When Sitar Met Electric Guitar: The new wave of Metal and Classical fusion music

Student Reporter, Jan 13, 2025, 2:53 PM IST

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Traditional Indian classical music and heavy metal are distinguished genres, marked by their perceivable difference to our ears. A few years back nobody could imagine an amalgamation of the two, until a veteran band called What Escapes Me from Kolkata took the plunge, credited Diptyesh Bhattacharya, a young metal vocalist himself. It was their album ‘Egress Point’ which first fused metal with Indian traditional music, that turned out to be a hit.

The band consisting of vocalist Shourav Kumar Dey, guitarist Arindam Sen, and bassist Pradyumna Laskar continued with drummer Sambit Chatterjee. Sambit, the son of percussionist Pandit Subhen Chatterjee, grew up with an Indian Classical background altogether. He was the first to introduce classical instruments such as Saroj, Tabla, and Sitar in the band’s songs, Diptyesh stated. 

Heavy metal music first emerged during the 1970s in the United Kingdom and graced India around the 1990s. The rise of a new brand of metal, known as Vedic Metal or Hindu Metal, traced its origin to the heavy metal band M.A.I.D.S. (Metal Aliens in Devil’s Soul), laying the foundation for heavy metal and rock in southern India.

Although metal itself caters to a niche audience, practicing musicians from all over the country are increasingly breaking that barrier. To call it risky, would be precise, as metal takes time to break through the stereotypes among people. 

Bhattacharya accounted for ‘Sitar Metal’, another such band that focuses on playing sitar along the lines of a metal background like rhythm guitar, and drums. The sitar is usually also accompanied by tabla, sarod, and other classical instruments. 

Challenges and Stereotypes in Metal-Classical Fusion

While talking about the most potent yet difficult part that comes with this kind of fusion, guitarist Soumya Banerjee of Warpath band said, “In one word, it’s incorporation. You need to be the master of amalgamating these two genres and only then the best audio product would come out. The moment you try to force and fuse these two, the essence is gone.”

Being someone from the scene for more than a decade, Soumya emphasised that the audience was and will always be divided. “What truly bridges the two genres is respect. In order to make fusion music, artists must respect each style and whatever it comes with,” stated Diptyesh. Explaining in more technical terms, he said, “The roots of Indian traditional music is through metric modulations. It’s not your basic 3-3 or 3-4, but already divided into metric modulations, which is used in modern metal.”

It is still a very popular perception that metal is ‘just screaming’ or ‘noise’, whereas it takes years to master the technicalities of methods such as growling and screams, even with the risk of harming one’s vocal cords in the process. Subgenres of metal itself vary quite a lot from one another.

He further added how the stereotypes go both ways, “There are two types of metal listeners, one are the gatekeepers who won’t listen to anything other than pure old heavy metal, or old school death metal. They don’t support this fusion movement, tainted by superiority. As compared to that, listeners of our age are much more open to the idea of new possibilities and experiments.” 

Indian Fusion Metal

One of the well-known names in this brand of music is Thaikkudam Bridge, one of the first bands to use Carnatic ragas in their metal songs. Their song Nawasharam is one of the most popular ones. Bloodywood is one of the biggest metal bands in the world that originates from India. In addition, Pineapple Express band’s variety and unique combination of music makes them one of the most underrated artists in today’s time. 

One can never know where their experiments can take them if they don’t visualise. Kolkata’s Warpath released an album called ‘Hool 1850’, in which they sang about our war hero and various impactful incidents in Indian history. Mixed with the aggression of metal and the soothing of classical music, the album beautifully showed how with just a few adjustments, you can be transported to a whole new genre. 

In between the aggression of metal and the calmness of Indian classical, one emotion that joins both ends is passion. Both genres have different degrees of their own traits, but passion is prevalent in the making of both. Depth in music doesn’t always just come from big words in lyricism, sometimes it requires raw, crude emotions, carried forward with music. Even if both these music genres cater to a niche audience, the new listeners are sure to find a place in it.

Written by: Sinchan Saha, School of Communication and Media Studies, St Joseph’s University, Bengaluru