'Welcome to the land of the Wild, Wild East,’ declare Bloodywood on the title track to their second album proper. And wild is right. In the three years since Rakshak, they’ve refined their sound and become a respected international touring act, making a huge splash at Bloodstock and becoming the first Indian metal band to make a mark on the US Billboard charts in the process. What they haven’t done is rein in the untrammelled energy that made them such an entertaining draw in the first place. Nu Delhi is as colourful, chaotic and multi-faceted as the vast city they love, hate and call home.
That punning title pins Bloodywood’s love of nu metal to their sleeves. But beyond the lurching, downtuned riffs, Nu Delhi delves both further back and further forward than Korn and Limp Bizkit’s heyday. There’s a naivety that recalls the frenetic, anything-goes approach of rap-metal forerunners like Senser and Urban Dance Squad, who were throwing everything they could grab into a musical blender before nu metal became its own codified genre. It’s a don’t-give-a-hang attitude that has resurfaced with acts like Wargasm, Poppy and even Babymetal – who make an appearance here on the superb Bekhauf, a trilingual explosion of floaty keys, dislocating grooves and kawaii bubblegum hooks.
