Energy levels were high Friday night as colored lights and fog filled the air of Rezac Auditorium for the annual Battle of the Bands hosted by StuCo.

Bands Comanche Club, The Noise, Shadow of the Earth and E.R. brought the audience to their feet as they performed everything from original songs to classic rock anthems.

“It was interesting getting to hear other groups play their style and their sound so it was kind of interesting getting to hear new stuff,” senior and Shadow of the Earth guitarist Jack Cunningham said. “The result surprised me because their sound, while interesting, wasn’t my cup of tea. Like I enjoyed it but it’s not what I enjoy, but other people enjoyed it.”

While there were problems along the way, the band members felt confident in their performances.

“I thought it was really fun and it was a great free performance that we got to do,” junior The Noise guitarist Ethan Levin said. “That doesn’t come around very often where you get to have a bunch of good lights and sound. There was one [problem] when the microphone for Jack [Matthews] didn’t work and there were some out of tune guitars and according to one of the judges they couldn’t hear the guitars entirely, but it came through the monitor for me just fine.”

Other bands faced issues as well, experiencing sound and instrumental problems.

“There were a few problems but in every performance there is,” senior and Shadow of the Earth Bassist Andrew Morton said. “I feel like it could have better and been handled better, but I feel like overall it was handled well enough.”

Cunningham felt similarly.

“There’s always room for improvement, especially for us,” Cunningham said.

After judges filled out rubrics based on each band’s performance, scores were tallied; Comanche Club came in second and E.R. came out on top.

E.R. is comprised of three members, two of which have already graduated.

“It was really fun,” MHS alumni and E.R. member Lukas Hugunin said. “These people are amazing. Honestly, I’m very shocked that we actually won. I mean two of us aren’t in high school anymore. I thought we were going to get disqualified, but you know what I’m very happy that we weren’t.”

The graduated status of the majority of E.R. was questioned by the other bands.

“I was told that E.R. wasn’t competing so that kind of bummed me out a tad,” Levin said.

E.R. dedicated their third song to Jane Kenyon.

“Today has been kind of a bit of an interesting day just because we all learned earlier this morning that Mrs. Kenyon passed away and that kind of set a lot of shock on us,” Hugunin said.

Overall, there was a mutual agreement that the performances went well.

“Comanche Club were great and I was honestly expecting them to take first and I’m really happy they got second place because they deserved that,” Hugunin said.

This sentiment was repeated and further discussed by Levin.

“Comanche Club did great, so did E.R.,” Levin said. “Also Shadow of the Earth was good. I’m really proud of what we did also, it was really fun to do. It was mostly about the performance for me I don’t care about the competition side of it. I think I’m dumb, maybe just happy.”

E.R. went home with a prize of 100 dollars from the StuCo fund.

“We’re just  happy to have made such a great comeback from fourth place last year to first place this year,” Hugunin said.