Bloodywood Returns With New Album And Bigger Global Vision

Bloodywood — comprising Karan Katiyar, Jayant Bhadula, and Raoul Kerr — crafts a hard-hitting yet modern folk metal sound that has made the world sit up, take notice, show up, and sing along. “A punch to the face, followed by a hug”, is how the band describes their music.

A relatively newer entrant onto the international metal scene – the band released its first track in 2018 – Bloodywood has broken through barriers, blazing a new path for Indian acts to follow. In the past seven years, they have released two albums – their latest is NU DELHI, which released last month to rapturous reviews and packed venues in UK and Europe. Up next for them is a run of shows in Japan and across the length and width of North America.

“2025 has already been a wild ride,” says the band, who are joined on tour by drummer Vishesh Singh (a fixture since their early days), bassist Roshan Roy (a seasoned figure in New Delhi’s indie music scene) and percussionist Sarthak Pahwa.

“Wrapping up our European and UK tour was nothing short of incredible, the energy, the love, the sold-out shows across the EU and UK… it’s been surreal. On top of that, we just dropped our second album NU DELHI, and the response has been overwhelming. We’re just a few guys from New Delhi who dreamed of playing metal for the world. We kept our heads down, worked hard, and it finally feels like we’re taking our first real steps toward that dream. From YouTube covers to magazine covers, from local gigs to sold-out shows around the globe, it’s been a wild journey,” they add.

The rise of Bloodywood

From a country where metal bands often struggle to find an audience beyond the college festival circuit, Bloodywood’s success is refreshing and merited. They blend heavy riffs with Indian folk instruments and lyrics that speak “about real things, mental health, self-belief, standing up for what’s right. It’s aggressive, but it’s also healing. You don’t need to be a metalhead to connect with it, you just need to feel something,” summarise the band.

And lakhs of people around the world have been drawn to Bloodywood’s rooted-in-reality lyrics. Even a global pandemic couldn’t stop the juggernaut that was Bloodywood – ‘Yaad‘ in early 2020 had deepened their storytelling.

The band followed it up in late 2021 with ‘Gaddaar’, taking aim at how politicians use religion to gain votes. Songs like ‘Aaj’ and ‘Dana Dan’ (the latter rallying against rape culture) built up to the release of their debut self-released album Rakshak in 2022. It earned them a nomination for Best International Breakthrough Artist at the Heavy Music Awards in 2022.

Over the past couple of years, Bloodywood have performed to packed crowds, selling out such storied venues as Gramercy Theatre in New York City, The Electric Ballroom in London, O-East in Tokyo to playing in front of tens of thousands at festivals across the world. From Lollapalooza India, Download Festival, Bloodstock (UK), Hellfest (France), Summer Breeze (Germany) to Brutal Assault (Czechia), to Fuji Rock (Japan) and American mainstays like Louder Than Life and Aftershock, Bloodywood have won global acclaim and devotion from fans.

In 2024, ‘Dana Dan’ even made it to a pivotal sequence in the Jordan Peele-produced action movie Monkey Man, directed by and starring Dev Patel.

NU DELHI, their new album

NU DELHI is a love letter to the band’s home and, to the many shades of hard rock and metal theory music represents. The band frontloads their sonic style with elements of nu metal, modern metalcore, and melodic hard rock, adding plenty of Indian folk elements to keep things unpredictable, thrilling to listen to, and explosive. The end result is a fingerprint-distinct style. Bloodywood fuse so many cultural sounds and styles in their music, and that is why NU DELHI – their latest heavy, culturally-infused and ruthless album that released on March 21 – is already a global phenomenon.

“Delhi made us who we are, it’s chaotic, intense, diverse, and full of contrast, just like our music,” the band says, explaining their decision to pay homage to the city via their album. “Growing up here meant being exposed to so many different sounds, struggles, and stories. It taught us to be loud, to fight for what we believe in, and to never hold back.

NU DELHI is our way of honouring that, it’s not just a tribute to the city, it’s a reflection of everything it gave us, the fire, the frustration, the culture, and the courage to be unapologetically ourselves,” they add.

The title track ‘Nu Delhi’, an obvious play on their music genre and their hometown’s post-colonial name, plays like a well-worn homage to their town. ‘Tadka’ adds a little spice to the album, literally. The song about the bands love of their food and how there is nothing like well-made Indian food is both compelling and vibrant, as Raoul raps, “...Because our food was made to win hearts like a wager... vicious and delicious.”

‘Bekhauf’ is the album’s lone track with a feature – a collaboration with Japanese kawaii metal band BABYMETAL, and a ‘marvellous collision of styles’ (Knotfest).  Whether tackling incidents of historical importance in ‘Halla Bol’ or the ideas of self-validation and standing up to the negative noise in ‘Hutt’, NU DELHI sees a more confident, self-assured version of Bloodywood.

“There’s an element of danger to the sound of this album. I cannot tell for certain whether that’s a good thing or not, but it’s definitely the right thing. We’ve changed as individuals since we released our last album and I feel the new music accurately reflects that change,” Katiyar, also the bands producer and mixer, extolls.

You can listen to NU DELHI here, and stay updated with the band’s journey here.