Eastern Conference Champions at Bloomfest on Saturday, July 23rd, 2011

The bands at the Bloomfest on Saturday were certainly not short on energy, that’s the least I could say. The first one I saw, Eastern Conference Champions, produced an explosive sound you could hear far away, and their stage energy level was quite impressive.

The trio, made of Joshua Ostrander on vocals, guitar and synth, Greg Lyons on drums and Melissa Dougherty on guitar (yes another band with no bass player apparently) engaged the crowd into a lot of clapping and singing-along, and everyone seemed to be furiously happy, the band like the audience during their 8-song set.

The music was loudly aggressive, but the songs were often starting like some quiet folk tunes, just ready to blatantly explode later on, thanks to Melissa Dougherty’s violent use of her guitar. She was playing like a guy despite her feminine seducing physic, and gently harmonizing on vocals with Joshua Ostrander who was singing with a distinct and calm but passionate voice.

Their guitars were epic, fuzzy with a lot of shredding, some sliding, building a real momentum with these long dueling parts, that had some U2-like potential.

As I was able to see their setlist, I saw they did a few songs from their latest effort ‘Speak-ahh’, like ‘Bull In The Wild’, ‘Hell Or High Water’, ‘Attica’, and ‘Atlas’. They also played ‘A Million Miles an Hour’, the song that is featured on the ‘Twilight- Eclipse’ soundtrack, as the unsigned band was chosen from more than 400 bands competing for the soundtrack slot! It sure is a great song, and completely unspoiled for me since I haven’t seen the movie.

During the last song ‘Atlas’, Dougherty and Ostrander went to the drum kit and pounded on the drums like a trio-drum solo, they sure knew how to captive and electrify their audience.