Hundreds of students from the five-college area gathered on the lawn at Hampshire College last Saturday to enjoy free food and live entertainment all day. Bands of all genres performed, including popular hip-hop artist KRS-One.
I arrived at Hampshire College around 5pm with the particular interest of seeing local band Hadoken, whose roots can be traced back to the Baker dormitory on the University of Massachusetts campus. Since then, the band has cycled through eleven different band members, including a viola player to form what is now Hadoken.
The name Hadoken is taken from a special attack in the Capcom game series Street Fighter, and is a Japanese neologism meaning “surge fist.” Hadoken’s guitarist Will Theis explained that similar to the attack from the game, Hadoken tries to “concentrate a force, and blast.” And that’s exactly what they did. Three guitars, an electric violin, bass, and drums carried the audience on a roller coaster of melodic build-ups, until they finally reached a peak of high energy.
In an interview with the band after the set, Hadoken assured me that their upcoming album will be based on the high energy, and technicality that I experienced during the set. As Theis put it, “The future has always been to diversify the instrumentation. We try new things all the time, because I feel like if we don’t, we will stop progressing.”
Hadoken is playing again on May 22 at The Elevens in Northampton with bands The Slowest Runner, and The Accident that Led Me to the World. Check Hadoken out at www.myspace.com/surgefist or www.last.fm
Some additional photos from the show below,
and at www.picasaweb.google.com/kellogg.josh
This is dopeeeeeeeeeeee
ReplyDeleteI subscribed to yer feed : )