Kathmandu Valley Hardcore Represent – Mad All Nepali Hardcore Show Taking Place Dec 10

When this popped up on our IG (which y’all should be following HERE) we were STOKED. Nepal, like many other places outside of the SE Asian region, doesn’t have a large hardcore scene – but the scene that it does have are CRAZY dedicated to the music, the ethos and the community that’s birthed out of it.

The show is simply billed as KVHC – standing for Kathmandu Valley Hardcore – and features almost all of the current crop of hardcore bands including Strangle, Nainsook, Neck Deep in Filth, Discord, Void to Exist, and even grindcore madmen in Maranatha.

The mainman behind this show, Keroz of Discord, was kind enough to send us some answers to questions about the show…

UA: Yo Keroz! Congrats on the new show! The flyer is so sick! Can you tell us why you wanted to organize this show featuring almost all of Nepal’s current hardcore bands?
We are trying to uplift our hardcore bands. It has been a long time since this type of gig has taken place in Kathmandu. We have included bands from Kathmandu, Bhaktapur, and Lalitpur. In our scene there are no sponsors, so we are doing this all on our own to let people here know what’s up.

UA: It’s so rad – you can feel the vibe right from the flyer. So what’s the current stage of the Nepali hardcore scene? How many bands are there and is the audience starting to feel it? Cause as far as I know metal is the main form of heavy music that’s popular there right?
We are definitely trying to bring a certain vibe through the flyer. Shoutout to meloooooo for capturing the vibe so perfectly through the flyer. Yeah, hardcore isn’t very popular here in Nepal. There really hasn’t been any growth in the community from when it began to where we are now but we’re here to try and change that. So far, it does seem people are pretty excited about this show because of the number of bands playing this ONE show.

UA: Yeah it’s interesting how that works. Some places in Asia have massive hardcore scenes but in some places no matter what, it just doesn’t catch on. Why do you think that is in Nepal?
People mostly follow trends nowadays. Whatever is popular that’s what people want to be a part of. This is across everything – fashion, music, politics. People don’t even know what it’s actually about, they just want to follow it cause it’s currently on trend. Our music isn’t trendy at all nor fashionable so people don’t seem to care. The cool thing is that our scene is quite diverse – our bands include powerviolence, technical death metal, metalcore, whatever. People in the pit are ready to die for this music – that’s how much passion there is for this here.

UA: What are your hopes for this show or the future of the Nepali hardcore scene?
The future is not in our hands so it’s unpredictable. We just know that our show is gonna go off because it’s been a long time. Everyone’s gonna have a good time and we know this scene will continue to evolve.