At Courtside, “Raincheck” brought together Ex 8, Achar, Arekta Rock Band, Meghdol, Karnival and Nemesis for a humid, rainless night that still felt like a monsoon gathering of Dhaka’s rock faithful.
Last Friday (June 26) evening, Courtside was prepared for rain. The idea behind “Raincheck” had always carried a wink: a monsoon-themed concert scheduled for June 26, a date chosen precisely for its odds of a downpour. Organisers Let’s Vibe and Karkhana leaned fully into the conceit, dressing the venue with rain-themed installations, makeshift shelters and complimentary single-use raincoats handed out at the gate. Every detail seemed to anticipate a storm.
Only the sky refused to play along. What arrived instead was humidity—the kind that settles on the skin, thickens the air, and makes a packed concert feel even more crowded than it is. The raincoats went unused, becoming a running joke, folded under seats and forgotten. The crowd stayed anyway, and the bands played through the heat. Somewhere between the opening acts and Nemesis’ late-night finish, “Raincheck” stopped needing the weather to make its point.
This edition’s line-up—Ex 8, Achar, Arekta Rock Band, Meghdol, Karnival and Nemesis—worked less like a standard concert bill and more like a compressed history of Bangladeshi rock in motion: newcomers testing the scale of a larger stage, a returning act reconnecting with old listeners, bands with sharply distinct live identities, and finally, a headliner whose catalogue now spans more than two decades.
Ex 8, among the newer names on the bill, helped open the night with “Alphard”, their newly released single, alongside a cover of “Bring Me to Life” that briefly pulled a familiar global rock reference into an evening otherwise rooted in Dhaka’s own scene. Together with Achar, their set gave “Raincheck” an important early texture—a reminder that the night was not built solely around nostalgia or established names, but also around bands still in the process of introducing themselves.
Arekta Rock Band followed, and their return carried its own weight for a section of the crowd. The band had been largely off the stage since releasing their full-length album, with founding members vocalist Riasat Azmi and guitarist Sakib Manzur Zihan now living overseas. For this show, two new faces filled in on vocals and guitar, though the arrangement was framed as a temporary measure rather than a reinvention.
Founding member and lead guitarist Ifaz Abrar Reza was clear that the band’s creative core remains intact despite the distance. “When it comes to writing songs and making music, we’re still doing it with Riasat and Zihan,” he said, noting that the collaboration continues virtually, having already produced the release “Bhera”. A new single, “Shomoy”, is expected by the end of July.
That detail mattered because “Raincheck” worked best when each band stood for a different kind of continuity. Arekta’s set was not simply a comeback moment; it was also a reminder of how bands now hold together through separation, migration and changed circumstances without necessarily calling an end to the story.
Meghdol’s arrival shifted the room into another register, opening with softer numbers and easing gradually into a sombre mood. Their set had to navigate a couple of mandatory prayer breaks, a familiar rhythm of Dhaka’s live music scene, though one that can still strain the fragile build of an hour-long performance.
Even so, Meghdol found its way back to the audience before the end. Not every corner of the crowd seemed familiar with the band’s older discography, but “E Hawa” changed the temperature of the room outright. When it arrived, listeners who had spent the set merely standing and watching suddenly became part of the performance, the chorus travelling out from the stage and returning louder from the floor.
Karnival brought a different pulse altogether. Where Meghdol had drawn the audience inward, this set pushed the room back into motion with upbeat, groove-driven numbers, leaning heavily on tracks from “Mohomukti” while still making room for older favourites such as “Shadakalo Rongdhonu” and “Amar Shotto”, before closing with “Bhrom”.
What stood out, beyond the energy, was the shape of the band’s live sound. Vocalist Tinu Rashid wove intricate harmonies that are easy to miss in casual listening but emerge clearly on stage—a texture that, in a crowded and humid venue, gave the performance something beyond sheer volume and momentum.
Nemesis took the stage with the night already having moved through several moods—the urgency of newcomers, the homecoming of Arekta Rock Band, Meghdol’s reflective pull, and Karnival’s rhythmic lift—and arrived not merely as another act on the bill but as the band tasked with holding the evening together at its close.
Their headlining set ran to at least ten songs, a practical reminder of how difficult it is to choose from four studio albums and 25 years of music. Vocalist Zohad Reza Chowdhury kept his exchanges with the audience loose and playful; fans called out his name, demanded specific songs, and sat through his teasing delays before the band finally obliged.
“We were a bit jealous that we missed out on last year’s ‘Raincheck’,” Zohad said after the set, adding that the band had reshuffled its setlist while still sticking to the basics. The crowd, by then, had stayed long past any reasonable hour, and the reaction alone answered for the experiment.
That was the real success of “Raincheck”. Not that every transition was seamless. Not that the rain-themed concept unfolded exactly as planned. Not even that every band had a technically flawless night. Its strength lay in how the evening made different generations and corners of the local rock scene feel present at once—newer bands sharing a bill with older names, a returning act hinting at unfinished work still in progress, and a headliner looking back without sounding trapped by its own history.
There was no rain, but there was still a kind of accumulation: songs piling up over the course of the evening, old hooks rediscovered, and new ones introduced. By the end, Courtside did not need a storm to justify the name. The monsoon had become metaphor enough. Sticky, crowded, unpredictable, deeply local. “Raincheck’s” second chapter worked because it understood that, in Dhaka, a rock concert is rarely only about the stage. It is also about endurance, memory, heat, interruption, return, and the stubborn pleasure of staying until the last song.
