NMIMS College held a rock competition in 2011. A leading music channel had sponsored it and set strict guidelines for the participating acts — no cuss words, and no singing in Hindi. Now, this was a year after The Riot Peddlers, Mumbai’s first outfit to play hardcore punk — a genre that wears rebellion on its sleeves — had come into existence. They, too, were taking part. But they couldn’t give two hoots about the strictures. And when the three members went up on stage, not only did they shower the audience with expletives as if they were throwing confetti at a wedding, but their lyrics also had a smattering of Hindi. Nonetheless, the performance was so tight that they eventually ended up winning.

What, however, happened after they left the stage is what’s significant in understanding how this musical style has evolved in Mumbai. The thing is, before The Riot Peddlers, the city had a whole army of metal bands, including thrash metal ones, a genre considered as a cousin of hardcore punk. People were thus familiar with the musical form. They knew, for instance, that trying to grasp the growled lyrics at a thrash metal concert is as futile as trying to head bang with a sprained neck. But with The Riot Peddlers — even though the technicalities of the music mirrored metal — the lyrics were crystal clear, with every word being easily discernible. So the youngsters at NMIMS were left confused. “What is this genre that you guys play?” some of them asked Arun S Ravi, the band’s vocalist. And that’s when he had to explain that what the kids had just heard was hardcore punk music.