Growing up a Metalhead in small town India
Cassettes, MTV, and finding Metallica in 1998 Ranchi.
This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. This month, we used the prompt, ‘MUSIC’. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.
It was September 1998 in Ranchi. My friend D handed me a cassette, promising it was some of the best music he had ever heard. Intrigued, I took it home and popped it into my Sony CFS-W455 cassette player. Within the first minute of hitting play, I knew: this was my music. Very rarely do you experience serendipity and recognize it instantly. It wasn't one of those moments where you have to look back years later to connect the dots. As the heavy distortion kicked in, I knew right then that everything had changed.
The album I describe above is Reload - Metallica’s Seventh Studio album. It was the first time I had listened to such raw aggression in music - the heavy guitars, the fast drums and the powerful vocals. For most people Heavy Metal (or simply Metal) is simply a loud, brash noise made by rowdy men on distorting guitars sporting long hair and leather jackets. For me, it is all that and more. Metal has a cleansing, cathartic quality, and is my go to music when I am feeling emotionally unsettled or just simply need that most mercurial of feelings - inspiration.
A teenager listens to Metal to channel his rebellious side. That is very normal in the West. But what was strange about my situation was that I was listening to Metal in a Tier-II Indian city like Ranchi. In the nineties, Ranchi was even lesser known than when it became the capital of Jharkhand in 2000 (and before a certain MSD captiavted the nation). It was at that point only known as the summer capital of Bihar : a backwater of a backwater. The closest big music store was Music World1 on Park Street, Calcutta - 400 kms away. It was not possible for local music shop owners in Ranchi to source Metal or Hard Rock albums - there simply wasn’t enough demand.
So it still amazes me that me and my small circle of friends managed. I still don’t know how that happened. We listened to Metallica and then moved on to Aerosmith and Van Halen and AC/DC and Ozzy Osbourne. These, as some of you can tell are not Metal bands but Rock bands. There are myriad sub-genres within Metal such as Thrash, Hair, Doom, Progressive, Nu etc. and Metal fans are the most pedantic when deciding what they do or don’t listen to. But we couldn’t afford to be pedantic, because apart from mainstream bands like Metallica and Iron Maiden, we didn’t have much exposure to other metal bands. MTV was a big influence and it was a time when they still played music videos (thankfully). We had a VCR at home and my dad had given me and my sister a blank video cassette to record whatever we wanted. I, of course started recording music videos. The three hour length of the video cassette was ideal for making a mix-tape. I recorded many but I will leave you with two memorable music videos from that era which perfectly encompass what Metal was for me:
It is highly unlikely you haven't seen the music video2 for Guns N’ Roses’ November Rain. Everything about it is massive—the hair, the elaborate sets, the sweeping guitar solos, and, of course, Axl Rose’s ego. It is a nine-minute, cinematic ode to the Rock Gods. Simply unforgettable:
For most people, Enter Sandman was their gateway to Metallica, whether they caught it on the radio or saw this exact music video. It perfectly defines what a great Metal visual should be. It captures the song's nightmarish mood by cutting seamlessly between a boy's terrifying dreams and the band thrashing away. The narrative perfectly aligns with the lyrics, all driven by a track with a bewitching sonic oomph. After this, Metal was no longer underground. Goosebumps.
DhvaniTaranga by Shwetha Harsha , Chutneymix
Music for Mental Health by Shruti Soumya, Same Here
The Singing Neighbour by Rakhi Kurup, Rakhi’s Substack
#18: On Music by Siddhesh Raut, Shana, Ded Shana
Music: A tale of three friends by Ritika Arora, Not a Straight Line
Morning Raaga by Nidhishree Venugopal General in Her Labyrinth
The store closed in 2013 sadly. The Kolkata Music World was the most successful of all the stores in India. I distinctly remember visiting in Dec 1999 and buying the Nu Metal Band -Korn’s album Issues
The first video on YT from before 2005 (Youtube’s birth year) to hit a Billion views. Currently at 2.4 B views.
Music was a different world before the advent of Internet and Smart phone. Every cassette was a treasure no doubt. Going back two decades in the 70s Record Player like HMV, EP and LP records were ruling.
Nice effort by Rajat to take us down the memory lane.
I have been liking heavy metal too. So it strikes a chord