They say that life’s a carousel
Spinning fast, you gotta ride it well
The world is full of Kings and Queens
Who blind your eyes and steal your dreams
Heaven and Hell, by Black Sabbath

If the pandemic has flipped like a carousel the world as we knew it and things have spun out of control, Bangalore’s musicians can say they have worn the thorny corona with resounding optimism and not allowed their dreams to be stolen.

Although Covid-19 has kept everyone home, bands in Bangalore, which reverberates with the power of metal and is home to India’s only dedicated open-air heavy metal festival, have found ways to use the time creatively, and in some case more purposefully, in spite of zero earnings from music.

Most band members usually have day jobs that leave them to battle the maddening traffic in the city. With everyone working from home now and the pandemic putting paid to live shows, the musicians have enough time to rethink, relook and build on their repertoire. The bands are also connecting with fans by uploading on social media videos of how they have been creating music during the lockdown.

Chintan Chinnappa, guitarist of the hugely popular thrash metal band Inner Sanctum who describes himself as a “lawyer by day, rock star by night”, has been missing live shows but would rather look for low-hanging fruits for now.

Because of the lockdown, it has been a rather different kind of six months for the band that had opened for Metallica, the iconic American heavy metal band, in Bangalore in 2011.

“We miss the adrenaline of live shows. But we need to stay busy and creative using the time in hand,” Chinnappa told The Telegraph. “It’s been very difficult for bands. But the only advantage is we have time to cultivate our fan base and work on our music,” he added.

“As we have day jobs, we didn’t have time earlier to build on our outreach. Lots of us are using this time to build visibility and stay alive when it’s time to hit the stage,” Chinnappa said.

Inner Sanctum is gearing up to release its first offering of the Covid season — a single titled Divided By Hate that will be a big-budget music video.

“You need to make time for your passions, otherwise you go crazy in such times,” Chinnappa said, adding that most band members with salaried jobs would survive the current crisis.

Srikanth Panaman, lead guitarist of the metal band Bevar Sea, recounted how the members used to juggle between day jobs and concerts with little time left for anything else.

“We had taken a break in 2016 to rethink and refocus, but were still busy with our jobs. Covid-19 has actually helped us regroup and we are now set to complete our new album,” Panaman said.

Of course, he misses the well-attended shows and all that energy of playing on stage. “Live is always great and we miss playing on big stages. But again, we took the positives out of the current situation and didn’t buckle under the pressure of not doing shows,” said Panaman, who is an IT consultant.

Like most other bands, members of Bevar Sea snuck in to the comfort of their homes to work on new music and rethink their musicality.

“We took our jam room totally online and used technology to share notes on our new production. We will start taking one member at a time to the studio (to maintain physical distancing) to record his track until everything is put together,” Panaman said.

“But of course, we miss sitting together and getting instant feedback from each other,” he added.

Building his home studio is another project in the works so that the band wouldn’t need to hire studios.

The vocalist of Bevar Sea, Ganesh Krishnaswamy, who doubles as the drummer of a band named Kryptos, used the time to come up with his solo sideshow Megadrone in which he played lead guitar, base, synthesiser and the drum track.

“After a few weeks of lockdown I realised we would have to stay indoors for long. So I didn’t want to slide into frustration and instead put down some ideas that developed into this one-song album of 55 minutes,” Krishnaswamy said.

While money flow depends entirely on the traction a song receives on online music platforms like Apple Music and Spotify, the response has been very encouraging for his Covid-time solo release.

Since stepping out was no longer easy, Krishnaswamy converted his guest room into a home studio where the album took shape. “In fact, I’ve already finished writing for the second album for which recording will start in mid-October,” he said adding that being creative was the best way to beat the Covid blues.

Krishnaswamy is in no hurry to play live with powerful amplifiers thumping music into head-bangers in the crowd.

“Live music is not coming back anytime soon. Even if it does, I don’t want to go out there unless I am vaccinated,” said Krishnaswamy, who handles digital strategy for an ad agency during the day.

He too said band revenues had been badly hit. “We are making music but we don’t earn anything, although fans do buy merchandise of Kryptos,” Krishnaswamy said.

But as Black Sabbath might have said in the current context: “And it’s on and on, on and on and on/And on and on and on and on and on.”