SHAS­TRI BOODAN

The name may con­jure up im­ages of men with nu­mer­ous pierc­ings and tat­toos splat­tered over their bod­ies.

But this is hard­ly the case with the young mem­bers of the El So­cor­ro-based rock band Prime Apoc­a­lypse, whose aim is to cre­ate a resur­gence of rock mu­sic in T&T and take it to the lev­el at which it was in the 1980s and ear­ly 1990s.

Co-man­ag­er Aman­da Kel­li Ba­boolal says their love for rock mu­sic was what brought the band mem­bers to­geth­er two years ago.

"We were formed from Or­ange Sky's School of Rock in 2010, and since then we have stayed to­geth­er as a fam­i­ly full of tal­ent and en­er­gy and ready to show the world what Prime Apoc­a­lypse has to of­fer."

The band com­pris­es 14-year-old drum­mer An­dre Ba­boolal, 12-year-old lead vo­cal­ist Gabriel Ra­jku­mar, 15-year-old lead gui­tarist Adri­an Mungroo, bass gui­tarist and man­ag­er An­tho­ny Bor­de and 19-year-old back-up singer Aman­da Mungroo.

Ba­boolal says the band is the on­ly sur­viv­ing band that spawned from the school in that year, when 54 young men and women, age eight-18, ben­e­fit­ted from the tal­ents of Nigel Ro­jas, Cathy El­la and Nicholai As­sam.

Ba­boolal says the band mem­bers see them­selves as a fam­i­ly unit, held to­geth­er by their love for mu­sic rather than as per­form­ers with a com­mer­cial ob­jec­tive. She en­vi­sions Prime Apoc­a­lypse ris­ing to re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards and cut­ting sev­er­al tracks for air­play.

The band re­hears­es every week­end at the homes of the mu­si­cians, and mem­bers have the full sup­port of their par­ents, even to the point of pur­chas­ing equip­ment.

She says, how­ev­er, there are some pieces of equip­ment they still need and are ex­plor­ing the op­tion of ap­proach­ing the Min­istry of Arts and Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism for spon­sor­ship.

The par­ents all con­cur that get­ting in­to mu­sic has im­proved their chil­dren's aca­d­e­m­ic per­for­mance, built their char­ac­ter, and has made them more fo­cused.

Per­for­mances

•School of Rock Bat­tle of the Bands 2010

•Pop Rock Peo­ple's Choice 2012

•Dig­i­cel Out of Con­trol In­de­pen­dence Day 2010

•Sky Fest 2010

•School of Rock Open­ing 2011

•School of Rock 2011

•School of Rock Bat­tle of the Bands 2011

•Play­di­um's Un­der-18 tal­ent com­pe­ti­tion 2011

•Darin's Free­dom Rock Fes­ti­val 2012

• Bar­rack­pore's In­de­pen­dence Day Cel­e­bra­tion 2012