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The Livewire Diaries 2007
Livewire Eliminations: Day Two
True to his word, your friendly Split correspondent made his way to Powai, and made it pretty much on time today — just in time to catch the first act Less Is More, in any case. They performed four original compilations, along with “A Hard Day’s Night” (The Beatles). They had a fun, rock ‘n’ roll sound, but the downside to their performance, along with many of the other early-birds was that there was pretty much no crowd, hence no crowd interaction.
Next came Five8, a decent punk/funk band that got attracted the attention of a lot of bystanders with their first song, a very catchy “I Wish You Her”. They then covered “Price You Gotta Pay” (Mr. Big) and performed another of their own songs with some nice keyboards, called “Rain”. Groove Lab took to the stage without any form of introduction, and rather confused the crowd by saying all their songs were covers of a band named Groove Lab. All their songs were pretty good with an alternative/bluesy sound, with “Victim of the Dump” and “Place to Hide” warranting a special mention. Amidst The Chaos ripped the stage apart next with a welcome dose of metal with terrific riffs and strong vocals (both harsh and clean). Theirs was the strongest performance to that point, with “Fight Night” and the somewhat bizarre “Ice Nights Nine Lights”.
Apollonian Quest, if my memory serves me well, were the first five-piece band to take the stage, and had a refreshing, avant-garde sound, with songs like “Progenies of Death and Havoc” and “Polishers of Tragedy”, which was a great song, except for a bit of out-of-sync keyboard play. They also covered “From the Cradle to Enslave” (Cradle of Filth) decently, and that was appreciated by the ever increasing crowd. Up next, were the exotically name Skratz, who had a jazzy rock ‘n’ roll-ish sound with a truckload of originals, the best of which was “Everybody’s Upto Something”, and they finished up with “Animal” (Pearl Jam).
Slingshot, an alt. rock band, had a great stage presence and got the crowd buzzing with their songs “Say Cheese”, “Give It Away” and “Blue”. Stiffneck Syndrome were another alternative band that had traces of Keane and Tool in some songs, and were alright, with “Funky Free Jam” being their best song, along with a rather strange number in “Pop and Roll”. Redemption were quite a disappointment, unfortunately, and having spent massive amounts of time on their soundcheck, just couldn’t get things to work. Their originals “Rage Against the World” and “Second Thought” were average at best, and “Shadows of Disaster”, while decent, was too little, too late.
Prosody were the proverbial “We are Rage Against The Machine Clones” band that would, in my opinion have played the whole Rage discography given the chance. Sure, the crowd loved it — why wouldn’t they? But their music was too monotonous, with “Killing in the Name” and “Bulls on Parade” being just two of the songs they performed. Exhumation were, in my opinion, the best death metal act in the competition. A three-piece band with brilliant guitar-work, Death-inspired vocals, and some fantastic music on the whole. The crowd loved it, and even the good old pop/rock fans could be seen trying to headbang to songs like “Tandoori Chick”, “Racial Slaughter” and “Among the Dead”.
Metal Messiah were a last minute entry since Aftertaste didn’t turn up, and their performance, although pretty good, was way too long, and started to get on people’s nerves after about six or seven songs. “T.I.M.E.” and “Kill Me, Tear Me” were about the only songs worth mention. Whitenoiz were a welcome change with a nu-metal sound. “Give Back” and “Crush” were decent originals and they also went on to cover “Deliver Us From Evil” (Bhayanak Maut). Red Cube lived up to their billing admirably with great vocals and lead guitars, with their abstractly named song “Pi” being their best number, along with the Incubus cover, “Anna Molly”. Oritus were the day’s final act, and a band that dared to be different, with heavy implementation of the flute in pretty much all their numbers. “Sometimes” and “Revolution Coming” were half-decent songs, and comparisons to Parikrama wouldn’t be too far out of place.
Results
This year’s finalists were declared rather unceremoniously in the space of 15 seconds by Sahil, and were as follows, in no particular order: Amidst The Chaos, Skincold, and Five8. Pushing Tin gave the aforementioned a run for their money, but just about missed out.
Finals
No edition of Livewire would ever be complete without some sort of security fiasco. More than half of the eager fans that had been queuing up for hours didn’t get to see even one of the competing bands, let alone all of them. In a nutshell, all the bands played their hearts out, and it was disappointment all over again for Skincold, as Amidst The Chaos ran out as winners.
The headlining acts Thermal And A Quarter and Zero had a great show, playing a lot of songs from their now popular albums. Overall, a pretty good show, but the security and organisation left a LOT to be desired. Well, there’s always next year, and the year after that, and the one after that… (repeats and fades away).
Destructively Constructive Criticism
In this year’s competition, the whole idea of bands from all over the country showcasing their talent was rather overshadowed by extremely poor judging. For more than a quarter of the performances, none of the judges were anywhere in sight, and even if they were, by some miracle seated at their desks, they were chatting away with pretty much no idea what the band was playing, let alone how they were playing it. Their judgement was pretty much based on the first 30 seconds of each band’s performance, which, in my opinion, is entirely unfair. Being associated closely with an upcoming band myself, I would most definitely not want to see my band playing their hearts out while the judges stick their noses into their Domino’s Pizza boxes, without any regard for the music that they’ve spent months on end composing. Sahil was probably the only guy who even cared about what was going on, but he too, turned from Demonstealer to T-shirt dealer eventually, and that really doesn’t cut it for me.
To sum it up, from a neutral point of view, the show was alright, the competition was just about alright, the best bands (for me) weren’t selected, owing partly to the selection of somewhat incompetent judges, and security was the same old mess. We keep saying that it’ll be better next year, but “next year” just never turns up, does it?
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GREAT REVIEW…