Even if Bloodywood hadn’t turned into a ‘proper’ band, the likelihood is they would’ve been just fine anyway. Knowing what the humour of metal fans online is like (i.e. seldom evolving past ‘lol random’ irony), they’d have stumbled across Punjabi Metal—effectively a nu-metal rework of Panjabi MC’s Mundian To Bach Ke—deemed it “the best thing ever 🤘” or that it had “won the internet”, and Bloodywood could’ve survived off viral residuals. Indeed, that would’ve very likely been the outcome had Bloodywood stuck to their original plan of parody metal covers of Bollywood songs. Thankfully, they saw some sense and realised that blending metal with their native Indian folk music can be interesting in and of itself, rather than merely being a honeypot for individuals who are wont to complain about how their bands of Viking and pirate cosplayers aren’t taken seriously enough.
Had they not, a) Rakshak wouldn’t have been as strong a breakthrough as it was, and b) they probably wouldn’t have even made it to another full album, let alone one that’s also very good. It’s unquestionably the best use of Bloodywood’s talents, now that accusations of gimmickry can seem all the less founded next to actual talent. If the ability wasn’t there, Nu Delhi wouldn’t be the kind of album it is—a real bellwether of creativity in metal, modern and devoutly unique, without diminishing the entertainment value that the brand was built on in the first place.
Rakshak was very much the same, but Nu Delhi finds room to crank that dial even further and delight in the results. The most key moment of crankage is obviously Bekhauf, a collaboration with Babymetal that synergises the two acts’ individual extravagances, rather than leaving them to thud against each other. To mind, it’s the only team-up of east- and south-Asian musical flavours that metal has to hand, with performances in Hindi and Japanese, and the standout strengths of both bands at full pelt.
For Bloodywood in particular, those strengths are plentiful and abundant across Nu Delhi. Their aptitude for modern metal is top-notch, for one, with a loaded mix that avoids encumbrance when it arrives at its heaviest. The limitations of nu-metal haven’t been removed, but songs like Hutt and Tadka do plenty within them and sound great as high-octane ragers. Accessibility is a very noteworthy trait among Bloodywood, often surprisingly so when Hindi lyrics or a dedicated dhol player are hardly commonplace in metal of any stripe. There’s an allure in the way that Bloodywood use them, though, and how active Nu Delhi is simply through its plethora of sounds. The sparing use of Sarthak Pahwa’s dhol is a wise move when it gives the spidery hip-hop grooves of Kismat so much more texture. Likewise, Raoul Kerr and Jayant Bhadula rifle through an abundance of vocal styles, and some supreme dynamism is rammed in through them alone.
You can perhaps chalk all that up to necessity, where an eight-track album doesn’t have the luxury of filler and is required full, unequivocal effort at every turn. It’s definitely true that Nu Delhi has no moments of obvious slouching, but there’s still a difference between rubric-mandated creativity and the impetus of a band spun out on their own confidence. In Bloodywood’s case, they don’t even try to hide how sick they are. They can’t; metal that slams and roars like this makes that impossible. Add in the inhuman amount of swagger coursing through songs like Hutt and Dhadak, and you’ve got some of the most bludgeoning metal songs of the year through personality and self-determination alone. ‘Indian metal band’ isn’t a design space teeming with representation, and as maybe the only name to make waves in that area since…dunno, Skyharbor, Bloodywood are absolutely not here to sit still.
Granted, liberties can taken, as they often are when a band partakes in their own mythologising. Halla Bol’s proclamations of “skill and resilience” might generate a side-eye when they’re coming from a band whose career was founded on engineering viral moments. Far be that the thing that gets Bloodywood thrown out, mind. They’ve certainly got worse going for them on this album, like Kismat’s bizarre couplet of “Checked it once, checked it twice, they said I should know better / But I’m still waiting for Hedwig to come deliver my letter”. That said, Harry Potter references are not overflowing on Nu Delhi (thank God), nor are the loudest clangers that afflict rap-metal, pleasingly. If anything, Bloodywood’s readiness to celebrate India is an automatic bump in their favour, just for another unique angle to them that they’ve chosen to explore. Tadka is a song literally about a love of Indian cuisine and sharing its wealth, blown up by a bellowing monster of a hook, and affixed with the utterly brilliant line “battle with the blandness”.
That’s a good phrase to describe Nu Delhi as a whole, actually, though you’d have to imagine that Bloodywood are aware of that, too. It wouldn’t be so perfectly placed and even more perfectly applicable if it weren’t. But they’ve got every right to feel that way—rising from a less-than-stellar musical background; excelling in an oft-maligned space of metal; smacking down a cultural boundary that often feels preclusive to international success at all, let alone in this genre. All the while, Nu Delhi continues to be a complete blast with each subsequent spin. As far as mainstream-ready metal in 2025 goes, Bloodywood have rocketed to the head of the pack, entirely on their own terms. Scrapping the parodies was the best thing they could’ve ever done.
For fans of: Electric Callboy, Fire From The Gods, Limp Bizkit
‘Nu Delhi’ by Bloodywood is released on 21st March on Fearless Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
