Standing at the foot of the stage, members of the student band Pizza Party were jumping up and down, screaming and cheering when it was announced that the group had won the Battle of the Bands.

“Oh my gosh, winning feels great,” said Jesse Katzenstein, who plays bass, guitar and saxophone and also sings for Pizza Party. “We were not expecting it at all. We just came out here — and I sound like Kobe Bryant right now — but we left it all on the court and we just did it.”

Orange Music Group, a student organization that works on marketing and branding local artists, hosted a Battle of the Bands at Schine Underground on Thursday night. The event featured both experienced and new bands and was sponsored by Subcat Studios, a professional recording studio located on South West Street.

Pizza Party, a band comprised of four Syracuse University sophomores in the Bandier program, took the top prize of six hours of recording time at Subcat Studios. Second prize, which was a photo shoot, went to Lee Terrace, a band whose members grew up in the Syracuse city area. The New Daze, which describes itself as “heavy jam funk rock with an edge,” took third place and will receive OMG merchandise.

The judges rated the performances based on audience interaction, music and performances. Two of the judges for the event were Jon Lessels, the owner of Subcat Studios and Jeremy Johnston, the engineer of Subcat Studios.

Some bands that performed included bands comprised of only SU students, but others had only one or two. Pizza Party and the other seven bands — Harryhausen, Futurism, These Walls, Lee Terrace, Nails in the Pulpit, The New Daze and The Late Night Jammers — each played 15 minutes, which allowed them to play anywhere between two to five songs.

Audience members were also given the chance to vote through social media, retweeting tweets from OMG’s official Twitter account. Each retweet would count as a vote, and the votes would be taken into consideration at the end of the show.

However, as of 11 p.m. when the show officially ended, the bands Harryhausen and These Walls had 32 and 34 retweets each, comprising the top two amounts. Pizza Party came in third, with only 14.

Pizza Party, is made up of four sophomores in the Bandier Program for Music and the Entertainment industries, band formed just at the beginning of the school year. Will Skalmoski, who plays bass, guitar and vocals, said the band had an advantage because its members all live together.

“We play together all the time,” he said. “I thought my mom was bullsh*tting when she said ‘practice makes perfect,’ but that was a lot of practice that we got. We had a lot of good chemistry.”

Pizza Party has expressed interest in releasing an EP by the end of the semester, and the members plan to make the most of the time they get in Subcat Studios.

Said Skalmoski: “We’re going to use it to the best of our abilities. It’s great because we’ve been wanting to get in a studio for a long time.”

Published on April 10, 2015 at 12:19 am

Contact Clare: clramire@syr.edu