Delhi’s meanest Metal Festival

May 21 • Events, Indian News, News • 5308 Views • 3 Comments on Delhi’s meanest Metal Festival

If the Delhi metal scene will be witnessing something new this year, the newly announced Outrage Festival pretty much takes the bill. “This festival is the beginning of something which I plan to eventually make bigger” says Karan Mehta, who conceptualized this gig. “Delhi has never witnessed a full-fledged metal festival for some time now. Since the GIRs, the vibe of a strong metal community has been missing”.

Outrage Festival

Although the biggest problem Delhi faces is with its metal-heads. With what happened when Metallica decided not to play at Delhi, one cannot but be judgmental of the attitudes of the fans of metal to bands and their music alike. From the plague of poseur metal-heads to free loaders at gigs, it is difficult to maintain the conscious ideas of extreme and underground metal. “I don’t want a crowd of 5000 to turn up for the event as well. I want a close community of people who enjoy metal.”

Escher Knot and Zygnema have been annouced to play for the festival yet

Escher Knot and Zygnema have been announced to play at the festival yet

When we question metal organizers or band members about the scene they are a part of, they always make it sound really niche while trying to say it is below par from what we witness in Bangalore or even Mumbai. While the scene down south (Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Chennai) is random and definitely prevalent, the genre base is far divided and nucleated. Delhi too faces this crisis and at a time when the gigs are few and good bands even fewer, it isn’t unfair to have Escher’s Knot from down south play at Outrage (they were the first band to be announced in the bill). Genre diversity is not very prevalent in many underground fests because they almost always host listeners of the same style of metal. Bloodstock cannot host Eluveitie the same way Roadburn can’t have Carcass in their bill. So will Outrage Festival be a genre specified gig? “I don’t want to do a black metal gig with some new age progressive metal bands. That’s something I feel can never work.” So this edition pretty much expects a prog/modern metal spread but promises nothing but all out metal. When we asked what Karan expects from this, and the metal-heads of Delhi, his response was primordial, “I would do my best to make this a night to remember for both artists and their audience. That’s my primary target, not making money.” Well we hope Delhi listens and Outrage Festival becomes ‘the meanest metal festival in town’.