Bangalore recently experienced the three-day-long music festival, 'The Kingfisher Great Indian Octoberfest', held for the first time at the beautiful lawns of the Jayamahal Palace Hotel.
Unlike the last edition, this one had much more of a festive ambience with the flea market, beer games and pretty lighting and décor. Happy faces could be seen running from one stage to the other or picking up colourful objects from one of the many stalls.
Day one saw some of the popular bands like 'Soulmate', Advaita, 'Shaa'ir + func' and Hari and Sukhmani perform, all of whom impressed the listeners with their original music.
Tennessee band, 'Gone In April' also gave a hardcore set — with a female vocalist!
"I had an awesome time this weekend! It was a really good experience and I got exposed to a lot of new bands," says Sharad Rastogi, who attended all three days of the festival.
The second day saw folk and fusion bands like Agam, 'Indian Ocean' and 'Papon and the East India Company' perform energetic sets. There was also a heavy dose of metal with Bhayanak Maut, 'Demonic Resurrection', 'Escher's Knot' and the much-anticipated UK band, 'Cypher 16'. The Bob Dylan tribute by Lou Majaw in the rain and Sunidhi Chauhan's hour-long Bollywood set were also enjoyed.
"It was like heaven today at Octoberfest. I watched 'Indian Ocean', Agam, Bhayanak Maut and 'Demonic Ressurection' all in one day," says Subhash Chandrashekhar, who had been looking forward to the second day since the festival line up had been announced.
A noticeable flaw was in the programming of the 'multi-genre' festival, which could have been better.
There were many instances when the non-metal heads had no option but to choose between one of the two metal bands playing on the world and main stage.
Day three began with bands like 'Bull Engine' and 'Quarantine' playing their sets. But the sudden downpour, for almost four hours, nearly led to a washout and a sea of people in black T-shirts were seen trying to take shelter wherever they could. This was probably the only time in the three days when the indoors electronica stage was most attended. 'The Raghu Dixit Project' braved the rain and played a short — but highly energetic — three-song set to all who had stayed back, until Raghu's guitar gave in and busted on stage.
The show stealers of the whole festival was the headlining act, Finnish metal band 'Children of Bodom'. Tents were set up and each band member was forced to stay put, preventing any stage acts. But for all the metal fans in the City, this was better than hearing that their performance was cancelled after waiting there the whole day.
"After five hours of waiting in the rain, the show still happened, though I thought they would play for longer. Still, it was an epic gig and I think it'll be a while before it sinks in that I saw 'Bodom' live!" shares Manish, who attended the festival.