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UNDERGROUND 2009 The best acts from three cities put forth their best for the ‘Last Band Standing’ title. NICKY

Underground – Battle of Bands 2009 — The most awaited competition for the south Indian bands came to an end after a tough screening of the talented bands in three major rock-loving cities — Bangalore, Chennai and Cochin. It was a very critical time for the judges to choose the best one as all the bands were displaying the best of their skills. The selected best bands from these cities were put on stage to fight for the title ‘Last Band Standing’.

Showdown

The opening act was by none other than All The Fat Children — a progressive alternative rock band and the winner from Bangalore. They were tight on stage and begged appreciation for all their original songs. They stood out with the cover of alternative Malayalam rock band “Avial”.The winner from Chennai, Escher’s Knot, took the stage next. Abhijit owned the stage with his vocal techniques and Anshuman nailed his six strings and actually the crowd came near the stage for a head banging session. Textures’ cover “Drive” was a crowd puller song for them. Next was In Dying Days, a metal-core band from Cochin. They did an energetic display of their originals and their stage presence was mentionable.

Before the guest band Skrat took over, reputed musician Johny Bedford was called upon the stage to announce the winner of “Last Band Standing” title and to give away the prizes to the winner —“In Dying Days”. Soon after that a heart touching video of Chennai’s loved metal guitarist Arjun Vasudevan who died a few months back, made everyone mourn for a few minutes. Following this, Saroop of Unwind Center proudly announced the “Arjun Vasudevan Best Metal Guitarist Award”, which was started this year by his friends and family to carry forward his legacy. And the award for this year was given to Anshuman Mishra of Escher’s knot.

Pro shows

The crowd was restless now to see Skrat on stage. They started with a Rage Against The Machine cover “Wake Up” followed by their originals “Adrenaline”, “Soon Before I am Dead” and “R.I.D (Robots in Disguise)”, which was written with an influence from the Movie “Transformer”. Audioslave’s cover “Your Time” and original “Black Hammer Man”, “Design” followed next. They were brilliantly placed in their set list in order to keep the variations going. They wound up their performance with their original song “Stay Wild” which made the enthusiastic crowd want more.

The headlining act of the evening was the band which already made an identity with their performance on various stages across the country. Yes, Blood & Iron, was next on stage, and they started with “The Altar” from their second album Dynamite World, followed by “Promised Land” and the title song of their album “Dynamite World”. More than half of the crowd was seen singing along with them for the songs “Anarchy” and “Sinner & Saints”. Individually talented musicians of this band displayed a very energetic performance of their first album self title song “Blood & Iron” in the end. This was another success story in the arena of Unwind Center. If any of you have missed an opportunity to see this show please wait for Underground 2010 and do catch “Lounge Piranha” on Live 101 next Friday.

Nicky’s into space marketing and also promotes upcoming bands through Unseen Underground shows.

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