Only one can win

By Steve McGill

Algonquin's finest bands came down to the Observatory on March -- to battle it out with each other for a grand prize, as well as attention from the students.

Bands were limited to short sets and had to put their best material forward in the time limit, in order to impress the judges brought in, consisting of someone from CKDJ, a previous Battle of the Bands winner, a Sound Tech, and Ken Macleod.

"I think it went really well, everyone was supportive and clapped for all the bands, and there was a lot of variety this year, we had five different genres … everyone was open to all the bands," said Macleod, the event coordinator.

Opening the night was Elgin, a band pulling off their best Blink-182 impression during their set, though with the misfortune of opening the night they did not get much of a response from the audience.
Up next was Dead Eye Daisy, filling in the role of the middle of the road rock band, though they had charisma as front man Cliff Menzies pulled off his best guitar moves throughout the set. One highlight including a cover of Nine Inch Nails Hurt.

Following them was LXR 22 a rhythm punk outfit, channelling Sublime and Ill Scarlett through their relatively depraved songs about nothing but alcohol and women, and continued playing until the lights were turned off on them.

The next band was Atma, a metal band who managed to bring an impressive amount of energy to their performance, front man Daniel Da Silva flying around the room, including running out of the Observatory and into the hallway during a particularly long instrumental section of their set.

"We had fun playing, despite the tough crowd and sound issues. Considering it's a Battle of the Bands, there's not much time to receive a proper sound check and all that. But yeah, it was a good time, and all the other bands played very well. We were just happy to place in the top three," said guitarist Nathan Da Silva.

The last band on the bill was Fine Horizon, an indie outfit complete with banjo, who followed the high energy Atma with a relatively low key but strong performance of their material, having to blast through their last song as they started to run out of time.

At the end of the night however it was time for the winners to be announced, and after a few minutes of deliberation Fine Horizon was given the grand prize of $250 and a chance to participate in the Ontario finals, while Atma and Dead Eye Daisy came in second and third respectively, all the bands however walked away with some money.