North Eastern Rockers Day 3 Review

Reviewed by: Nima Norbu Lepcha


16th May – 2011: A perfect day for the finals, packed crowd around 1500-1800, top 4 bands of NER - 2011, What Escapes Me (Kolkata), Purple Asparagus (Kolkata), Future History (Gangtok) and Sinister Violence (Darjeeling), and the headlining act by Still Waters. You can never ask for more. The first band tonight was one of my favorites, What Escapes Me.


 As expected when What Escapes Me took to the stage, crowd started cheering. It is probably the most deafening experience I’ve ever had in recent times in Gangtok. The band is really creative onstage. They started with a pre-recorded material played through the sound console via mp3 player. It sounded really great with the mix of live sound of the band. However, the technical help must have caused them dearly as in a competitive format, technical help gives a negative impact. Nevertheless, the band was awesome onstage with their originals. Midway through their performance, they experienced some technical hitch with one of their guitar sound going off for about 10 seconds, but I doubt if anyone from the crowd noticed it. These guys mean business and are real professional onstage. They also did a cover of “a new beginning” by threat signal. The mood was set right by What Escapes Me.


 Next up were Purple Asparagus from Kolkata. Intriguing is the word that best describes this band. I was very happy to see this band onstage, first because of their music and second of course because of the female guitarist, due to whom the beautiful girls were up in the front row where I was glued for the rest of the performance of Purple AsparagusJ. But on a serious note, these guys were sounding far better than their prelims. Their performance was energetic and their music would speak for their stage presence. The girls in the crowd were really cheering for the band and the decibels were really high when the interlude part with the guitars came. The band was really tight today. However, it would have been great if they could play some fresh numbers. They performed the same set of their songs of their prelims. In fact all the finalists mostly repeated their same set of their prelims.

The 3rd finalist band was next and hearing the crowd it was obvious that they were the hometown band, Future History. They quickly did their set up and started with their original“Get Out”. As usual, the band had their aggression as their trademark. Comparably, the band seemed to care less about the competition. They were onstage at full throttle involving the crowd to create moshpits and headbanging. The band did create a hell of a show but they also had to pay for their aggressive stage presence. Initially, they were sounding a little messy. However, as the show progressed, the sound got better. ACDC’s back in black prelude was nicely clubbed in by these guys in one of their originals and the crowd for once reached at the top of their vocals. Future History can be a rejuvenating factor for the metal music of Sikkim.


 The best was saved for the last, Sinister Violence, from Darjeeling. These guys surely know what they are doing onstage and how to proceed with it. The most balanced of all the bands, Sinister Violence performance was as good as their music. Their first number, one of the band’s original “Lordess ov destruction” is almost 9 minute plus and when they started with it I could hardly notice the time. They were so tight and sounded so balanced. The crowd was spellbound with the energetic and flawless performance of Sinister Violence. In a way, Sinister Violence did succeed to create a dark atmosphere, which complemented their genre and if to say in the word of the vocalist himself, the crowd was really baptized in “Violence”, the Sinister Violence style. I was intentionally trying to find some loopholes, mistakes, hiccups, etc. but I could hardly complain. The band really was the tightest band in this year’s version of North Eastern Rockers - 2011.


 After the last band was done, Still Waters took to the stage and my my, it was really a “Happy Go Lucky” time. The decibels reached to the maximum. They performed a mixed number of new releases and some good old tracks. The crowd got the chance to sing along the band in their songs “Rock to the Rescue” and “Happy Go Lucky”. Sonam Lachungpa, one of the three judges, was at his best with his solo performance. He produced some new effects from his guitar and tempo of his riffs was as high as it could be. Lokes on the bass did some cool stuffs too while interacting with the crowd and Ananth today was in his full swing. He was only the one who covered the whole stage area and still it seemed limited for him. Still Waters signed off with one of their nepali tracks “Feri Pharki Na Aau”.


 Coming back to the competition, there was hardly anyone who could not guess the winners but the runner up position was really tough to pick. Sinister Violence was the most deserving band to win the title of North Eastern Rockers – 2011 and there was no second thought to it. They bagged the title along with the whooping prize money of Rs. 1.00 lakh. Even though if I was given the choice J, I would have selected What Escapes Me (being my favourites), the judges opined Future History as the runner up who walked away with a cash of 30K. The technical use must have caused WEM to be left behind. The choice was, however, really hard and Future History deserved it. Whoo… this year North Eastern Rockers was really what the organizers, The Alpine Attitude, had claimed. It was bigger, better and tougher and yes unlike other previous phony self proclaimed so called international fest held in Sikkim, “North Eastern Rockers” truly deserves to be called the biggest and the onlyNational Rock Music Fest/Comp. of Sikkim. The standards have been really raised high and hopes have double-folded that near year’s version of NER would be greater than what we had this year. Cheers to the team of “The Alpine Attitude” for putting up such a great event for us.