CHENNAI: In what came as a complete surprise, Chennai rock enthusiasts picked pav bhaji over Pongal! When the lead vocalist of Scribe, the Hindi hardcore metal band from Mumbai, asked the crowd how many of them liked Pongal, the response was tepid. But when he asked them how many of them liked pav bhaji, the loudest roar of the evening immediately went up. Of the four bands that played on Saturday night as part of the rock show at Saarang, the annual cultural fest at IIT-Madras, Scribe was one of the better acts.Earlier, Blind Image, the Chennai-based trash metal act, managed to get in five songs before they succumbed to technical difficulties. However, they managed to get a few head bangers and crowd-surfers out. But the flavour of the evening was Scribe, as the crowd constantly chanted their name to bring the band on stage. And when they did come on stage, it was like a live reenactment of Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan’s enna da rascala sequence from Om Shanti Om. Wearing a lungi over shorts and with sneakers, the vocalist knew how to keep the crowd guessing and entertained. The fact that they opened with Rajini’s Oruvan oruvan mudalali theme won them brownie points much before they even struck a chord. “Dai baniyan potta saniyangala, start the music!” yelled the vocalist and there was no stopping them. The band, working as a unit better than ever, stormed through some of their most popular hits, including RSVP and I love Pav Bhaji. By this time, the crowds were already going crazy with their own ‘Walls of Deaths’ — an event that usually takes place at heavy metal concerts where the crowds split into two and when the best portion of the song comes up, they charge at each other. However, Scribe decided to take it up a notch, in their own words. For their song Buddy, they invited members from the other three bands that shared the stage with them and they had their own ‘Wall of Death’. The expert metal heads that they were, they launched right into each other, almost making their crazy battle look choreographed. The only problem with the entire setting was that the crowds worried about the vocalist’s lungi that precariously hung around him as he jumped about in the most care-free manner. Later, the vocalist benevolently removed and threw it at the crowd. Though Scribe was a tough act to follow-up, Vildhjarta, the progressive metal band from Sweden, had no problems in making an impact. “This place is F***** amazing, isn’t it?” started off a band member and the cuss words free-flowed all night from then on, both from band members and the crowd. The first band that performed was Inner Sanctum, the Bangalore-based metal outfit, which definitely left the crowd asking for more metal madness.
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