With a 7,000-strong audience including visitors from Indonesia and Malaysia, Planetshakers together with New Creation Church rocked the Max Pavilion at the Zone concert on Jun 15.

The Australian Christian band, which counts Australian Idol Guy Sebastian as a former lead vocalist, performed in Singapore, their first stop on South East Asian tour. Their first album, When The Planet Rocked, was recorded live at the Planetshakers conference in Melbourne in 2000. Since then, they’ve been producing albums each year with their latest being this year’s Saviour of The World.

Like all concerts, the queue began early with fans at the entrance a full 4 hours before the doors opened. They had to brave the erratic weather with sweltering heat and clammy rain just to get the best seats in the hall for the free seating concert. Sometimes, even the early bird has to wait for the worm.

“I came early because I’ve a big group of friends who will turn up later so I want plenty of prime seats,” said Ngee Ann Polytechnic graduate, Ong Han Yuen, 20.

When the doors opened at 6:30pm, the influx of people was so great that tickets were only collected when people exchanged them for a goodie bag carrying a Solid Rock magazine and a water bottle. Of the crowd, a small percentage were gate crashers who simply walked in without a ticket.

“They belonged to another part of the queue that allows them to enter only if there were extra seats,” explained one of the ushers, Nicholas Tan.

The concert kicked off with a drum solo by Timothy Patrick Solomon, New Creation’s drummer. His solo was the prelude to a Stomp team by Dare ministry, New CreationChurch’s Youth Ministry (think Stomp The Yard with Asian secondary school kids). The execution of beats and synchronised actions were close to perfection, considering how hard the dancers were trying not to laugh when their friends were at the front screaming their names.

And then Planetshakers came on stage.

The music was simply awesome. Unlike so many popular songs that speak of anger and maladjustment, the band’s music was uplifting and, for want of a better word, happy. Their genre: Contemporary Christian.

Although there were 2 lead singers, Samantha Evans and Henry Heeley, in the 10-piece band, the latter had more of a stage presence and did most of the singing. A large reason why Heeley was the centre of attention was because he sang the louder and faster songs and looked more like leader of a band while Evans had a more mature feel to her voice.

It was, however, disappointing that the Planetshakers’ gig lasted for no more than 7 songs (approximately 1 hour).

“I was really surprised that their performance was so short but I guess most of the people here wasn’t familiar with their songs, so most of the time they are just jumping to the music,” said Steve Kwa, 27, professional bodyguard.

And as the band left the stage, Joscelin Yeo, ex-national swimmer, went up and shared her experience about last year’s Commonwealth Games in Melbourne, and how she managed to do well despite the fact that she was stricken with chicken pox a week before the competition.

Recounting that most critics had dismissed her chances of success, she revealed that she relied on her faith and self-belief, which at the end of the day, saw her achieve miraculous results against all odds.

“In fact, last year at the age of 26, I broke many of my records which I had set at the age of 21.”

The next speaker was Pastor Joseph Prince who gave a talk about grace and righteousness, and kept everyone laughing. At one point, he even did an impersonation of Jack Sparrow of the Pirates of the Caribbean which probably even Johnny Depp would have paid money to watch.

The last item of Zone concert was the band from New Creation. With their original compositions, they performed all the way from 9 pm to 10.15 pm. And the crowd’s reaction was no less compared to Planetshakers’, with many jumping and cheering all the way to the end.