What inspired you to enter the world of music? How was the band formed?
The band was formed in 2007 by Hashim Mehmood and like all other bands we went through many lineup changes to this current one which has been stable since 2010.
All of our musicians come from different inspirational background and when we put that all together we get a flavor of Black Hour. As recently labelled in Pepsi by Bilal Maqsood of Strings, ‘’Black Hour can do anything’’ he said. And with that we tend to keep our music spectrum broad and not to one style of music. However you can easily put our music more towards the Rock genre where we are mostly considered to be a power-pack live act.
I guess, for most of us getting into music sort of just happened. It dates back so many years that sometimes it’s hard for us even to remember where we started and where we are today working as professional musicians.
Why the name ‘Black Hour’ ? Is there a story behind it?
Black Hour was a name that Hashim decided. Probably no particular reason at the time. This is by far the most asked question to us. Haha! And we have a different answer every time to this.
How would you describe your music genre?
We don’t like adding labels to music as long as it’s good music. However, we would say it’s mostly Rock, Alternative or Rock & Roll.
Where does the band draws inspirations from?
Each of our members have their own listening and style of music. Diam, our drummer listens to a lot of progressive rock, Tayyab, our vocalist usually enjoys diverse music, Salman, our bass player listens to a mix playlist and Hashim usually has his own instrumental fusion music.
But as a band when we combine all these flavors together we sort of get the final product of the Black Hour sound.
How was the Pepsi Battle Of Bands experience and how did it change your life?
Coming in third place, Pepsi Battle of the Bands surely made us rich. Haha! But to more serious answer, Pepsi gave a platform to musicians and bands of tomorrow and not many major entertainment platforms are doing that these days. People don’t want to take a chance with the upcoming youth and they rather play safe and keep rolling the same tape but Pepsi not only for us but for all the bands who have been a part of Pepsi surely have experienced their hard work paying off. So now working with Pepsi has been a very good career changing moment for us and definitely towards something bigger and better.
What is the most rock star thing the whole band has done?
Tayyab did a crowd surf at one of our last shows before the pandemic outbreak. So that was pretty crazy to witness.
And on a lighter note two of our members did miss their flight for a video shoot and tour. So that at the time was nerve wrecking but things panned out and we had a good laugh about it later saying ‘’Wow! Truly behaving like rockstars and missing flights now are we’’. Haha!
The best memory about any musical gig you performed?
I don’t think we can decide on a best gig and the reason is most of us have bad memories. Haha! But you know some shows go good, some go great and some not so good also. So, every moment on stage is a time to remember whether you are playing a small audience or the loudest and the largest crowd you’ve ever seen. Either way, it’s magical and it’s energetic like no other feeling. Live music and performance is an addiction.
What’s next on bucket list of “Black Hour”?
Coming out with our first Urdu album because before this we had released to English rock albums internationally. But now it’s different music with the same members but sort of renewed.
So an album for sure with some music videos and when the world returns to normal, we definitely plan to take the new songs on road and tour some cities of Pakistan.
