[ATTENDED: May 5, 2026] Bloodywood
My wife and I saw Bloodywood open for Babymetal about a year ago. We loved everything about them–their intensity, their positivity and just how heavy they were. So when they announced a headline tour I grabbed a ticket for myself, my wife and my son. My son had a final exam the next morning so he opted not to come. (Smart kid). So that left my wife and I. Normally I love seeing opening bands–some of my favorite live bands are band I first saw when they were an opener.
But I looked at this lineup and saw three openers–bands that I have never heard of–and told my wife that we could skip them all. She had something to do until around 6:45, so we left a little around 7. I figured we’d get into Philly with a bunch of extra time and then stroll in around 9 right after the third band finished.
Well, we didn’t realize it was Cinco de Mayo and had no idea that South Street was blocked off in a number of places because of some kind of free taco festival. And we got caught in the middle of it. We drove about a mile in 45 minutes, finally escaped the chaos and found a parking garage. When we walked to South Street, there were crazily drunken people everywhere and police on every corner. We negotiated the cops and entered the venue at around 9:15. My wife later told me she thought they were going on at 9 so she was panicky and didn’t understand why I wasn’t. Well, there was no merch line, so I bought a shirt and we headed into the packed room.
I don’t really like being so far back, but TLA is fairly small, so even being n the back isn’t so bad. Aside from the guy who inexplicably felt the need to put both his hands over he head for most of the songs, I could see fine and the sound was great.
So Bloodywood is a metal band from New Dehli who started out as a band making heavy metal parodies of Bollywood songs. In 2016, Katiyar quit his job as a corporate lawyer and together with Jayant Bhadula formed a two-piece band with the intention of “destroying pop songs”.
Now, live, the band is a six-piece. Katiyar plays guitars and flute! Bhadula sings and growls. Raoul Kerr officially joined in 2019 and does rap vocals. The touring band since 2019 includes Vishesh Singh on drums, Roshan Roy on bass and Sarthak Pahwa plays the dhol (an Indian drum that sounds amazing). (more…)
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