The road to Indie stardom hasn’t always been smooth. In 1997, five childhood friends decided to partake in that time-honored rite of passage: forming a garage band. For some reason, one of them not-so-cleverly christened the group “Female Body Explosion.” This wouldn’t have been a problem were it not for three things. Number one? The name connoted a sensual, libidinous girl-group who had NO qualms about playing in dingy Rock clubs. Number two? Rock clubs are INFESTED by sweaty, drunken, horny young men dripping with unrepressed sexual desire. And number three? Not a single one of those five friends happened to be a woman. A baptism of fire, to be sure. Making matters worse, booking agents had no clue how to categorize this new band…a trend that (arguably) continues to this day. Indeed, their very first performance was playing dead last after half a dozen Death Metal acts had concluded their conniptions. A fairly inauspicious beginning considering the five friends had proudly invited their respective sets of parents to attend. Needless to say, not one of those shell-shocked adults has been to a gig since.
After that comedy of errors, the boys renamed themselves “Monsterbot.” This new moniker, oddly enough, ALSO seemed to tempt fate with its disastrous implications. For those of you less geeky, a “Monsterbot” is a toy that “never quite made it” into the popular “Transformers” cartoon show of the 80s. The superstitious among us might shake our heads at this. Had the group inadvertently cursed itself to the same sort of mediocrity? Would THEY, by defying the stars, “never quite make it” within the Pinoy “band” scene? Time has proven that this wasn’t the case. Monsterbot’s first recorded offering made its way into NU107’s “In The Raw” compilation in 2000. Two years later, their debut album “Destroy! Destroy!” appeared in finer record boutiques across the metropolis. 2004’s “Epekto” E.P./Single was but a precursor to a flurry of activity. In 2005, they contributed songs to the “Full Volume” and “Shiny Silver Jeepney” compilations. This, amazingly, ran concurrent with their triumphant return to full-length releases, “Rhomboids.” Through it all, Monsterbot have partied hard, gigged steadily and even turned a few of us on to their complex brand of Music. These guys put the “cult” in “cult heroes.”
