(Antara/Agus Apriyanto)

Local band Noah — unofficially “The Band Formerly Known as Peterpan” — is ready to rock the stage and bewitch their fans in concert at the Mata Elang International Stadium (MEIS) in Ancol, North Jakarta, on Friday night.

Titled “The Greatest Session in History”, the concert will serve as “the fourth session” and also the culmination of the band’s comeback tour following the release of its front man Nazriel Irham, or Ariel, from prison on July 23 after serving most of his three-and-a-half-year sentence for violating the Pornography Law.

Earlier this year, the band performed the concert “Tanpa Nama” (“Nameless”) at Senayan City shopping center in Jakarta on May 29, while Ariel was still in jail.

In mid-September, the band were awarded a record by the Indonesian Museum of Records (MURI) for holding five concerts in five countries over two continents in a single day.

Simply dubbed the “five-nation, two-continent tour”, the one-hour concert series kicked off in Melbourne, continued on to Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore with its grand finale at Gandaria City mall in South Jakarta.   

The band later held another series of concerts in the “Born to Make History” tour across eight major cities in Indonesia: Surabaya, Semarang, Padang, Palembang, Yogyakarta, Samarinda, Medan and Makassar.

Concert promoter Berlian Entertainment promised that the concert in Jakarta on Friday would be unforgettable and would leave a long-lasting impression on Noah’s fans.

“We deliberately created four sessions for Noah. Each of the sessions serves a different purpose but shows Noah as an exceptional musical group with a distinctive Indonesian flavor in their songs,” Berlian Entertainment CEO Dino Hamid said, as quoted by tribunnews.com.

Regarding details of the show, Noah guitarist Uki was suspiciously enigmatic, merely saying that the band is keeping things close to the chest.

“The only thing you should know is this is a concert with a different concept,” he said.

He did say that the band would perform at least 25 songs during the concert and that he hoped the fans would wear red-and-white-colored clothes to the show.

He also joked that Noah might sing songs popularized by other bands during the concert.

“We used to cover other people’s songs in cafes. We want to bring that memory to the stage. Just wait and see,” Uki said.

Ticket prices for the concert range from Rp 350,000 (US$36.4) to as high as Rp 3.5 million. Some fans have raised concerns over the unusually high ticket price for a local band’s concert, but many others seemed to have no problem with it.

“[As of Tuesday], some 95 percent of 4,000 tickets available for the show have been sold. Fans’ enthusiasm is so high,” said Berlian’s Marchell Permadi.

Following the concert’s press meet at Nyi Ageng Serang building in Kuningan, South Jakarta, on Tuesday, the band was seen performing Nirvana’s seminal generational anthem “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in a rehearsal session.

Will the song be performed during the concert? Sadly, the band members remained tight-lipped.

“The one thing you can be sure of is that we want to give our fans something different,” said Ariel.

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