Eternal Wait Ends!

\m/ Call me obsessed. Call me crazed. There’s truth in that. It is the moral duty of a guitarist to be a fan of metal. Then you can choose your sub-genre. My vote goes to thrash and power metal.

It’s hard to not be partial to Finnish and Norwegian folk metal. And Ensiferum was the first band I had ever heard from this genre. Naturally, I was all gung-ho about seeing ENSIFERUM live; my first ever gig.

The OAT at IIT Powai was pretty deserted when we got there though LiveWire's opening band was already belting out some good stuff. We took our positions in the pit, me at the railing thanks to my great height and protracted ability to see over the heads of heavily built metalheads there. He ha.

Anyway, I ain’t complaining, because I got to see all the Fenders and Ibanez’s and Jacksons and Epiphones up close. The basses were three feet away from me, vocalists five, drums seven and leads ten. God! If I thought I was in heaven, I was so mistaken. Pro-nite, as they call it, began (after some really frustrating minutes or maybe years spent getting wet in the rain and watching blue tarps go over the double bass Yamaha drum kit that had me fascinated).

I’d thought that Slain from Bangalore was great (Mumbai’s Rosemary had had a really cute bassist but boring leads in pyjamas). Then Motherjane as the pronite opener was mind-blowing. Half of their face painted in a metalhead’s parody of Kathakali dancers, they really kicked ass. Their lyrics were a welcome refreshment from metal staples of death, destruction and freedom. They spoke of feminism, terror in daily life and flying. Metal with a real soul, reminding you that there’s light at the end of the tunnel. The vocalist Suraj actually ducked to give me a wide grin as I punched the air in time to Mindstreet. The lead guitarist Baiju deserves special mention as he conjured a heady blend of Carnatic music with metal. Had I not seen it being played on a guitar 10 feet away, it would have been difficult to convince me that it wasn’t a violin that was being played. That man is pure unadulterated genius. I have listened to little else other than Motherjane in the two days since.

Then, it was time for the Vikings to take centre deck. The air was so thick with excitement that you could almost cut it with a guitar string. Even Janne’s sound checks sent the crowds careening. Wham-bang! It began...

And voila! I was in love. With Petri Lindroos. With Markus Toivonnen. With Emmi SIlvennoinen. The pit was a mass of banging heads, bouncing balls (the ones on the feet, you dirty mind) and \m/s. Ensiferum were dressed in Viking attire – skirts, greased vests (they were Reeboks by the way, I saw the tag on Sami. ha-ha), war-paint, gauntlets, satchels on chains, wild hair and, in Emmi’s case, streaked red hair and a pair of leather boots on a pair of legs I’d kill to acquire. Even the guitars were straight off a dragon-ship, with sweeping curves and Norse-God dimensions. They urged the crowds to chant as though rowing a huge dragon-vessel skirting Finnish crags. I wonder if Slartibartfast has met Ensiferum... Interspersed chants of AHTI (the Finnish God of sea) actually put the missing “Mood” in place before the “Indigo”. My hand was \m/-ing over the railing and nearly got singed in the pyrotechnic blasts from below the stage. Efforts to take it back in were pointless so I \m/-ed away anyway and flashed a tongue back at Markus as he pranced to our end of the stage, tongue stuck out and whammying away.

I believe some huge moshes must have happened behind me as I got shoved along the railing nearly five feet several times. But for all I care, they might have been making way for a spaceship to land. It was just me and the band all the way.

A special mention here for Apurva, my guardian angel metalhead who took special care to ensure that I don’t get squished in the mass of bodies. I’m sure very few pint-sized girls around the world could boast of having survived in the pit at a large gig. But then, girl power was heavy on the ground that evening as 20-year old Emmi SIlvennoinen gyrated her head making her Korg dance to her tunes, alongside the Vikings. All night, I overheard several sincere wishes from guys to be reborn as a Korg keyboard next time round. If you ask me, I’d rather be reborn as Emmi, than, say as Petri’s Kramer guitar. Ha.

Anyway, the excitement was a bit dampened as mum hadn’t expected me to be out so late (I got home at 1 a.m.). As soon as I got home, I gave mom a note-by-note account of the whole thing and POOF! A metalhead was born at home! I showed her some live videos of Ensiferum yesterday and a spondilytic head-banger metalhead was born at home.

And so, my tryst with the Windriders of the Viking-metal world came to a dramatic, fireworksy end and so does this post.