Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
ONE of Bahrain’s top school bands is attracting a whole new fan base after its members decided to keep the music playing whilst attending universities in the UK, writes Stan Szecowka.
Guitarist and lead singer Mazen Al Maskati,19, bass player/backing vocalist Rab Honar, 18, and drummer Vish Mhatre, 18, have linked up with lead guitarist Jad Habib, who went to school in Holland, to wow audiences on the London gig circuit.
& the Centurions will be playing live at the legendary Nambucca, North London’s premier live music venue located in Islington on June 16, and will follow it up with sessions in a recording studio.
“This is going to be one of our biggest gigs, we’re hoping for a really big turnout. We’re going to be headlining and playing some new tracks from our next EP, which we will hopefully be recording this summer,” Rab told GulfWeekly.
“Nothing quite beats travelling all over London with our gear in the pouring rain and freezing cold. But we’re looking forward to this summer quite a lot and I’m really excited about what is going to come from this new EP.”
Most of the band’s gigs have been in the English capital although they have appeared at Cheltenham Ladies College and twice in Canterbury at Kent University.
Mazen and Vish recently staged a special show at the Paul Smith store in Bahrain City Centre, as featured in GulfWeekly, during a short break back in the kingdom to visit family and friends.
The gig attracted scores of fans from St Christopher’s School where they were first formed and often performed.
The band recently had one of its songs The Other People from its popular five-track release entitled Animalism featured on a Mercedes-Benz Mix and it received rave reviews. The track was also featured on a compilation playlist of new and upcoming bands on a French website and one music critic suggested the indie rockers were ‘one of the most exciting bands’ to have emerged from the Arabian Gulf’s blossoming music scene.
Rab is studying at Cardiff Metropolitan in the first year of a psychology degree course. Mazen is at Imperial College London having fun studying medicine, and Jad is at the same university focusing on chemical engineering. Vish is at Kent University taking a degree in law and business.
Their new EP is going to be named New Fears and fans can get a sneak peak of one of the tracks on the band’s Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/andthecenturions
