It’s only apt that Bengaluru-raised, Dubai-based metal gig organizer Vinod Varma is bringing Mumbai extreme metallers Demonic Resurrection (DR) at the upcoming edition of his gig series Desert Inferno on Nov. 1, 2025.
“Sahil [Makhija aka Demonstealer, founder and guitarist-vocalist of DR] is always so resilient; he never gives up. This is what it is for me as well. I’m a resilient person, whatever the challenges are. There are ups and downs, but you don’t give up,” Varma, the founder of Resurrection Metal Events Dubai, who also holds down a job in digital media, says over a video call from his office conference room.
Resurrection Metal Events Dubai, which Varma runs along with South African-origin Dubai-based promoter Matthew Scott Joyner, was started between 2009 and 2012 and has now hosted international bands, local U.A.E.-based bands and Indian metal bands. From Dutch metallers Pestilence to German thrash veterans Destruction, Middle East mainstays Nervecell and Indian bands like Godless, Gutslit, Kryptos, Girish and The Chronicles, Chaos, Amorphia, The Down Troddence and Inner Sanctum, Varma has worked with them all.
Varma has an encyclopedic knowledge of metal across India and the Middle East. He can tell you about Oman’s black metal band Arabia who played the first gig he organized inside the Grand Hyatt in Muscat in 2009. He can go further back and reel off names of legendary bands like Millennium and the time they played hallowed Bengaluru venue Chowdiah Memorial Hall in the Nineties, or the now-defunct 19 Church Street where rock and metal ruled the Garden City with bands like Vulcan Edge and Crimson Storm.
He moved to Oman from Bengaluru in 2004 as an “economic migrant.” Varma says, “I was not a call center kind of a guy, so that made me move. I got an opportunity to move to Oman with my wife and I started a job immediately with a media company in Muscat.” Then, there was also a move to Bahrain before he finally moved to Dubai in 2012.
When Varma moved to the U.A.E., Dubai Desert Rock Festival had kicked off, bringing global metal favorites to the Gulf, including Megadeth, Iron Maiden, Robert Plant, Motorhead, Korn, Opeth, Mastodon and more. “It was a great festival also because it was all-ages, we had people coming from all over—Bahrain, Oman, Saudi, Egypt and even Russia. The gathering was fantastic,” Varma says.
Yet, Varma says he felt “claustrophobic” when he first moved to Muscat, because he was missing the metal community back home. In the pre-social media age, the only place to meet metalheads was at bars. One day, he spotted a truck with a Slayer decal that led him to become friends with Qais Sabbagh, an early metal gig promoter. They traveled to festivals like Wacken Open Air in Germany for a few years in a group. Varma says, “That’s what sparked things up, around 2008. We said, ‘We should be doing this in Oman.’”
After his inaugural gig in 2009 in Muscat, the Middle East transformed as cities like Dubai opened up. Dubai Desert Rock Festival may have had its final edition in 2009, but that’s when Varma was just getting started. In 2012, after moving to Dubai, Varma played several clubs as a metal DJ under the moniker DJ Wynn, thus creating a network of metal fans as well as venues. In 2015, he had gathered enough funds to bring down Mumbai thrash/death metal band Devoid for their first international gig, also marking the first Indian band that played a Resurrection gig.
Through his day job, savings and DJ gig money, Resurrection Metal Events runs monthly now, starting with regularity around 2022 with the Desert Inferno gig series. “My daily work as a media man is good, but metal is passion and people who’ve known for me ages know what kind of metalhead I am,” Varma says.
It wasn’t the first time an Indian metal band had played Dubai—Varma points to torchbearers like Pin Drop Violence having performed, plus Demonic Resurrection too had played in 2014 and 2015. But it was the beginning of a movement for Varma. Demonstealer, now performing for the third time in the region, says, “I think the deal has been exactly the same, so nothing has changed. It’s [the promoters offering to] cover all your expenses, come and play the show, sell your merch. It’s good.” Marking the 25th anniversary of Demonic Resurrection, Dubai was a “bucket list” city to come back and play for Demonstealer, and it worked out after a few months of finding the right date. They’re playing a career-spanning set, from A Darkness Descends to Dashavatar to newer singles like “Necromancer” from 2022.
Mumbai brutal death metallers Gutslit played Dubai first in 2018 and came back for Varma’s gig series March Massacre in 2023, followed by Desert Inferno in 2024 alongside Pune thrash metallers Kasck. It served as a kickoff point for their tours. Bassist and founder Gurdip Singh Narang calls Dubai “a very good prospect for Indian bands,” more so if you’re traveling onward to Europe for the rest of the shows considering Dubai is a major travel hub. “The crowd there is super supportive and it’s a lot of people from all over the world, so when you are playing you have a global exposure,” he adds.
Demonstealer adds, “Dubai is a great spot to play, there’s a nice, small metal community there. It’s really great that Vinod is being able to build that sort of community and infrastructure there for that to happen.”
The way he sees it, Dubai is often a layover city when Indian bands have to plan their Europe tours, so they could as well score a gig there. “If you can sort of create, like a three or four city touring circuit in the Middle East, it would be pretty awesome to see. Bands could play three or four shows in the area and then move to the next leg of their tour, and that economically takes a bit of the burden off one singular promoter as well,” Demonstealer adds.
Varma is all for it, but he does envision challenges. “The only other countries [for touring] I can think of are Bahrain and maybe Saudi Arabia or Qatar. It could be quite possible, but there are some challenges for Indian passport holders to get a visa to those countries,” he says.
There’s a bit of competition among promoters in Dubai but he’s all for a more expanded touring circuit in the region for metal bands. He faces his own challenges putting together gigs. Venues in the party-friendly city of Dubai are often expensive, along with renting equipment. There’s no brand sponsor, just Varma funding it out of his own savings and recouping on ticket sales. “No alcohol company can sponsor events out here,” he notes. While there may be thousands of metalheads living in Dubai, about 150 to 300 attend Resurrection events. “As economic migrants, not everyone cannot afford to come to each and every gig here in Dubai… it’s small but it’s intimate,” he adds.
After a couple of years in full throttle, many Indian bands want to come back to play Dubai. Varma has Desert Inferno shows booked until May 2026, but he won’t reveal it all at once just yet. “If you’ve chosen the path as a metal band in India or a promoter in Dubai, as your career, then you know it’s a 50-50 [part-time] career. The moral of the story is to be resilient,” Varma says.
Leave a Reply