- Review by Jad Jawhari
I was looking forward to this event because the idea of it was new and it was a creative one. However, the event lacked the “karaoke”. I didn’t see a lot of people singing or choosing what to sing, there were many bands going up and playing 2 or more songs. However, the event gave a chance to newly rising bands to experience the stage. Some bands showed some potential and others sounded really annoying, the “Iron Maiden” tribute band was impressive, they managed to decently play some of Maiden’s best songs like: Fear of the Dark and Dance of Death. There was also a guitar performance by Fady BK who proved to have good talent.
The only bad thing about the event was the sound; sadly we have to accept that the sound at every Metal concert is going to be bad, organizers always fail to install a good sound system or even a decent one. There was also an important announcement from Elia Mssawir (from Lebanesemetal.com), he is currently filming a documentary about the Lebanese Metal scene and from what the teaser showed us the documentary is going to be a great one.
In conclusion, the event was fun and it was a new experience and it gave hope to new bands and made them feel that they aren’t left out.
- Review by Rami Rouhana
As already mentioned by Jad there was not much Karaoke as there were bands filling most of the time. Well maybe because it’s the first Karaoke of its kind in Lebanon, not many people participated or even understood the concept the first place. Still the solution is simple; less bands and more promoting for the idea. Still the event was successful from some points of view:
1) People organizing (Jad Joubran and all who volunteered to help him) are not experienced in event organizing and still too young to handle such big responsibilities. Still they managed to come up with a decent organizing.
2) There was not enough money to efficiently fund the event so a hybrid mix of sound equipments was used to come up with the best sound possible… I noticed several channels used in amplifiers which caused some speakers to fail. Sometimes the sound was only on the main right channel (Jacks…). We could hear the music playback but not the performer.
Still Mr Roland Azar did a great job with what was available. Definitely a good sound engineer; tuned the sound frequencies/feed back / Reverb… at best it can be done.
3) The Idea was new and not much people were expected to attend. Still the number of attendees was good; I can estimate about 150 but I will leave it to Jad to give us the real number if counted.
As for Bands’ performance I can only mention few things that I mostly noticed: Frozen Flames Performed good… but all the time I was hearing “Are they copying Rock in Rio “. Many commented on the vocalist’s attitude on stage “So much Bruce “… Whatever the comments were, Frozen Flames made the crowd move!
Fadi BK performed good, still the sound of his guitar was low especially when he was giving it the best of what he learned in Kamasutra!
A couple soprano /Tenor sang Phantom of the Opera! The female singer had an amazing performance ! Amazing !… Amazing !
