Battle of the Bands : 2017 Edition

It was a warm and sultry midsummer afternoon in Manipal – the only kind of afternoons it has irrespective of the time of the year – when the day of the most anticipated event of Revels dawned upon the denizens of MIT. It was a day that brought along with it the promise of well-rehearsed live performances featuring crushing guitar tones, deafening snare, the solidness of the bass, and the mellifluous musicality of various other instruments.

The event began fairly late at around 6:40 pm, because of which the allotted slot time was reduced from 18 minutes to 12 minutes per band. The stage had a fairly good setup with Marshall amplifier heads and cabinets dominating the view with the gorgeous Pearl drumkit being placed at the center. The performances belonged to a vast variety of genres ranging from folk to straight-edge metal.

The first two bands  were fairly good – the vocalist of the first band seemed to miss the perfect tone on multiple occassions by a few semitones. The second band played an Iron Maiden inspired instrumental composition.

With the third performance, a Bengali band named Maach Bhalo Baashi is when the performances really picked up. With great drum fills, amazing vocals and a brilliant guitar tone, this band managed to capture the attention of the relatively previously disinterested crowd, and really managed to get them going with their second song, Mishti Doi.  The fourth  band played a relatively progressive song, while the fifth band featured an amazing blend of classical Tamil and English vocals.

Then came Cloudburst, playing  a beautiful rendition of R U Mine by the Arctic Monkeys along with two originals. Other noteworthy performances were by Under the Cross and No Flux Given.

Following the participants’ performance was Lagori’s performance, who left no stone unturned in delivering the performance of a lifetime. About 10 year ago, band members Geeth, Edward and Vinyl previously in Fahrenheit came to Manipal to perform at Revels as participants, and now, they played as headliners on the very same stage in a different band. They played their own renditions of popular songs like Iktara, Bulla among others and finished them up with songs from their self-titled debut album. The vocalist jumped around on stage for a staggering two hours while interacting with the audience, and managed to remain perfectly in tune, while the lead guitarist kept ripping out solo after solo to the various songs.

All in all, it was an evening most wouldn’t easily forget.

 

 

 

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