I was idly scrolling through Instagram one lazy afternoon this past summer and saw Dawn Ray’d posting about playing some cool-sounding anti-fascist music festival—I want to say it was 161 Fest in Manchester, but they played that last year, so it must’ve been something else. I thought to myself, “Man, I wish we had something like that here, but for metal.” I love metal festivals and have been to tons of them in various countries, but I’d long wanted to find one that combined my music and my politics. Too many big festivals make room for known bigots, abusers, and/or outright fascists, and it can be hard to find one that I feel 100 percent good about supporting (outside of gems like Migration Fest, Roadburn, Eistnaflug, Northwest Terror Fest, and like-minded others). Metal deserves spaces like that, and my thinking was, “Wouldn’t it be nice if I could somehow create one?”
I was also itching for something new; I’ve been writing about this stuff for a very long time and have been booking shows in Philadelphia and NYC for over a decade, so putting together a festival was an intriguing idea. Because I spend too much time online, I tweeted out, “Who wants to give me a bunch of money to put on an anti-fascist metal fest?” People responded enthusiastically right away, and then five minutes later, my friend Meredith, who works at Kickstarter, was texting me telling me that she’d help me figure out a Kickstarter campaign (I’m a bit of a Luddite, so I definitely owe her big for her guidance and for things like forcing me to make a video). I can never resist a challenge, and, well, here we are.
How did you select the bands? What do they all have in common, and why do they all rule?
Honestly? Almost every band confirmation was the result of me texting or messaging one of my friends and saying, “Hey, I’m doing this thing. You want in?” Like any festival promoter, my biggest ulterior motive here is to get a chance to gather together a bunch of people I love and respect in one place, and I am extraordinarily lucky to have built close relationships with a lot of good people who also make incredible music and support the cause.
I did want this to be an explicitly metal (and later, metal and harsh noise, because I had a few more friends I wanted to sneak on!) event. It would’ve been easy to book a grip of dope punk bands, because NYC and the surrounding areas have a ton of killer bands, and it’s still a lot easier to find explicitly anti-fascist, radical bands in the punk world than it is in metal. However, I wanted the lineup to reflect the fact that there are a lot of metal fans who support inclusivity and want to quash the fascist creep into our scene, and that there are a lot of metal bands who are proud to stand up against fascism, racism, sexism, and bigotry of all stripes. A lot of incredible bands got in touch, and I could’ve easily booked two more days of this thing, but after five months of losing my mind over the planning, I think a day and a half is enough for a first try.
What is the Brooklyn Bazaar, for out-of-towners?
It’s a cool, multi-level, multi-use venue in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that books a lot of metal shows, and has also hosted a lot of great events, like La Migra Punk Fest, the Latinx Punk Fest, and various oddities markets, that made me think they’d be down with the idea behind this one. The banquet hall space is perfect for the vendor market I envisioned, and in addition, the other organizers and I know a number of the people on the security staff (a few of them used to volunteer at ABC No Rio with my partner before it closed down) so we knew that there would be good people on hand. Also, Paulie Gee’s is right down the block, and their pizza rules.
Do you want this to become a recurring thing? If so, what are your plans for the future?
Absolutely. We’ve still got to get through this first show, of course, and that will dictate a lot of our next steps, but we are already talking about expanding. We want to hoist the black flag all across North America and beyond.
Aside from music, can you share any more details right now about what kind of info booths, vendors, food, etc. will be there? The vendor market is my pet project (well, I suppose this whole thing is, really, but I’m especially excited about this part). We’re envisioning it as a sort of mini-anarchist bookfair/merch market/maker showcase, and will have tables from a number of great radical book publishers like Haymarket, AJK Press, PM Press, and Verso; anarchist and anti-fascist organizations like the NYC Anarchist Black Cross, POP Gym, The Base, It’s Going Down, and more; records from Tridroid Records and Vinyl Fantasy; art and merch from Foxie Cosmetics, Just Seeds, and Revolutionary Thread; and about a million zines; as well as festival merch (designed by killer tattoo artist Dan Bones); and the bands’ merch upstairs.
What do you hope to accomplish with the fest? Is it raising money for any causes, or just to spread awareness?
A bit of both. My main goal is to create a space for metalheads who care about politics and inclusivity and riffs to connect, organize, and enjoy themselves without having to worry about any boneheads fucking up the vibe, and to make sure that every person involved in playing or putting on the festival itself feels supported, respected, and is compensated well for their labor. That’s a big part of why we did the Kickstarter (besides us being dead broke): we wanted to make sure everyone got paid well and treated well. After expenses, any extra dosh is going to go straight back into planning the next event, and into donations to various causes that are close to our hearts. For me, that’s the Brooklyn Bail Fund, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, the International Anti-Fascist Defence Fund, and the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES), and for another one of the organizers, it’s the women’s revolution in Rojava and ongoing revolutionary struggles across occupied Kurdistan. We’ll see how things shake out!
Aside from this fest, what can we as punk and metal fans do to keep out Nazis and keep our scenes safe spaces?
That’s a big question with a simple answer: practice zero tolerance. We all start somewhere—lord knows my own politics have evolved over the years, and in the past I was far too soft on a few bands that I’d never support now—and growth is always possible and should be commended. However, it is important to recognize toxic, violent fascist elements within our community, and to remove them by any means necessary. There are literally thousands of metal bands in the world, the vast majority of which do not hold virulent genocidal or crypto-fascist views; it’s not going to kill you to do a few minutes of research, or throw out a few records, or skip a few shows, but every act of resistance against these scum further weakens them. Metal is the best thing in the world, and fascists have no place within it.
The long-running and invaluable Red and Anarchist Black Metal blog published a great piece on this that I wholeheartedly suggest every person with an interest in cleaning up our scene read:
How do you think actions like this in the underground scene can affect change on a larger level, outside the scene?
My hope is that it will remind people that metal—and especially extreme metal—does have a rich tradition of political, anti-fascist resistance, and that there are bands out there right now carrying that torch (and burning the shit out of black metal internet Nazis in the process). I hope it will show other women, people of color, LGBTQ folks, and other marginalized people that there is a place in metal for them, no matter what reactionary racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, bigoted jagoffs might have tried to tell us in the past. I hope that word spreads and more events like this pop up. We’ve already got the support of hundreds of people; if every one of them leaves having learned something, or met someone, or gained confidence in their own activism, or just had a really good time, then we will have been a roaring success.
What are you most looking forward to about the fest?
Seeing all my friends onstage and off, meeting new, like-minded people, spreading righteous propaganda, finally seeing Ragana, and doing face masks with Vile Creature and Kayla from Pulsatile Tinnitus.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Let our fire burn as a signal. No pasaran!
Black Flags Over Brooklyn Daily Line-Up
FRIDAY
January 25, 2019
Dawn Ray’d
Racetraitor
Vile Creature
Pulsatile Tinnitus
Niuta
Doors at 7:45PM
SATURDAY
January 26, 2019
Cloud Rat
RAGANA
MORNE
Chepang
Closet Witch
White Phosphorous
Glacial Tomb
Occultist
Sunrot
Axebreaker
Trophy Hunt NYC
Doors + vendor market at 2PM
