2001 - Emergenza’s first year in Sweden was a huge success. The Stockholm winner, WILLOWTREE, was chosen as the best Emergenza band throughout all of Europe. (They went on to play with the Vans Warped Tour in the U.S.) The concerts took place in clubs like Tanto Garden, Kägelbanan and Munchen Brygeriett. But last year, because some of these places had closed down, the event was organized abroad and the whole thing had to be done on a much smaller scale. Nevertheless, the Emergenza management decided to do Stockholm again. They told us, “There´s a need for something like Emergenza in Sweden, it´s really hard for local bands to find good places to perform live”. The music scene is so lively, the bands are just too good to not get the chance to play before a bigger audience. This year, with the help of Claes Holding from Swedish Showcase and great support from JAM and Birkka Music, things got off to a much better start. Even though the kick-off for registration started pretty late, 48 bands went for it. The first round was held at Café Mix, a small lunch and party place with a stage, inside the old building of the Music Museum. Most of the bands stuck to what Swedish music is famous for: easy-going pop with catchy tunes or reduced to the bare-bone essentials of rock. Rock from 60’s garage to 70’s hard rock, 80’s metal to 90’s alternative. Of course, some bands didn´t fit into those categories, like NOLL playing slow and quiet indie the American way, BLOODWRATH with brutal hardcore, and weird AUTOTRASH, a Swedish version of trash rock&roll Guitar Wolf from Japan, but with a drum-machine instead of a drummer. The semi-finals saw the Emergenza line-up at Kägelbanan, one of the best clubs in town, with amazing acoustics and a great reputation. In three nights more than 1,000 people came to watch the show and to pick out the ten best Stockholm bands: SOM OM, DIPSTONE, IN GREY, WHISPERWAVE, BRUTALERS, DECHAS, EPIC SUN, NERVOUS NELLIE, MEANDERSTREAM and SPLEEN. These ten went on to play the final at Klubben, one of two stages at Fryshuset, on the 28th of June. Usually only the big names play there, this time it was the gonna-bees. And it turned out to be very nice indeed! The bands rocked as if it was their last show, and the audience was excited by the diverse performances, a great lightshow, and a wall of sound. In the end DIPSTONE, WHISPERWAVE, BRUTALERS, DECHAS, EPIC SUN, and NERVOUS NELLIE were favoured by the listeners and went on to the jury votes. The jury decided very quickly on this year’s winner - DECHAS. Everyone knew exactly what they were doing on their instrument, without loosing sight of the whole. Interesting correspondence between the guitars, a driving rhythm section, and an experienced and expressive singer, all combined with the aim to bring their genre nu-metal up to or beyond its limits, incorporating reggae rhythms, jazzy arrangements and a few ballads. Taking second place - NERVOUS NELLIE, led by the Johnson brothers on guitars and vocals, played an up-dated version of alternative, but performed in the garage style of the THE bands. Melodic, but raw and a little risky as far as breaking strings and sticks goes. The BRUTALERS coming in at third place, played probably the most offensive game in the festival: two singers, a guy going wild and a girl taking the cool part, switching the verse-lines and doing the hook-lines together, backed up by a solid band, and all together with some kind of late seventies glam-rock. It was nice to see, that the bands are maturing during the festival. Like SOM OM, who played their second gig in the first round and made it to the final. Others have evolved over the years - 2001 second place winner STONEPARK went on to win Stockholm the following year (3rd. in the European Final). The third place from that season, DECHAS, took a big step and hit the mark this time. With former champions STONEPARK being on the jury and WILLOWTREE playing as special gue