History of Bangladeshi Rock Music

zxm I know there won't be much people to see this post. But I haven't seen anyone making posts about Bangladeshi rock music. I thought I should make one. Now, here I am going to write about timeline of Bangladeshi rock music. However I will still add some other genres history on this post if it's related to rock music.

Before starting I'd like to state that the whole post is about Bangladeshi rock Music. Not Bengali rock music. Bengali means the Bengali language and a nation. But Bangladeshi means only people and language of Bangladesh.

Pre-80s (Folk and Pop):
Bangladesh was never interested in popular music. The most common music in this country was Bangladeshi traditional music. Which was widely practiced in remote areas. But in urban areas different types of music such as - Arabic music, Hindustani music, Turkish music etc foreign traditional music were practiced. However first popular genres started in '60s and '70s. Different genres of artists such as Jazz, Pop, Soul were introduced in this country. The fist pop artists was Azam Khan. Meanwhile different kinds of bands were formed in the 70s. The first pop-rock band was Souls. And within the ten years bands like Feedback, Miles, Renaissance etc bands were formed. The whole '70s was popular for pop music.

80s (Hard Rock, Psychedelic Rock and Pop Rock):
1980s is considered as the most important decade for Bangladeshi rock music. Different rock bands such as Nagar Baul, Warfaze, In Dhaka, Rockstrata, Different Touch, Nova were formed. However these bands were formed but this decade was still popular for pop music. But gradually the rock was mixed in those pop songs. And it created pop rock. Especially Miles was very popular for their pop rock songs. Their's first two albums were released in English. Helped them to rise quickly in the '80s. However at the end of '80s Feedback also released their first album. Their's Moushumi-1 and Mohashunno were big hit of 1980s. Meanwhile James released his first album "Anonna". His songs inspired many psychedelic and hard rock in the late '80s.

While many hard rock and pop rock artists were playing different kinds of pop and rock music in the 80s, Warfaze and Rockstrata was a covering band in that era. They used to cover different metal songs at that time.

90s (Heavy Metal):
Followed by 80s, 90s was a very important decade for introducing heavy metal to this country. Warfaze and Rockstrata released their first albums in the 90s which made them the pioneers of heavy metal artists of Bangladesh. Warfaze released their first album "Warfaze" in 1991. Which was mostly a hard rock album. Their's "Ekti Chelay" and "Boshe Aachi" became very popular. Sunjay, who was the vocalist of Warfaze was a successful metal singer of Bangladesh. Experts have cited him to be the first heavy metal vocalist of Bangladesh. Meanwhile in the next year Rockstrata released their first album "Rock Strata" which was even heavier than Warfaze's first album. Their heavy riffs are considered as the first heavy metal riffs ever created by Bangladeshi. Thus the heavy metal era of Bangladesh started. Throughout the decades there have been numerous heavy metal bands in the '90s.
Besides Warfaze and Rockstrata, Bands like Cryptic Fate, Shironamhin, LRB (Love Runs Blind), Ark were also formed. But the most prominent bands like Artcell, Aurthohin, Black, Nemesis, Poizon Green, Scarecrow were also formed. Cryptic Fate released their first album "Ends Are Forever". Which was in English. And was pure heavy metal instead of pop elements. However most metal bands at that time were covering bands. But they quickly became famous in the 2000s.

2000s (Spreading Different Genres of Metal):
2000s was probably the most famous decade for rock music in Bangladesh. At that time Artcell released their first album "Onnoshomoy" in 2002. Which was a mixed of melodic elements and heavy metal elements. The entire album was a progressive rock and progressive metal album. Their's "Poth Chola" was the most famous song of that year. Meanwhile Aurthohin released several albums. They started with acoustic rock and hard rock. But as time passed, they became heavier. They released "Shaat Din" (7 Days). Which was an example of progressive metal. They also released their famous series "Guti". Which was a series of hard rock and heavy metal. During the mid 2000s, Artcell released their second album "Oniket Prantor" in 2006. Which contained numerous metal songs. Their's album titled song "Oniket Prantor", longest song of the album became most successful song of 2006. And quickly became one of the greatest Bangladeshi rock songs of all time. Meanwhile Warfaze was struggling from frequent line-up changes. That's why for certain members they started to use pop elements in their songs. They released only two albums, "Alo" and "Moharaj" in 2000s. Both became famous in the time.

Meanwhile alternative rock and other genres also became famous. Black released their first album "Amar Prithibi". Songs like "Kobor", "Manush" and "Amar Prithibi" became very popular among alternative rock fans. In the next following years they released "Utshober Por" and "Abar" in 2000s. Nemesis also released "Onneshon" in 2005. Which became quite popular in that decade. Shironamhin released "Jahajee", "Ichchhe Ghuri" and "Bondho Janala" in 2000s. Their songs were mixed of classical music style and alternative rock. They became one of the most famous soft rock and alternative rock artists of 2000s. "Pakhi", "Ditio Jibon", "Bondho Janala" where their's popular songs of 2000s. In the early 2000s, In Dhaka, Arbovirus were formed. They released some alternative metal albums in the 2000s. Shunno, an alternative rock band, also released few of their albums in the late 2000s. And they soon became popular for it. Their most popular album was "Shoto Asha".

Apart from the rock bands, solo artists like Bappa Mazumder and Shayan Chowdhury Arnob also became for their soft rock music mixed with folk elements.

2010s (Soft and Alternative Rock):
In 2010s, the music taste of Bangladeshi changed a lot. They started to like alternative music more instead of metal music. That's why the alternative rock bands started to become more popular in the 2010s. Shunno was one of them. They released two albums, "Bhaago " and "Gorbo Bangladesh" in early 2010s. Nemesis released their second album "Tritio Jatra ". Which was the biggest hit of the band. Popular songs from the albums were, "Kobe", ""Bir", "Nirbashon" etc. Black released their self titled album "Black". Which was their biggest hit until then. Arbovirus also continued to release their albums. Other bands like, Ashes and Lalon also started to release their albums.

Though alternative rock was very much popular in the 2010s, but metal and hard rock never died. Aurthohin released their "Aushomapto 2" album in 2011. It contained some hard rock, heavy metal and alternative rock songs. They released their latest album in 2016. It was "Cancer er Nishikabyo". Warfaze released their only album "Shotto" after almost nine years of their last album. This album was mainly a hard rock album. But a huge amount of alternative musical style was used in it. This album also contained some heavy metal songs. Meanwhile bands like Minerva, Mechanix, De-Illumination and Funeral Anthem also released their metal albums. After a long time, Rockstrata released their second album "Notun Shadher Khojey" in 2014. Which was almost 22 years after of their first album.

While other bands were releasing their albums, Artcell never released a full album in 2010s. However they released a lot of singles though. They almost stopped performing live concerts. But they focused on releasing their third album.

So that's it. A long post. It just about few artists. There have been a lot of other artists who were missed on this post. But I tried my best to pick the most important artists possible.
Anyway, thanks for visiting.

Comments

Awesome post! I wish it's a HQ one. - LightningBlade

This has been marked as an "HQ" post. - zxm

Awesome post, sorry I didn’t notice it before. - visitor

Thanks. - zxm