On the 15th of January, 2016, downstairs at the Valve Bar inside the Agincourt Hotel, a new festival is hitting Sydney’s metal scene! Well, I say “festival” but it’s all indoors, there are 5 bands playing, you won’t get gouged on merch prices, there is full strength beer and entry is only $15. This mini festival is called Scroungewave and is presented to you by Deaf To All But Metal in association with a mysterious, surly promoter who goes by the name of G. G. Madder or, by his Twitter handle, @Iamnotyawning.
Madder was inspired by some other big name Australian festival (whose name escapes me for the moment) to put on a cheaper festival that’s smaller in size but big in heaviness. This way, metalheads that can only manage to scrounge together a few bucks still get a version of the festival experience and get to witness some good quality local heavy metal talent. Madder also came up with the idea of giving a theme to this mini festival (ok, well, he got the idea from that other festival of which I still can’t remember the name). G.G. suggested a kind of evil Christmas theme but this was already taken (what was the name of that festival??…) so he found another equally suitable theme for a festival being held on a Friday night in the middle of January: Perturbed Shrove Tuesday!
When it came to the band selection process for the fest, G.G. Madder got in touch with Gary Grim from Deaf To All But Metal, a fairly new monthly heavy metal club in Sydney. Grim got in touch with some of his favourite local bands and, after dropping Madder’s name, they all jumped on board.
Diminish The Gods will be headlining the mini fest with Darker Half, Whisky Smile, Pagans Realm & Masta Gravity rounding out the bill.
Join the event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/930699310299850/
Keep up to date with Scroungewave and Deaf To All But Metal here: https://www.facebook.com/deaftoallbm/
Photo by James O’Conner
