Taking It To The Streets With JAYANT BHADULA From BLOODYWOOD

Interview by Kris Peters
Billed as an Indian folk metal outfit, Bloodywood are a band much more than that. They are an amalgamation of hard rock and metal, mixed with traditional Indian elements, who create a sound comfortingly similar but also fresh, new and exciting.
While the folk metal element is there, labelling them as such is doing the band a disservice musically.
Bloodywood first landed on the world's sonic radar with the single Ari Ari in 2018, a Punjabi folk song made famous in the early 2000s remix boom in India by hip-hop act Bombay Rockers. The band pushed it further with help from the gritty New Delhi-based conscious hip-hop artist/rapper Raoul Kerr, offering a cultural musical alternative to the mainstream acts that were dominating the charts.
Since then, Bloodywood have taken the world by storm, with their debut album Rakshak solidifying the band's growing reputation.
Bloodywood have been on the road pretty much ever since, performing to packed crowds and at major global festivals, including Lollapalooza India, Download Festival, Bloodstock (UK), Hellfest (France), Summer Breeze (Germany), Brutal Assault (Czechia), Fuji Rock (Japan) and American mainstays like Louder Than Life and Aftershock.
Their sophomore album Nu Delhi came out on March 21 this year, marking a new landmark in the band's short history and proving emphatically that Bloodywood are more than just a metal band from India. They are now a world-class band in their own right.
HEAVY spoke with vocalist Jayant Bhadula to get the rundown.
"Very, very well," he smiled when we asked how the album has been received. "In terms of numbers, it's doing very good, but in terms of people showing up for the shows and singing our lyrics back from the new album, it's a great thing to see. Honestly, as an artis,t the greatest level of validation I can see is when people are singing your lyrics for you, especially the ones that are not in the language as well."
We ask what Bloodywood were going for musically on Nu Delhi.
"In terms of music, we tried to represent the sense of New Delhi where we come from," he mused. "It is a very realistic and metal city where we come from. If you give it love you will get love 100 times back but just like we say in the album, if you fuck around you won't be found and that is what we were trying to capture. That is why this album is more in your face rather than being as subtle as the last one."
In the full interview we talked more about Nu Delhi, Bloodywood's collaboration with Babymetal and how it came about, the cultural dynamics present in their music, blending Eastern and Western cultures together musically and how difficult that is to do, how Nu Delhi differs musically from Rakshak, being labelled as a folk metal band and more.


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