No rain, just rock: The camaraderie of ‘Raincheck’

<div>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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.&nbsp;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.</div><div><br></div><div>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.&nbsp;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.</div>