Metal Theory

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.

Curated For You

‘You don’t like it, I don’t care’: When Priyanka Chopra spoke about not caving into the pressure of pleasing others; how it chips away at self-worth

Smriti Mandhana skips Kapil Sharma’s show as he honours the cricket team on his show: ‘Smriti ne bola tha ki…’

Magnus Carlsen ranks Praggnanandhaa as 3rd favourite to win Candidates tournament