JO Magazine

The more-or-less loveable jocks from Cactus have taken the prize in Jordan's first rock- and metal- themed talent competition.

Words by John Lillywhite.

THE BATTLE OF THE bands is over, and the winner, by a narrow margin, is Cactus. The band helped themselves out with good organization and media campaigning, but in the end, it was their skilled playing that carried the day.

“I had to act surprised,” shrugged Cactus' bassist Nizar Saqqar, with trademark confidence, after the verdict was announced.

The two bands that made it to the final round, Cactus and Cerberus, [linkto profile] couldn't have been more different. Cactus was the most PR savvy of all the bands, and made one thing very clear from Day 1: they were the best, and they knew it. Still, they had quite a ways to go to show that.

Images

Crash of the Titans

Profile: Purgatory
The First Show
Profile: Methanol
Profile: Cactus
The Second Show
Profile: Cerberus
The Semifinal
The Final

Cerberus let their music speak for itself, adopting a respectful, understated style offstage, and in general avoiding the limelight -- except, of course, for their aggressive, high-energy performances.

The nice guys finished second, but it was a close contest: Cerberus took the vast majority of votes via SMS, but Cactus managed to make up the difference through their use of Facebook -- partly due the fact that they got out and campaigned for votes.

But when all is said and done, by the final night Cactus had really demonstrated that they were musically the strongest group in the competition: though a touch abrasive, they worked hard and supported each other, they were incredibly organized and also very talented.

Crash of the Titans began back in August, when dozens of young talents were auditioned for the competition; the top contenders (then 19) were assembled into four impromptu bands, who would compete for then-unannounced prizes. On October 30 the four groups crashed on stage for the first time; each had their own particular character, strengths and problems.

Cactus and Cerberus were strong front-runners from the beginning, giving high energy performances of crowd pleasing tunes. Last week, on the third performance, two of the groups, Methanol and Purgatory, were eliminated.

The final competition, on December 10, was a fitting conclusion to the competition, with strong performances by both the competitors and support bands. (Indeed, the show was almost stolen by the local punk band “The Noises,” who played in the intermission, offering blistering covers of songs by Iggy Pop, The Ramones and The Dead Boys, as well as original music.)

As always, the strategy of Cerberus was to forget everything offstage -- be it group dynamics or homework -- and focus on the music. Vocalist

Zenah Haddad was recovered from a cold and back in full head-banging form, and bassist Foad Azar had returned from the sojourn in Dubai that caused him to miss the semifinal. (“It wasn’t my fault, my father made me go,” he grumbled.)

Sadly, the band still had lineup changes: guitarist Omar Abu Rabea was absent, replaced by Anas Cooper, who had subbed for Azar at the prior event.

The group began Metallica’s “Harvester of Sorrow,” to shouts of “I love you!” from the crowd, and followed it up with Slayer's “Bloodline.” They concluded with a new original track, “Into the Underworld.” This seemed far and away the best-written original of Crash of the Titans, and it was executed wonderfully. Unfortunately technical problems marred the performance somewhat, when Azar appeared to have problems with his pedals, and the bass solo got lost.

The choices of track were commended by judge Ahmad Nazzal, while judge Zeid Amarin wished the group all the best and singled out Haddad as his favorite performer of the entire competition. While judge Tojan Naghaway singled out Cooper and drummer Ali Lars for their performances.

Cerberus had delivered an impressive performance, and certainly had a lot of fans in the crowd.  Technically, they were also the favorites to win the competition: in the semi-final Cactus had come in second to the hounds of hell by a margin of 2.5 percentage points.

But you’d never have know from the way Cactus took the stage: as if they owned it, in no doubt as to who was in charge. Their opening track was superb, and the chorus to Iron Maiden’s “The Wicker Man,” -- “your time will come” -- seemed aptly suited to the occasion.

By the second song, “Cemetery Gates” by Pantera, lead guitarist Abd Atari’s groupies in the crowd were already chanting his name, and Saqqar was jamming energetically with the other band members on stage. Their final original song was entitled “I.S.F.E,” and while it was nowhere near as strong as the Cerberus' original, it was certainly enough to give the audience and judges pause for thought.

In general Cactus played with confidence, ease and a sense of fun -- no mean feat given this was the final. Vocalist Edgar Lorenzo, once the darling of the judges, seemed to have become an irritant, theatrically falling to the ground as the closing track ended, but he remained a massive favorite with the crowd.

After the performance he thanked everyone for their support, while Saqqar also thanked all the other groups who’d taken part in Crash of the Titans but failed to make the final. Could it be that Cactus has a soft streak?

For most of the contest, the prizes remained unannounced, leading to much speculation on the part of the musicians. (The most oft-repeated guess was a fruit basket.)

But instead of fruit, the members of Cactus took home a JD1,000 check to split between them; as well as a set of Crash of the Titans trophies, and, most important, some extremely nice cake. The self-avowed jocks of Crash of the Titans finally scored a touch down.