Nu Delhi

Nu Delhi is a nu-metal album by Indian metal band Bloodywood. Most of the music is rather generic nu-metal. "Bekhauf" is featuring Babymetal, but is indistinctive for the most part. The tracks at the end of the album ("Daggebaaz", "Tadka" and "Nu Delhi") show some native musical influences, making these songs a bit more interesting. Too bad the damage is already done at that moment and my interest is lost.

WOW! This was a combination of genres I did not know I needed 5

I loved this! The Indian influences made this so much more interesting. Perfect for the gym today.

This is *incredibly* lame (complimentary)

Pretty standard from a musical perspective, but much more interesting than half of the list (the original 1001 and the user's list).

First Indian heavy metal album I’ve listened to. I actually really enjoyed this, not a massive metal head but the short running time meant this didn’t outstay its welcome.

This started out pretty bad, then got good for a while simply because of how absolutely fucking unabashedly cheesy it was, then it overdoses on that cheese and returns to being pretty bad. Mixed so ungodly loud that the "Nu Metal x Punjabi folk music" gimmick barely registers on most songs.

This was suprisingly good!

Hell yeah! Possibly my new favourite band, and Dhadak is my favourite song of this year (even if it came out last year!) - their twist on "float like a butterfly" is one of the rare perfect moments in music. An absolute joy, from a band clearly having a blast, and another discography for me to explore in full. Thank you so much for the nomination!

Metal metal metal lately, which is not my main genre, and this also features my least favorite vocal style, though the heavy effects actually made it a lot more tolerable for me. I liked that it was mostly not in English. All in all very solid modern metal, and I always appreciate when bands keep it short and sweet.

That was a neat mix of cultures.

Uh yeah, okay

Nu Delhi sounds like it should've been released 25 years ago, which I guess is the point. It's short, loud and not particularly easy to understand but makes a decent racket. It'd fall squarely into the middle of the nu metal pack so probably a low 3/5, though I could've done without the BABYMETAL cameo because I can't abide them. The last track is the angriest and therefore best.

Rating: 6/10

Kiinnostavan erilainen mut vähän liian dudebro-siistiä -tyyppistä heviä et jaksais kauheesti heilauttaa. 3/5

Extra star cause finally a non english band for a change.

It was fine

An interesting cultural mashup, but way too overstuffed – there's zero dynamic contrast or variation, and the whole thing ends up becoming a bloated wall of distorted mid-range. Desperately needs some lighter instrumentation and a good mix engineer, hope these guys found a better producer for the next release.

Nu metal, Indian folk music, folk metal. No me ha gustado. Un 2.

Pre-processed, processed and assembled in a factory line, and packaged with all the optional Indian spices shoved into small transparent plastic bags, Bloodywood is nü-metal at its finest, but also at its most exotic and most... capitalistic. Exactly the sort of project a former corporate lawyer would undertake after putting dough away, to then climb his way into the music world... This is not a metaphor here, by the way. The band's founder and guitar player WAS a corporate lawyer before he became a professional musician, ha ha -- it's explained in Bloodywood's Wikipedia page! His nose still being trained to follow the scent of money, *of course* he invited the popular Japanese metal-style-stamped "idol group" Babymetal on one track from this record (just so you know, Lil Uzi Vert did the same a couple of years ago, for a similar sort of downright horrible result, lmao). I guess that with this type of featuring / collaboration, we merely have the second-league equivalent of Coldplay inviting BTS to play on their latest dross so as to cater for a new target audience. So fucking predictable. My absolute distaste for such business-driven, behind-the-scenes moves doesn't prevent me from judging Bloodywood's music for its own merits, fortunately. After all, that's why I gave a 3/5 - 8/10 mark to Babymetal's debut on this list -- even if I also gave a 1/5 to their *unbearable* last LP. So let's break *Nu Dehli* down as quickly as I can, and then move on to better stuff. To be honest, the first three Slipknot-adjacent tracks slap in their elected genre, there's no arguing about that. There are some very infectious growls in those bloody cuts, served with trademark-yet-efficient riffing, and sprinkled with a teaspoon of local flavors... The thing is, when the fourth song surges -- yes the one featuring Babymetal! -- the spell is not only broken, it is shattered into a million pieces. That track doesn't make a fucking shred of sense. It does a hundred things at the same time, and NONE OF THEM well. This is where the assembly line is not even able to package its product in a somewhat presentable manner. There's a fine line between artful excess and a sheer mess, and both acts' teams cross it gleefully, like an elephant charging into a china shop indeed. Add the loud mix and the crucial lack of dynamics, and what you get is a total disaster. After that, the lead frontman switches gears to an extent, decreasing the number of yelled parts and increasing the singing, mostly to terrible, forced results. By the way, I don't have anything to say about the insignificant guy rapping in English next to him. It's a Linkin Park arrangement that is so formulaic it feels like it was crafted in a test tube in some secret lab between Bombay and Calcutta... Yet even this useless rapping is better than what the frontman does when he sings. Only French people are going to understand my next comparison here: the guy actually sounds a lot like... (Maître) Gims. And of course, it's NOT a compliment from me. Once you hear it, you just can't unhear it, I swear! "Et il chante FORT!" 🤣 As for the music, the two tracks after the Babymetal feature are simply inconsequential bullshit for the most part. With the penultimate cut, "Tadka", the traditional Indian / Punjabi folk elements are finally better integrated to the nü-metal shtick, even if the singing is still terrible. And that feat is pulled off again in the closer and title-track, miraculously spared by the stiff Gims-like vocal performance this time around. The Bollywood-like vocals are actually pretty good on this one, a rare case where the System Of A Down comparison sometimes used to describe Bloodywood's artistry might be valid. Hell of a way to save this album from my gallery of stinkers at the eleventh hour. In an alternate universe, "Nu Dehli" is the one song that should have followed the first three tracks instead of the turd with Babymetal. From that point on, maybe Bloodywood could have found a way to follow through so as to release a full-length release that's genuinely valuable for the overall metal category. But what we have instead is the Temu version of the genre, cheap-sounding and overblown to ridiculous proportion in the same move -- a "product" whose half is largely uninspired and even unlistenable. Of course, two or three metal-oriented websites and magazines claimed that this record conversely displayed good music... Idiots. But those sorts of publications have promoted all sorts of ridiculous releases among the true gems of the genre for decades, you know.... So you'd be wise to ignore them. As for Bloodywood, the latter have found a way to make a living doing "artistic" things, and there's no real harm in that, I guess. But placing that album of theirs in a list of 1001 essential albums? You gotta be out of your mind. Or have terrible taste. Take your pick. PS: I've just stumbled upon a 2018 Bloodywood song named "Rang (de) Basanti", and, surprise, it's a genuinely fun and catchy track, with a perfect balance between Indian pop and metal shenanigans. I am now under the impression that the musicians who are in this project have become its prisoners, so to speak, even if they don't consciously realize it. That what was once instinctive and spontaneous now feels like a day job at the office... They make money, sure. But are they truly happy inside? When you create music that now sounds as artificial and manufactured as this, and yet still manage to come off as awkward or heavy-handed, chances are all of this ends up taking its toll on your soul. Pretty ironic for a guy who wanted to stop being a corporate lawyer. 1.5/5 for the purposes of this list dedicated to essential albums, rounded up to 2 6.5/10 for more general purposes (5/5 for the musicianship and production values + 1.5/5 for the artistry) ---- Number of albums from the original list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 465 Albums from the original list I *might* include in mine later on: 288 Albums from the original list I won't include in mine: 336 ---- Number of albums from the users list I find relevant enough to be mandatory listens: 93 Albums from the users list I *might* select for mine later on: 112 Albums from the users list I won't select for mine: 231 (including this one) --- Hey Émile, j'ai répondu sous Demon Days ET ta sélection pour la users list ! 🙂

Nu metal, Indian folk music, folk metal. No me ha gustado. Un 2.

Really?! Bloodywood?! Nu Delhi?! Come on man!

If I liked nu metal, maybe I’d have given this more stars

Really not sure I can keep listening to albums from the same genre every day. I thought people's suggestions might be eclectic. The entire metal community has finished the project.