Six boys with music as a common goal came together and named themselves H2O. But just before entering the stage for a competition one of the members declared, ‘I don’t like the name H2O, I want us to be called Judgement day.’ A few quick movements and some running here and there to the organisers and H2O went on stage as ‘Judgement Day’. A year and a half later, Oliver Daniel, Uday Kiran, Amit Makka, Deepu Joseph, Ricky Raymond and Joshua Kamthan fight over only one issue — ‘Why didn’t you turn up for the practise.”
Since then, they have been at ease with their name and as Oliver; the manager-cum-drummer says “We feel we are ready to prepare our listeners for the Judgement day.” Gospel singing?
“That’s a part of all of us when we are in the church, but as musicians our music is different. We are not ready to preach yet,” he laughs. Individually all six are members of their respective church bands and say, ‘the music the six of us play collectively as a band is different from what we play during the service,” says Deepu. Winner of six different awards in the local rock band scene, the band feels they ‘made it big’ after winning the élan-e-jung, a competition of rock bands at IIT Hyderabad where they competed against some of the leading youth rock bands from the metros. “It was a great feeling competing against some of the leading bands nationally. We were nervous yet confident,” says Oliver, the spokesperson of the band. Of the six boys three have completed their engineering and the other three are pursuing their studies.
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In these group of six there are two shy guys as well—Amit and Joshua. But Oliver is quick to defend and says, “they drown themselves in their music, that’s all.” What do they have to say about bands who come with a bank and eventually melt in the crowd? “Everyone will have their reasons to not let their band survive. We want to be sure that we don’t end up in a similar way. We are aware of our commitments as we grow but we want to stay true to Judgement Day,” says Oliver.