PHOTO: COURTESY

FAIZA RAMIM

Getting down from the bike before the YAMAHA Flagship Centre at 5:45pm this Friday, January 23, I spotted a short, lean man walking out of the parking lot—hardly looking older than 40–45. As he moved closer, it became clear who I was looking at: Ibrahim Ahmed Kamal, the legendary guitarist of Warfaze, in town to lead Guitar Master Class 4 as the guest mentor.

Before I could properly introduce myself, my simple, timid wave was enough. He walked right up, shook my hand, and I introduced myself as his interviewer. “Oh. Am I looking good?” he asked. When I said it was for a newspaper, he laughed. I said yes anyway. At almost 60, wearing his old merch, a full beard and bandana, and looking noticeably leaner than before, his appearance felt almost unrecognisable. Still, the rockstar persona came off him at full volume.

Fame, however, does not get to his head. He gave us more than an hour of his time, speaking like an old acquaintance. Even now, he goes live on Facebook and says the easiest way to get him to reply is simply greeting him with a salam.

Kamal started Warfaze at just 14, inspired by Western metal bands. The first song he learned on guitar was Black Sabbath’s War Pigs . That early start helps explain why Warfaze sits where it does now: a pioneering force that helped carve out multiple subgenres within Bangladeshi rock and metal.

In 1984, with no video tutorials and no mentors to guide him, Kamal learned guitar entirely by ear—with only time, passion and obsession. In Warfaze’s early days, he played bass. But late 1987 changed the band’s shape: guitarist Meer left, and Kamal took over the guitar duties. Asked what remains consistent in Warfaze’s sound, he answered simply: distortion.

That single word pulled me into a bigger question. Punk began as rebellion against systems and set ways—was that an inspiration behind starting out too? Kamal did not romanticise it. “I think the system is already disrupted,” he said. “If we can bring discipline into the chaos, that’s success.”

Warfaze’s rebellion is not theoretical. The band rose during the decline of the Ershad regime, and songs like Ekti Chele and Shadhikar spoke to that moment. Asked whether listeners always grasped the messages, Kamal said they mostly did. For him, music begins with a concept—a message worth sharing, something you hope might change a life.

That mindset carried into the Yamaha Flagship Centre in Tejgaon at 7:00pm, where the fourth session of the Guitar Masterclass drew young musicians eager to hear from a childhood favourite. Kamal prefaced the session with a warning: they might learn one or two concepts, but what mattered was what they did with them afterwards.

Organised by Team Alpha, the masterclass blended hands-on playing with overlooked essentials: tonality, songwriting nuance, and what “professional” really means on a guitar. To demonstrate, Kamal asked the room for a random topic—“election”—and, with humour and precision, showed how tonality can exist inside anything. He followed that up with a breakdown of Warfaze’s Rupkotha and Purnota . He moved between humour and precision, making the room listen harder than it usually does.

As the interview drew to a close, I asked the inevitable question: amid AI-generated music and TikTok virality, is rock dead? Kamal disagreed. Anyone who thinks rock is dead, he said, is simply looking in the wrong places.

In the end, it comes down to circles—and what you choose to expose yourself to. Rock is alive and well. It only asks for attention, understanding, and the respect needed to let it keep breathing.