It’s that time of the year when music lovers in the City are spoilt for choice. In keeping with its spirit of promoting live music, CounterCulture played host to three gigs over the last weekend, each one unique in its own way. Being the Deepavali weekend only added to the festivities for those who went to the Whitefield venue for an evening, or maybe three, of good music and fun.
To start off the weekend was an acoustic set by Khalid Ahamed and Kashif Iqbal, members of local rock band Parvaaz. While they are best known for their tryst with Urdu fusion rock in the band, their first attempt at going acoustic without the full line up did not fail to impress. The evening was filled up with their mystical vibe of Urdu and mesmerising guitar tones. “It was one of the best acoustic sets I’ve seen till date,” said Arjun Rao, who attended the gig.
The second night saw pop-rock band ‘One Night Stand’ ruling the venue. Popular for their unique energetic music and performances, this one also had the audience hooked. The band performed a lot of their original compositions like ‘Fly Away From Here’, ‘She’s Out of Control’, ‘Test of Time’, ‘Summer Love’ among others. A few covers were also thrown into their 90-minute set, which had the audience wanting more. “The show was one of our best! The crowd really got involved,” said Behram, the band frontman.
For the metalheads in the City, there was no better gig than the third edition of ‘Metal Factory’, an evening dedicated to metal as a music form and sub-culture. Despite the crowd being lesser in number than expected for this one, it was an evening of headbanging and black T-shirts for the attendees. Three bands were on the cards – thrash metal outfit ‘Theorized’, progressive metal core band ‘Final Surrender’ and Mumbai-based blackened death metal band ‘Demonic Resurrection’.
The monthly showcase of some of the country’s best metal bands was combined with the venue’s #PayForTheArts campaign, wherein the attending metalheads could pay whatever amount they wanted to contribute and that amount got split amongst all the bands.
Vishwaraj Mohan, the owner, said, “At CounterCulture, we take pride in providing a platform to independent artistes with immense talent who may not yet have bitten the ‘commercial’ bullet. Khalid and Kashif’s performance was a revelation. We’ll be bringing them back to showcase their musical range to more people along with a host of other musicians in the coming months.”