Ballarat is about to host one of Australia’s newest and most exciting music festivals. Performing at Karova Lounge on the 26th January will be a stellar Australian line-up including the likes of Dead City Ruins, Desecrator, Hadal Maw, Whoretopsy, Dreadnaught and Frakenbok. With such an exciting line-up planned HEAVY Mag caught up with Jake Wiffen from Dead City Ruins to find out what exactly we can expect from Blaze.
“Five or six years ago I was saying we needs to do this,” says Wiffen when I ask how important it is that regional towns like Ballarat get festivals like this. “Bands are out there spending all their money to become a band. They spend money on practice and all of that and spend money getting themselves up and down the coast to play shows but there didn’t seem to be enough people kind of dedicating as much money as bands were, there were no people becoming promoters or starting record labels or anything like that. So now getting to see it start to happen is awesome, man. It is not only important that the bands and the content comes along but there needs to be the support for it and that the industry around it builds up. There doesn’t seem to be the big companies out there supporting us so we all have to do the DIY thing and just say ‘fuck it I am going to do this.’ Now that people are putting together festivals and targeting regional areas that is fucking amazing. We need more of it!”
When our chat turns to how when you walk around a regional town you see teenagers wearing rock and metal T-Shirts rather than associating with more mainstream music Wiffen says “Fucking oath, because they are blue collar towns. Maybe there aren’t the right venues in regional areas yet or perhaps there are the dedicated bookers that they need but that is where double-denim, flanno wearing, long haired dudes and chicks are. They want to bang their heads, they want to go out and drink beers and listen to loud music. The cities are full of people that are overloaded for choice and they don’t really seem to give a shit where just like rock and heavy metal small towns have this kind of feeling that they are being forgotten and left behind and they need to come together to remind themselves that they are still there. They want to go out and go crazy and bands want to do that and see that so I think more and more we should be targeting regional areas. That is where it is, man. That is where the heart is!”
You can listen to our full Dead City Ruins interview on the Spreaker player on this page. All the details of the Blaze Festival can be found below.
