Brisbane’s premier heavy music and dark arts event, the Dead of Winter Festival, is officially rising from the ashes. Dubbed The Resurrection, the festival is locked in for Saturday, 27 June 2026, marking its first return since 2019. Originally launched in 2009, the iconic gathering was forced into a multi-year hiatus following the pandemic.
For its grand comeback, the festival is shifting away from its former home at the Jubilee Hotel to a brand-new venue: the Mansfield Tavern in Brisbane’s southern suburbs. The highly anticipated 2026 edition promises a massive celebration of alternative culture, packing 34 live acts across multiple stages alongside performance art, horror cosplay, visual installations, and dark market stalls. Organisers have unleashed a diverse, genre-spanning lineup headlined by dance-punk and noise-rock heroes DZ Deathrays, alongside heavy hitters like Mammal, Toe To Toe, Beanflipper, and Slim Krusty. Tickets are available now via Oztix and the official Dead of Winter Festival Website.
With the festival fast approaching, HEAVY sent out some questions to all of the bands in order to get to know them better. Today, we chat with R.U.B
Hailing from Naarm’s DIY punk scene, this fierce musical powerhouse takes a sledgehammer to expectations. They fuse intense hardcore, metal, grunge, and riot grrrl elements into a brutal, politically charged sound. Armed with tracks from their EP Unaddressed Culture and a reputation for chaotic, fist-raising live energy, R.U.B is a must-see act on a stacked, heavy lineup.
Q & A
HEAVY: DEAD OF WINTER FESTIVAL returns in 2026 after a seven-year hiatus. Why do you think DOW just HAD to return?
R.U.B: DOW is such a sick festival – with such a strong history of being a heavy music fest run locally with so many stand out bands, it absolutely had to come back – particularly as we see other bigger heavy festivals struggling to keep going!
H: What does it mean to your band to be playing DOW?
For us, it’s such an amazing opportunity to come up and play with other heavy bands – we are also literally in the dead of Naarm winter at the moment, so a chance to come up and enjoy some sunny weather is such a bonus! Soph is from Brisbane too, so it’s always such a joy for us to come and play what feels like a home show, even though she’s been away for almost a decade.
H: Have you ever been to DOW as a punter or playing?
Soph went to the fourth DOW in 2012!
H: If so, best memories of the day.
(from Soph) My best memory was seeing Witchgrinder play their thrashy industrial metal – I went with a bunch of people from work, and a lot of them had dressed up as zombies to match the theme, which made it so much more fun. Shout out to our manager who had to work the JB Hifi counter because we all took leave on the same day haha
H: It’s a long day of music. What will you be doing to make sure you will still be standing come your set time?
We are playing relatively early in the day, so we are the lucky ones – we get to start the day off with a bang and then spend the rest of the time enjoying ourselves!!
H: Give me your Top 3 Festival survival tips.
Water, food and SUNSCREEN!! A shady spot is a bonus! Don’t be like us the last time we played in Brisbane, where we forgot how hot it would be, didn’t drink enough water and almost didn’t make it home. We are so excited that we get to play inside with air con!!
H: Which band – other than yourself – do you think will get up to the most mischief on the day?
We can’t wait to see our friends in Backhand – it’s always such a joy to spend time with them, and it’s part of why we are so excited to play the festival!! We also couldn’t go past this question without a special shout-out to Pizza Death – all-around legends and friends of ours – Braiden in Pizza Death is the partner of Liv, who was R.U.B’s original lead guitarist! Friends all round!!
H: Run us through your typical live show and what punters can expect.
We always start off with a bang – we’ve been playing our song “Did I Ask” as our opener because it always gets both ourselves and the crowd fired up. We just got back from our UK tour, which was our first time overseas, and we found that playing the song was a perfect way to get started, especially to a crowd that might not really know us. From there, we always try to rip through our sets with ferocity and passion. Every song we play, we fucking mean – and we want to make sure people watching can feel that. We want to share in the catharsis of punk, of screaming and of taking up space in a way that can feel almost impossible for a woman, a queer person, a femme person or someone who is outside the gender binary. We want to create that space, that’s what our live show is all about.
H: If you could get one band on the line-up to cover one of your songs, who would it be and what song would they cover?
Let’s go with a Valtozash cover of “Womb” – when we have reached the very end of a long rehearsal where everyone is almost hysterically tired, we have been known to do a swing version which I feel could translate well to jazz metal??
H: What’s your latest release?
Our latest release is our 10″ record “Unaddressed Culture” which is on all streaming services except for Spotify. We also have another upcoming VERY SPECIAL physical release that we just might have available for the very first time at the festival… watch this space!!
H: Finally, what plans does your band have for the rest of 2026 into 2027?
We are playing another festival in August in a little mini-festival run, and then we are looking at some local shows to round off the year! We can’t wait to get back overseas, which is going to form the basis of our planning for 2027, along with a new EP. R.U.B 4ever!!
