New band on the block

After staging their first international live concert hosted by the Indian Embassy in Oman recently, the band members are a happy lot. As the concert was mainly meant for diplomats, the audience included ambassadors and concillors from USA, Turkey, Korea, Italy, Germany, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Tunisia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Sri Lanka and Egypt among other nations.

Recalling the formation of the band, Darryl Mascarenhas, the drummer of the band, said that it all happened when Joel Rebello, the lead singer of the band who was then pursuing his post-graduation in Mangalore University, received an invitation to stage a concert in the university. As Darryl too was working with Joel for a different band, Darryl was the obvious choice. The duo contacted Ashley Michael (base guitarist), Loy Valentine (keyboard) and Melwyn D’Souza (lead singer and lyricist), who were playing with another group, and soon Elysium was born.

“Our new group performed for the first time in Mangalore University in 2009. As we did not have our own compositions, we played numbers from Rock On, Bon Jovi, Linkin Park and so on..,” recalls Darryl.

Many other concerts soon followed and the band started earning name and fame. When the football world cup fever was on, the group composed a song for the same and posted it on YouTube. Within a few days, MoneyGram International, a US based global money transfer company, invited entries for their initiative, ‘Cricket for Peace’, to launch a tri-national — India-Sri Lanka-Bangladesh — album. Over 100 bands (18 from Karnataka out of the total 80 from India) from across three countries participated in the competition.

Elysium emerged as one of the nine winning bands and recorded a song for the album. As if to take the winning streak forward, Joel was chosen as the best singer from India to sing the ‘Cricket for Peace’ anthem along with two other singers from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. “It was an opportunity of a lifetime,” recalls Joel.

And then the concert at Oman happened. The young and energetic band has plans to bring out their debut album with their original compositions within a year, to be released across the world. Besides, plans are also on the anvil to organise concerts in Konkani and Hindi after the monsoon.