The Band Call


Call is a Pop Rock band formed by Danish J. Khan, Khurram J. Khan, Xulfi and Omer Pervaiz. The vocalist, Danish J. Khan left in 2001 and the band was disbanded. However, the band reformed in 2002 and after a few line-up changes, released their debut album, Jilawatan in late 2005.

Call was formed in 1994 by Xulfi, Omer Pervaiz, Khurram Jabbar Khan and Danish Jabbar Khan. They started out by providing background music for mime performances at NCA, Lahore under the name Undrap Nexus. Undrap Nexus' line-up was with Xulfi on the keyboard, Omer Pervaiz on the guitar and Danish Jabbar Khan on vocals. Soon, Xulfi and Danish Jabbar Khan, Khurram Jabbar Khan bought himself a drumkit and Call was officially formed. Call still needed a bassist and recruited Shahzad Hameed.

Call's musical inspirations included bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin and Iron Maiden.The band's first gig was in 1995. The site was decorated with flame torches and complimenting the band's music were live mime performances. Their setlist was composed of 10 original tracks, a rare thing for underground musicians to do back then. However, in 1996, the band's bassist, Shahzad Hameed left. After a while, the band's guitarist, Omer Pervaiz left as well in order to concentrate on his solo project, Naqsh. Xulfi and Khurram Jabbar Khan decided against disbanding the band and thus ended up recruiting Ahsan Fida Khan on guitars and Faisal Murtaza on bass.

Disbanding (2001)

On October 20, 2001, Danish Jabbar Khan, the band’s vocalist and lyricist, performed for the last time with the band at a rock festival on his birthday. Once the band’s primary lyricist and vocalist was gone, the members of the band got busy with other things. Khurram Jabbar Khan moved to the United States, Xulfi concentrated on his band Paradigm (which later became EP) while Ahsan and Faisal moved on to fulfill family obligations.

Revival (2002-2004)

In September 2002, Khurram Jabbar Khan, being a core member, returned from the United States to revive Call. Khurram and Xulfi got together and auditioned for new band members and decided that this would be an urdu project. They found Junaid’s voice to befitting for the band’s musical direction and recruited him as the band’s vocalist. Soon Sunny was chosen to be on lead guitar, Usman Nasir on rhythms and Sultan Raja (Xulfi’s student) on bass. Khurram joined in on drums.
The band’s first single, Nishaan was released through various Pakistani music websites and gained widespread fame. It went on to top the charts and also won the band its first award: Best Rock Song at the Band Baja Awards 2003. Indus Music made a live video of the song which was to be exclusively aired on the channel itself. Call then came up with a second single titled Pukaar, which came with a promotional video directed by Xulfi, eventually won the Indus Music Award for the Best Alternative Rock Song. The band then released an unplugged song titled Kaash.
Soon Khurram had to part roles with the band because he had to run Jilawatan Productions, the company which used to manage EP, Jal, Call and Roxen (band). Eventually Sunny and Usman left the band as well. The band said that Usman didn’t deserve to be in any band and was only there because of his brother, Sunny. Sunny, who was the real musical contributor, couldn’t contribute to the band due to his job and thus had to leave the band.
Khurram was replaced by Waqar of EP and Xulfi took Sunny and Usman’s place. A new single was released and was accompanied by a video directed by Xulfi. The song was titled Shayad and topped the charts.

Jilawatan (2005)

Now that the band’s line-up was stable, Call started recording their debut album, Jilawatan. The album was finally released in November 2005 and immediately topped the Vibes charts and stayed there for a lengthy amount of time. The album release was accompanied by a single titled Sab Bhula Kai. A video was released with the single and was directed by Sohail Javed. The single topped the charts and fared extremely well.
A while later two more singles were released, both of which were accompanied by videos. The singles, titled Kuch Naheen and Bichar Kai Bhee, both topped the charts.

Official Website-Thebandcall.com