll take it all the way to the moon.”

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