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Women’s metal festival sees success in Lone Butte

Metalocalypstick showcases female musicials
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Brittny South plays the drums in her “hard hitting” metal band Remnants , out of Edmonton Alberta. The Metalocalypstick metal festival played through the weekend in Lone Butte, with each band featuring at least one female artist. Tara Sprickerhoff photo.

A different flavour of music filled the Lone Butte Community Hall over the long weekend, as other Canada Day festivities around the South Cariboo featured a jug and washboard band, choirs and other entertainment.

Metalocalypstic, a metal music festival designed to celebrate women in the genre, filled the Lone Butte Community Hall on July 1 and 2.

A last minute change from the Interlakes Rodeo Grounds brought the festival to the new location and festival organizer Kaija Kinney couldn’t have been happier with the venue.

“I just looked on a map for somewhere secluded and beautiful and I was like yeah, this place looks amazing.”

Campers filled out the grounds around the festival and attendees were happy to make the trek to Lone Butte.

“People want to go away for a camping weekend and why not listen to music,” says Kinney.

With a sign on the door warning attendees to “put in earplugs” the hall was filled with festival-goers happy to listen to the blasting bands — each featuring a female musician.

“It’s to support women in heavy genres,” says Kinney, who plays in her own band. “Each band contains one female and we’re just going with that theme. It’s awesome.”

The 17 band lineup included bands Cabrakaan (Toluca, Mexico), Sovereign Council (Kingston, ON), Violent Betty (Saskatoon, SK), Atmora (Windsor, ON), Scythia (Calgary, AB) and Massive Scar Era (Vancouver, BC / Cairo, Egypt).

One band, Meteor Tree out of Kamloops, infuses Aboriginal-style music into its metal music.

“Usually when you go to a metal show, the ratio of women to men is like one to 40, maybe 50, but here it’s almost even and that’s [extremely awesome],” she says.

Last year’s festival was held in Valemont, but Kinney hopes to keep the festival in the South Cariboo in the future and continue to build on her success.

“Attendance is triple from last year, so it’s spreading like wildfire and I’m really excited,” she says. “That venue gets pretty squishy once the bands start playing.”

The festival started at 1 p.m. both days and went until 9:45 p.m. Tickets were $90 for the weekend, including free camping on site.

“Our goal is to be able to donate to Girls Rock Camp and the Vancouver Rape Relief Shelter, the Earth Protectors and then eventually we want to be able to sponsor independent bands that are playing and be able to sponsor them with recording and music videos,” says Kinney.