This two day festival packed over 100 bands into three venues, spanning genres from hip-hop to metal with heavy doses of punk & grind. Hosted by the Ostrow brothers, Bryan and Sean, owners of What’s Left Records, this fest was a non-stop onslaught of loud music and great vibes.

Notable names included Castle Rat, Primitive Man, Weekend Nachos, Vermin Womb, Necrot, Mizmor and many more – a ridiculously stacked lineup! With overlapping sets, there was always something to see – and miss. Tough choices had to be made. It’s always great to see favorites but I opted to skip some sets in order to see bands I had never heard of. I knew the Ostrow brothers would curate local bands that went just as hard as the headliners. Here are a few sick bands I saw that you’ve maybe never heard of:

Trucido – Grindcore; Dallas, TX

I fucking love these guys. Loud and fast and everything grindcore should be while still packing a few surprises. They make me want to dance. The crowd at What’s Left Records felt the same way. It’s badass to see that kind of energy for an out of town band playing mid-day in the back of a record shop. Music to make your ears bleed.

Clarion Void – Blackened Sludge Doom; Colorado Springs, CO

A towering wall of trance-inducing loudness that draws you down, down into sludge-‘filled void. Loud and heavy, slow and sweet – there is a lurking hopefulness about their sound that I dig. Music for making out.

Berated – Grind; Denver, CO

Probably my favorite performance of the weekend. The only thing better than live grind, is live female-fronted grind. Caitlyn absolutely rips it up on vocals. Best enjoyed at a distance of 6” from a shin-high stage, which I had to pleasure of doing at Vultures. Music for losing your shit.

Saintbreaker – Thrash/Death; Mesa, AZ

Unrelenting is a great word to describe this band, their energy is unfathomable both on and off stage. Guitarist Jacob & bassist Sebastian head-bang, run, jump, and stomp back and forth across the stage for the entire set. And they sure look like they’re having a blast doing it. Their show feels like a bitchen’ party that you absolutely want to be invited to, while their lyrics deal with war, violence and the extinction of humanity. Music for the apocalypse.

Kthulhu – Death; Prescott, AZ

These guys brought a brutalicious heaviness that was barely contained by the tiny stage they packed onto at Vultures. Good old fashioned death metal expounding on the ever-satisfying topic of Cthulhu, as well as other earthly and unearthly horrors. Music to bang your fucken’ head to.

Dysphotic – Black/Death; Santa Fe, NM

They just do things different in New Mexico, and Dysphotic is no exception. On stage the present a simmering pot of heaviness that comes on slow and cooks to a ferocious boiling point. Music for satanic rituals deep in the desert.

Re-Buried – Death; Seattle, WA

To be honest, I thought Chris might take my head off the way he was swinging the mic stand around, but that seemed like a small price to pay for taking in the entire set from the closest possible spot I could stand. In Vultures, this means standing pretty much face-to-face with the band. Hard to understand how they packed that much energy – never mind that many people – onto that tiny stage. What followed was a barely contained fit of disgusting sounds. Fantastic! Music for getting decapitated.

I tried to sit down with the Ostrow brothers after the fest by Bryan was already hitting the road on tour a day later. I asked Sean about the history and future of WLF, and the Colorado Springs music scene.

How did this festival come about?

SO: We’ve been doing festivals for quite a long time. WLF started a long time ago, it kinda started as a local fest and then we started adding bigger names to it and doing the multi-genre thing. Then we did a fest called 71Grind for four years that was pretty much all metal and punk. Then we pretty much took a 7 year break. Now, we have the record store here and Vultures and Black Sheep were like ‘We’re just gonna go all out and bring it back’. We hit a bunch of people up and didn’t know if everyone was gonna say yes, but everyone said yes and all the sudden we had 105 bands.

We love this town, we wanna bring people in. We love so many bands, we’ve been touring for a long time and met so many bands along the road so we just wanted to give a chance for all of these more underground bands and bigger bands and just bring so many homies together. We’re just all friends so it’s cool to bring everyone together all into one place and really just celebrate. Total family reunion, everyone just hanging out.

Will you be doing WLF again next year?

SO: No. We would have to start planning today. Who knows it could be an every other year things. We’ll definitely be throwing a fest again, and we’ll have some pop-ups. We do shows constantly in the store. If you like the fest and you like all these bands, we book stuff constantly. Keep coming to shows at the store, at Black Sheep, and at Vultures.       We’ve been working really hard on building a scene for over 20 years, just working super hard, and this weekend was the payoff. It shows the hard work we’ve put in over a long time and all the connections we’ve made. We love community, we love music, we love getting people together. We are really grateful to get to do this festival, get to meet a bunch of legends and have so many people come to the same place.