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Big 69 : India’s First Metal Pilgrimage

Metalheads who think the scene is dying… there’s a light at the end of the tunnel! Mumbai is now ready to get its very own metal music festival, called BIG69. Supported by Pepsi MTV Indies and managed by BAJAAO Consulting and Entertainment Pvt. Ltd., BIG69 will bring the biggest names in the rock music arena to India. In its very first year, BIG69 will showcase UK’s leading heavy metal legends Carcass and progressive metal act Sikth as the headliners. The festival will take place at the Richardson & Cruddas industrial compound in Byculla on the 17th and 18th of January, 2015 and the lineup includes Italian metallers Fleshgod Apocalypse and UK rap metallers Hacktivist along with some of the biggest Indian bands such as Bombay Metal Project and Joint Family, who will be reuniting for this festival after seven years of being defunct.
Carcass is one of biggest influences in the death/grindcore and melodic death metal genre. After disbanding in the mid 90s, Carcass reunited in 2007 for touring purposes, but the reunion became permanent in 2012 with a new lineup as drummer Daniel Wilding and guitarist Ben Ash joined founding members Bill Steer and Jeff Walker. With a 2013 release ‘Surgical Steel’ the band sets foot in India for the first time this January.
SikTh, who disbanded in 2008, have made a triumphant return in 2014 with a headlining set at the Download festival and are considered by many to be the godfathers of modern progressive metal. Vocalist Mikee Goodman said: “It has always been a dream to travel the world and play shows for myself and the rest of the band. It is an honour to be here right now. I heard some bands were recently coming to India to play. At last this chance has come for us and we are very excited to see and play in India!”

Fellow headliners Hacktivist who are considered to be one of the rising stars of the UK progressive metal scene and Fleshgod Apocalypse from Italy will be the other two international bands performing at the event. This festival will also give a platform to some of our very own Indian bands who have been performing in this genre. These include Nepal’s Underside and Indian metal biggies Demonic Resurrection, Undying Inc, Zygnema, Kryptos, Devoid and Noiseware. There is also something that young aspiring bands can look forward to. Pepsi MTV Indies is conducting a band hunt to choose two promising bands who will get a chance to play at the festival.

Apart from music, the festival will also have a special focus on art, with well-designed stages, art installations and the Indies KVLTure project – a special showcase of visual art, photographs and iconography associated with heavy metal. This will involve a number of collaborations with some of the finest artists and designers from the Indian metal scene who will create artwork and designs especially for the festival. Artists already on-board include Reuben Bhattacharya aka Visual Amnesia, Aaron Pinto, Avinash Jai Singh, Anirudh Singh aka Nuclear Puke, Gaurav Basu aka Acid Toad and Aaquib Wani. Limited edition prints of their artwork will be available for sale at the festival, along with special Indies KVLTure project merchandise and much more.

Festival managers BAJAAO were the company behind the now-defunct cult underground venue B69, which is still remembered fondly by the city’s metalheads. BAJAAO, along with the festival’s promoters and partners, is very excited about this upcoming new event that is to be added to the city’s annual calendar. Festival promoter Ashutosh Pande said: “We’ve had a long association with the Indian metal scene. BIG69 is our effort to take metal to the masses and to fill the void that B69 left behind. We intend to replicate the B69 experience at a much larger scale by giving Mumbai its very own Festival director Himanshu Vaswani said: “Mumbai hasn’t had a big music festival in a long time and we’re very excited to be doing a metal festival on this scale. We’re making sure that everything – from the line-up and stages to the whole experience – is as big as it gets.”

Early bird tickets are available at www.insider.in/big69 at Rs. 2500 for a two day pass. School and college students can avail of a special discounted pass at Rs. 1500. Find all the details at www.big69.in.

Watch this space for updates!

Bangalore Open Air kicks off crowd funding with ‘Keep Metal Alive’

Indian metalheads might just create history this year. They will fund what is termed ‘Asia’s largest metal festival’- Bangalore Open Air, in an effort to prove that we do not need sponsors or promoters to keep metal alive! The crowd funding campaign is being spearheaded by the man behind B.O.A.- Salman U. Syed- well known metal DJ, event organizer and manager of Kryptos.

Bangalore Open Air 2014 has a target of Rs. 44 lakhs, and a deadline – Tuesday, the 8th of July, 2014. The idea is to get metalheads to pay for a gig that they might attend, and get rewarded for it. There are multiple packages that can be purchased, which come with T-Shirts, meet and greet options, and also V.I.P passes, among other things.

Read all about the crowd funding campaign in detail on the Wishberry website, and contribute! This time, it’s in all our hands to #KeepMetalAlive!

Also check out the promotional video for the campaign here:

Bangalore Open Air 2014  is powered by Wacken Open Air, which celebrates its 25th edition this year with bands such as Arch Enemy, Behemoth, Carcass and others confirmed. American heavy metal band Megadeth has been confirmed as a headliner and will be playing their first show at the history of the festival.

Wacken-2014-poster

The complete list of bands confirmed as of date are:

A Pale Horse Named Death, Amon Amarth, Apocalyptica & Avanti! Orchestra, Arch Enemy, August Burns Red, Avantasia, Bülent Ceylan, Behemoth, Bembers, Blechblosn, Bring Me The Horizon, C.O.P. UK, Carcass, Children Of Bodom, Chthonic, Crematory, Decapitated, Degradead, Der W, Devin Townsend Project, Dunkelschön, Earth Divide, Emperor, Endstille, Excrementory Grindfuckers, Firkin, Five Finger Death Punch, Fleshgod Apocalypse, For The Imperium, Godsized, Hammerfall, Hatebreed, Heaven Shall Burn, Hellyeah, Iced Earth, ICS Vortex, J.B.O., King Diamond, Knorkator, Kreator, Lacrimas Profundere, Masterplan, Megadeth, Motörhead, Nachtgeschrei, Nailed To Obscurity, Nightmare, Omnia, Onkel Tom, Pampatut, Prong, Red Hot Chilli Pipers, Saltatio Mortis, Santiano, Saxon, Schandmaul, Skid Row, Sodom, Steel Panther, The Ocean, The Vintage Caravan, Torment, Vogelfrey, Vreid + Guests and W.A.S.P.

A lot more bands are slated to be confirmed in the coming months.

Check out the trailer for the 2014 edition of Wacken Open Air:

Norway’s Inferno Metal Festival comes to India

Rock Street Journal and VH1 India announced the inaugural Indian edition of the well-known Inferno Metal Festival that takes place every year in Norway. The announcement, which was made on January 20th, named New Delhi and Bangalore as the 2 cities to play host to the festival. Headlining this 2-day festival will be Norwegian death metal band Obliteration and thrash metal band Nekromantheon. The Indian contingent will comprise of Undying Inc, Devoid, Inner Sanctum and Theorized. The festival is to take place on the 15th and 16th of February in New Delhi and Bangalore respectively.

India has been associated with Inferno in the past with bands like Demonic Resurrection, Scribe, Undying Inc and Zygnema having played in its Norwegian edition in the past. This year too, Kryptos have secured a spot at the festival. This is the 2nd major international festival coming to Indian shores after Bangalore Open Air’s direct support from Wacken. Stay tuned for more updates!

Inferno

Blind Image to play Metal Asylum Fest, Dubai

Blind Image has just announced that they will be playing at the Metal Asylum Festival in Dubai sometime this November 2013.

Following their SE asia tour 2012 , Blind Image is now in the studio working on their upcoming third album which is expected to release by mid 2013. The band has already confirmed their tour of South East Asia (September 2013). Dates for the same will be announced shortly.

Regarding their slot at Metal Asylum, the band’s chief spokesperson Krishna says -“We played in Dubai in the year 2011 as a part of the global metal bash. The experience was unique and we are really glad that we will be hitting Dubai again this year for playing at the Metal Asylum festival which also feature various band across Europe and Egypt.

We will be hitting Dubai right after we come back from our SE Asia part 2 which will be happening this September.

These 2 tours will follow our third album’s launch which will be happening mid 2013. Prior to this we will also be touring India.”

The Metal Asylum festival is one of the biggest festivals that happens in Dubai every year and features a lot of underground bands from all over the world.

Check the official event page for more.

Inner Sanctum part of Burning Sea 2013 Festival in Croatia

Bangalorean death/thrashers Inner Sanctum have officially been announced as part of the highly all-star line-up at a one-of-a-kind beach metal festival called Burning Sea in Croatia this year. The event’s headliners are King Diamond and Iced Earth, being supported by such giants as Overkill, Destruction, Candlemass and Amorphis. Here’s hoping that the Croats never forget Inner Sanctum.