From East Pakistan to Bangladesh, this land has an enriched 'band-music' history of over six decades. Although the nation is bestowed with a great number of esteemed and promising bands throughout the aforementioned timeline; unfortunately, this particular genre has been surprisingly overlooked and not properly documented through major publications or documentary productions.

With a vision to add a noteworthy publication dedicated to this genre in Bangladesh, Haque Faruk and Milu Aman, two dedicated band music-lovers, joined forces to mummify this unarchived history - in the form of a book, titled 'Banglar Rock Metal,' which is going to be published on 5th August.

The book not only carries a chronological history of the gradual development in the Bangladeshi band scene but also the authentic profile of over 170 bands with their discography. Haque, now a senior journalist, and Milu, a full-fledged writer, have worked separately as music journalists in the past decades. With all of their experiences and almost two years of relentless efforts, now this duo is ready to publish 'Banglar Rock Metal' for the band music enthusiasts.

Haque said that he has spent hours at the archive section of different libraries apart from his regular professional responsibilities as a full-time journalist. The duo not only depended on the existing-secondary documents but also recorded the history through the first-person narration of the living band members.

"We Even crosschecked the information with the former members of the band who are still alive," said Haque. They had to conquer space and time to find and contact some of the musicians from the past who had been almost forgotten from the scene and have been living in different parts of the world for decades now.

"For example, the members of band 'Aces' (from the 90s) now live abroad, scattered in different countries, and they were finding it hard to recall their days of glory. So, we created a social media group and gave them sufficient time to recall the decade-old memories," explained Milu. "We followed their (band members) conversations from the group and noted down the almost erased histories," the co-author said.

Ziaur Rahman Zia, band leader and bassist of popular band Shironamhin, said that this has been a much-needed initiative, a responsibility to give people an authentic record of the country's enriched band-scene history. "The importance of archiving has always existed and we're really fortunate that this talented duo who have witnessed the scene for almost four decades, successfully took this initiative," Zia said regarding this book.

This book is going to be published by Aajob Prokash along with a special poster. The book cover is designed by Niaz Ahmed Aungshu, the cover typography by Mustafiz Karigar and the essential graphics are done by Kousik Zaman. Publisher Joy Shahriar, a renowned musician and founder of Aajob Prokash, said that they are all set for a book launching ceremony on August 5. The venue and further details are yet to be announced.

‌"Preorders are open till launching but we have already started receiving overwhelming response from the band-music fans, and we hope the first-print copies of the book would stock out pretty soon, once the book is officially launched," according to Joy, who believes that with this book, the nation is finally overcoming the reluctant culture of not preserving or documenting our history in a proper manner.

'Banglar Rock Metal' can be preordered via the Facebook page of Aajob Prokash at a discounted price. The printed price of this 450-page hardbound book, band encyclopedia, is Tk 1000. Young music enthusiasts, especially students might struggle to buy it because of the price, thus the publisher informed the media that there will be a special discounted price during the preorder campaign. The book is also available for preorder at Rokomari dot com.