“This is less a concert than a hard rock workout”: Bloodywood’s energetic Indian folk/nu metal fusion makes for one of London’s sweatiest gigs in recent memory

Bloodywood performing live in 2025.

Statistically, Bloodywood are 10 times more popular now than they were just six years ago. When India’s most talked-about metal export played their first London show in 2019, it was to 250 people at the O2 Academy Islington. Two albums, hundreds of gigs and several viral hits later, they’ve sold out the 2,500-capacity Forum down the road in Kentish Town.

The numbers don’t lie, but they don’t illustrate the sheer passion the New Delhi outfit draw from their onlookers either. From the moment they storm onstage and burst into Dana Dan – recently heard on the soundtrack of Dev Patel blockbuster Monkey Man – this crammed-in crowd will not stop moving. The band’s blend of Bollywood verve and nu metal bounce is so infectious that it hops the language barrier, everybody in the house pumping their fists and screaming along to the Hindi song’s hook “Dan! Dan! Dan!”