What: 91原创 Island Metal Festival, featuring Armoros, Scimitar, Witches Hammer, Punish and others
Where: Centennial Square and Logan鈥檚 Pub, 1821 Cook St.
When: Aug. 22 through Aug. 25
Admission: Free
Rarely when a festival gets bigger and better do ticket prices decrease. More times than not, producers are eager to cash-in on the growing demand and raise their prices.
What producer Casey Lazar has managed to do with the 91原创 Island Metal Festival, which enters its third year this week, is remarkable in that regard.
In the past, daily tickets for his festival were priced between $10 and $20, with a festival pass running $60. For the current edition, which gets underway tonight with the first of 33 bands on tap over four days at Centennial Square and Logan鈥檚 Pub, the festival is being offered free of charge.
鈥淲e鈥檝e had some grant funding from the City of Victoria, and were pretty successful last year,鈥� Lazar said of his decision to adopt a free model.
鈥淭hose two factors more than outweighed what we would have got from tickets sales [this year], so we figured if we didn鈥檛 need to charge for tickets, why should we?鈥�
Lazar鈥檚 primary focus was to book Island-based metal bands for the festival. With a thriving and supportive metal community here in Victoria, he hoped that by staging a festival celebrating 91原创 Island鈥檚 unique community, fans from other cities would want to come and check it out. 鈥淪ome of the bands are playing shows exclusive to our festival,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 recently got a message from someone who is coming from Germany.鈥�
Though the lineup features several intriguing bands from outside our environs 鈥� Bewitched and Idle Hands are from Portland, Oregon, while Numenorean is from Calgary 鈥� it wouldn鈥檛 be a stretch to suggest that fans who are travelling to Victoria are doing so to see Armoros, the much-admired metal band from Victoria that is making its return to the stage after a three-decade absence.
Revisionist history this is not: Armoros has been cited on numerous occasions as a foundation piece in West Coast thrash metal history, and vintage recordings by the group, which formed in 1986, have been reissued by labels in Brazil and Germany, with another forthcoming from Victoria reissue label Supreme Echo.
The band鈥檚 performance in Centennial Square on Friday will feature original members Mike Sudar (guitar) and Rick Lee (bass), who will be joined by new members Ken Doyle (drums) and Kelly Nordstrom (guitars) for the one-off performance.
Armoros played a key role in helping develop that 91原创 Island metal scene, which Lazar says is comparable in size today with 91原创鈥檚, despite the smaller population.
鈥淭he scene we have here in Victoria is a lot more supported and a lot stronger than 91原创. We don鈥檛 have the same numbers of people, but for a show that comes to both places, it鈥檚 often that Victoria outshines 91原创, despite being a smaller population.鈥�
The creation of the festival, in 2017, was something of a coincidence, according to Lazar. He had already booked U.K. metal legends Diamond Head into the former V-Lounge when a booking agent contacted him with an offer to book North Carolina鈥檚 Weedeater the night prior at Logan鈥檚 Pub.
He wound up doing both in his own casual, worry-free way, and thus began the 91原创 Island Metal Festival.
鈥淗ow I got people to come out to both shows was easy 鈥� I made it one ticket for both events. It wound up being successful in pretty much every way you could think of.鈥�
Lazar was told after last year鈥檚 event that the City of Victoria received 140 emails following performances in Centennial Square, which were very well attended.
To his surprise, all of the feedback the City received was positive.
鈥淚f there was any negative feedback, it was very overshadowed by the positive.鈥�
