Welcome back to the second installment of our online Battle Of Original Music, or BOOM for short. (Get it?) For those of you who are unfamiliar with our battle of the bands for the information age, here’s how it works: Local original music acts visit Artvoice.com and submit a photo, an mp3, and fill out a brief questionnaire. (Bands, you still have time to enter, but there is nothing to be gained by procrastinating. Click here to register!) From those submissions, we pick two bands each week to go head to head in an online struggle for the hearts and minds of music fans across Western New York. How can I, as a music fan, participate, you ask? Simple. Start with our selections below for week one - visit and bookmark boom.artvoice.com to keep track as the contest progresses. Each week, simply place your vote for your favorite. The power, as we just learned on November 4, is in the hands of the people. Bands are encouraged to get out the vote any way they can short of stuffing the ballot box. Our IT guy is very savvy, and he’ll be monitoring the votes more closely than an election lawyer in Ohio. If you’re caught cheating, you can be disqualified. And there’s nowhere to appeal our decision.

The rewards for the winners are great. By next week, one of the two bands below will have collected enough votes to proceed to our first live quarterfinal—scheduled for December 26 at Nietzsche’s. There, each audience member will be issued one ballot, which they can use to vote for their favorite band. At the end of the night, one band will emerge victorious. They will receive a recording package from Audio Magic, and 100 CDs of that recording from ESP CD & DVD Manufacturing. In addition, they will be profiled on WBFO as part of their “Buffalo Avenues” program. We’ll do this four times.

The four winners of our live quarterfinals will face off in our Grand Finale in May. The winner that night will win a slot on WBFO’s Wednesday night concerts live from Allen Hall, a video produced by Artvoice, and a nice cash prize as well.

We’re happy to present this contest with the help of our great sponsors: Audio Magic, ESP, WBFO and Neitzsche's. They all play a vital role in making our town a hotspot of original music.

But we can’t make msic without u. May the best band win.

Voting is CLOSED

Results will be available in next week's Artvoice (v7n47, the Artvoice Gift Guide, week of November 19th). Results will also be available on the BOOM web page at http://boom.artvoice.com. Thanks to all who have participated this week, see you next week!

Kryszt You need to have the Adobe Flash Player installed to listen. Download it for free here. Listen to Summer of the Firefly by Kryszt When did the band form? 2007 You might like us if you like: Nine Inch Nails, Tool, A Perfect Circle, Muse, Pink Floyd List of recorded releases: A 3-song demo cd in 2008, working on a full length cd for a 2009 release. Worst show ever played: We played at Rhinos once. The sound guy was very unprofessional and rubbed us all the wrong way. We didn’t play a solid set—as the sound on stage was mixed pretty bad—but everyone there seemed to enjoy it regardless. Best show ever played: Any of the shows we play at Diablo. We play there the most and have a great connection with the employees and the patrons there. Why you should win the Artvoice.com Online Battle of Original Music: I don’t know, maybe we do, maybe we don’t. We are still a pretty new band, but I believe that we have a whole lot of talent to show. I would rather play, see how it goes, and find out from you why we deserved to win. Website: http://www.n3wt.net

Hyperion Blast You need to have the Adobe Flash Player installed to listen. Download it for free here. Listen to Tightrope by Hyperion Blast When did the band form? Formed: 2007 in Lockport. Most of the band lives in the West Seneca area but practice in Lockport. You might like us if you like: Eyehategod, Weedeater, Black Cobra List of recorded releases: Forecasters of the Armageddon EP (Poison Tree Records-2008). Worst show ever played: We played a metal fest in Buffalo at the Sikora Post and everything just went bad. Sound was bad, guitars and vocals cutting in and out, broken strings. An overall mess. Best show ever played: One of our best shows was at the Red Eye Saloon in Lackawanna with Down the Drain. There was a great size crowd and we played a very tight and energetic set. We’ve had a bunch of shows we were very happy with but this one stuck out as one of our favorites. Why you should win the Artvoice.com Online Battle of Original Music: We work hard to represent Buffalo and Doom Metal in general. we play from the heart the music we love to play with no compromise. Contact information: http://www.myspace.com/endtimeblasts