While the biggest music stories tend to happen under arena lights, six emerging acts are getting a very different kind of stage tonight at Metronome Nottingham.
The venue’s Battle of the Bands brings together Intercolour, Headgazer, Ciaran Marshall, Super Mega Death Robot, Fatal Reflection and Cherry Stone — all from Nottingham Trent University — for a free evening of rock, indie and alternative music.
Each act gets a short slot before a panel of industry professionals decides the outcome.
This is what grassroots actually looks like
It is easy to talk about supporting emerging music as an abstract idea. In reality, it often looks exactly like this: a Wednesday night, short sets, a local venue and artists learning how to win over a room that may not know them yet.
Not everybody on a bill like this will end up with a record deal or a festival headline slot. That is not the point. Scenes need places where musicians can be inexperienced, take risks and get better in public.
For Imminent Infinity, those nights belong in the same archive as the chart stories and major releases. The top of the industry only exists because somewhere underneath it, somebody is playing their first ten-minute set.
