Dec 28, 2022

Maker Park Radio’s Battle of the Bands Finals at Flagship Brewery 12.16.22

Last Friday Maker Park Radio & Flagship Brewing Company’s Battle of the Bands to crown “The Best Band on Staten Island" came to an end! This series of shows took place over 6 weeks and saw performances from The Telling Time, SuperFuture, Pastel, Goddamn Wrecks, The Wayward Strangers, Figurehead, and the two Finalists Vega Maestro and Gamma Ghouls.

Not only is the competition for the aforementioned title, the winner also gets to create a beer in collaboration with Flagship Brewing Company.

"We loved working with MPR, Kristin and Tom can't wait for BOTB 2023. It's a great way to build community and support local artists!" - Flagship Brewery

After all these weeks, it finally came down to two bands competing for the title: Vega Maestro and Gamma Ghouls!

Vega Maestro

Vega Maestro combines an alt rock style with high level musicianship. Having 2 Guitars and Keyboard really fills out their sound, the bass and drums lock in to keep everything nice and neat, and the vocal melodies lay great over the finished product. They had a great set and the audience loved it, for a relatively new band on the scene they made a great impression at these shows!

The BOTB was a lot of fun, it was the first time we'd ever done anything like that. We didn't want to repeat ourselves too much, so we did something different every round. We have a new album coming out soon, so it was a good opportunity for us to start working new material into the live set. Overall the experience was great! Everyone was super cool and supportive. We met a lot of people we may not have met otherwise. It was cool to make connections in the scene, from people in other bands competing or just there for the show, to the people at Maker Park, etc. The beer was good too. And performing in the finals was awesome. We were very flattered to be put through to the end. Gamma Ghouls are cool guys and they put on a great show. We definitely want to play more shows with them in the future! - Vega Maestro

Gamma Ghouls

Gamma Ghouls picked the energy UP with their set. You could tell from the moment Lorenzo Mameli (A Maker Park Radio DJ and the host of the battle of the bands) introduced them it was gonna be an electric set. Gamma Ghouls falls somewhere between metal and punk, they are self proclaimed Thrash Horror Punk and it totally shows in their music/performance. Between the heavy breakdowns, shredding guitars and catchy vocals the crowd was hooked, they had a mosh pit going their entire set!

So the night came to an end, both bands had great performances and the fate of the competition was left up to the judges and the online poll.

The nice part about a battle of the bands is it is a great opportunity for exposure to new crowds, and a chance to make new friendships with the other bands you play with. Thanks to Maker Park Radio and Flagship Brewing Company for creating and hosting this event and for contributing greatly to our thriving local scene!

Now the moment you’ve been waiting for…

🥁🥁🥁……………

Sunday morning came and Maker Park Radio announced the winner of the battle of the bands…..Gamma Ghouls!

"We had a blast doing the Battle of the Bands. We are so happy with the energy our friends brought to the shows and their support voting for us. I would like to say our favorite part aside from winning was the good natured yet aggressive trash talk with the other bands leading up to the finals. We don't have anything in stone yet involving our beer, but from the talks we've had so far it looks like we are going to focus on drinkability and crushability." - Gamma Ghouls