KEY POINTS:
Like many young musicians, James McCully started a band because he and his mates wanted to play Metallica covers.
That's how Solomon, a five piece band from Rangitoto College on Auckland's North Shore, formed back in fourth form.
Now, the 18-year-olds are in the final of the Smokefreerockquest, for the second time in two years, at the Bruce Mason Centre in Takapuna.
The band, made up of McCully on drums, singer/guitarist Michael Cho, guitarist Jae Hyun Kim, keyboardist Philip Kim and bassist Daniel Kilhams, have changed a lot since churning out Master of Puppets and Enter Sandman.
"We loved Metallica and then ended up doing originals," says McCully. "Back then we just thought being in a band was such a cool thing to do because some of us were kind of good at sport but nothing had defined us yet.
"We thought we'd start a band. We started out doing some real heavy stuff and then we realised Michael could sing."
Cho sure can sing - he has a unique tone and soars into his high register effortlessly.
"I think we were just really lucky to find him and he developed his voice while he was in the band.
"He didn't really have it at the start and he actually got it from singing karaoke. He can hit the high notes forever," laughs McCully.
Tomorrow night, Solomon have 12 minutes to impress the judges and McCully, who is also the band's songwriter, says they will do three songs in the short time on offer.
In saying that, Solomon's opening number will be a song called Gypsy, which has obvious epic progressive rock tendencies.
"Yeah," laughs McCully, "and we're making it even more trippy. So we'll open with that and give them a bit of a shock. It's not too long though."
Rockquest founder and director Glenn Common says this year's competiton is the biggest since it started in 1988 with 660 bands taking part.
"We thought it might plateau but it's growing by 5 per cent each year, and that includes right from Invercargill to Whangarei, so it's kind of a universal thing that kids wanna play rock'n'roll and are just keen to get out there."
Tomorrow night it's up to the final six: Malford (Auckland), The B-Side Electro Funk Disaster (Manawatu), Frankly Mauve (Canterbury), Bang! Bang! Eche! (Canterbury), Taking the Fall (Otago) and Solomon to battle it out for first prize of $10,000 worth of music gear and recording time.
Solomon came second last year to Christchurch band Neil Robinson and would love to go one better this time round.
But McCully says the other five finalists are quality bands and they're not too worried if they don't win.
"We're not going to pack it in or anything like that if we don't.
"We've figured out winning Rockquest isn't everything but it is a really, really good step forward. We'll give 100 per cent but we're not going to hang ourselves if we don't win."
Common says that's an attitude organisers have been trying to push in recent years.
"You've made it this far, you've got the skills, now you need to get out there and keep going."
He says in a time where communication is very impersonal, there is something intimate and real about performing live on stage, and that's what's at the core of Rockquest.
And most of the bands in the final already perform live regularly. For example, Bang! Bang! Eche! play at the Kings Arms tonight with Motocade and the Tutts.
On the flipside, Common says the advances in technology are also helping young bands reach new heights of professionalism. "They are very quick to pick up on what new technology can do, and away they go.
"You can get an iMac straight out of the box and you can do most of the things they need to there and then without having to pay out huge amounts of money for studios.
"The stuff we've had submitted to us this year, technology-wise, the standard has been very high.
"But if you can't pull off a live performance there will always be questions over how real it is."
