Metal Theory
Mehr Singhs debut documentary Yeh Hai Metal is a sneak peek into the lives of metalheads,who changed the course of the genre in India
It’s a hard surface. Hard to penetrate through,” says Rahul Hariharan of the band Bhayanak Maut,while Rohit Pereira from Pin Drop Violence (PDV),Sha’air n Funk and Khiladi,compares the genre of metal music to non-vegetarian food. “There’s pork and beef,which is the forbidden kind of Satanic metal. Then there are eggs which are like pop rock. There is nice,chunky chicken which covers music by bands like Metallica,and then there’s fish,which is probably death metal,” explains Pereira as he adds,“Some people eat non-vegetarian food to survive,some listen to metal to survive,” says Srinivas Sunderrajan from Scribe,who adds that he connects with metal not just because of the genre but because it is music created by him and his band. “It is some kind of music” and that’s what matters to him.
Metalheads Hariharan,Pereira,Surrajan and other talented musicians who have changed the course of Indian heavy metal music,talk about what the genre means to them in Mehr Singh’s documentary titled Yeh Hai Metal.
A graduate in Communication Design from the city’s Symbiosis Institute of Design,Singh was interning with Enter Guerrilla Films,a production house in Mumbai,when she interacted with many bands and musicians. She did not want to make a run-of-the-mill documentary for her graduation project and had been wracking her brain for an idea when she thought she could make a film tracing the history and evolution of Indian metal music. “I tend to get attracted to anything related to music. My jury,on the other hand,did not include people who would be familiar with metal as a genre. That’s when I wanted to introduce metal to them and shock them,” says Singh,who managed to get the reaction she wanted. The documentary — featuring bands such as Skyharbor,Bhayanak Maut,Scribe and Inner Sanctum — was shot in two months and presented to her jury in May 2012.
Singh later released a teaser of the film online for the music lovers. In an entirely unplanned progression of events,it got noticed by Metalbase,a web portal for Indian heavy metal music that offered to get on board with her as promotion partners. After much re-editing and finishing,the 34-minute documentary was released on the website on July 31.
One would imagine Singh to be a hard core metal fan. But she claims to be quite the contrary,with a play list featuring rock,punk,hip-hop,dubstep and even “heavy metal’s arch enemy”,Bollywood. So why this interest in metal? “I wanted to know who the people behind this music really are. Most people who are unfamiliar with the genre tend to think of them as satan-worshipping,baby-eating,blood-drinking,crawlers of the night. While shooting my documentary I realised that they lead a dual life — one that is off stage where they are polite,happy and have day jobs,and the other on stage,where they rip the stage apart and happily growl to their hearts’ content,playing some really exciting music,” says the 23-year-old.
Share
