The fourth round of the 17th Annual High School Rock Off, which took place yesterday afternoon at House of Blues featured another 11 bands competing for a spot at the upcoming Final Exam. Like Round 3, this round was dominated by hard rock acts. Ironically enough, the hard rock acts weren’t the ones that advanced to the Final Exam.
The hard rocking Kevlar started the four-and-a-half hour concert off with a bang. While the band’s music was a bit derivative of the post-grunge that was so popular in the late ’90s, the Erie-based band benefited from terrific musicianship. The band regularly plays clubs in town and even had CDs for sale. The members of M4, another band out of Erie, were technically too young to advance to the next round but decided to compete anyway just for the hell of it. Their female singer’s voice often sounded shrill, but the youngsters held their own against the older kids, delivering a set of original material and a few covers (include their take on Muse’s “Hysteria”).
