Atrax Mantis and Decadation

Yesterday saw hundreds of people cram into the Zoo club for the final of this years Battle of the Bands. Unfortunately the crowd attracted the attention of over a dozen local scumbags aswell. As people tried to enter the Zoo for the final they were spat on!? This group of ignorant little losers were big and brave when they circled little girls and harrassed them, but not so brave when myself, event organiser Andrew McGuinness, Zoo club manager Brucey and bouncer Jammy went head to head with them outside. They were eventually moved on by the Gardai and the competition kicked off.

It’s the 6th year of the competition and the judges (myself, Daw, Ken, Boo) were a little disappointed this year by some very low standards. However, yesterdays performances by the finalists; Atrax Mantis, Decadation, Pitch Black and Desecrate certainly changed our opinions. With over €3,500 worth of prizes, including recording time, equipment and a website on offer, we were marking hard and trying our best to ensure the best band walked away with the goodies. I also decided to throw in 2 photoshoot packages for the winning bands and a new “Best Song” award was introduced aswell.

I’m not going to go into too much detail as we’ll be doing a Battle of the Bands special on the Sound System Podcast this week but I will say that it wasn’t an easy job yesterday. All four bands really brought their “A game”, performances were great and energy was incredibly high. The huge crowd went completely crazy for over 3 hours, homemade t-shirts were on display, people were covered in markers with band names written on their faces and arms, the heat in the Zoo was ridiculous and the tension was high. The finalists were clearly enjoying themselves onstage and the level of professionalism was great to see, all the bands gave each other encouragement throughout and gave it 100% onstage. But in the end it was Atrax Mantis that were a cut above the rest. First up on the day, their performance was nothing short of powerful. They hammered their way through their set and I don’t think anybody was surprised by the result.

Decadation walked away with the ‘Best Song’ award for ‘Retribution’ and the ‘Bands Band’ award. They’ll get to record the track and get €500 worth of equipment from Ad Lib music. I’ll also be doing a photoshoot with the lads some time in the future. Their set yesterday was really impressive, I’m adding them to my “Oss237 Recommends” list and I’m looking forward to hearing more from the lads in the future.

Plans for next years competition are already in the works and hopefully it’ll be bigger and better than ever. There’s now over 100 of my photos in the KilkennyMusic galleries from this year, coverage from all the heats and the final. We’ll be recording the Sound System podcast special this Thursday, with our first ever guest on the show, Andrew McGuinness, so make sure and have a listen as we give a complete rundown on the competition.

All that’s left to say is hard luck to all the bands who didn’t make it through, well done to Desecrate and Pitch Black for solid performances and a huge congratulations to Atrax Mantis and Decadation.