Setfoot perform at last year’s festival

Credit: Keith Norton

Who’s Hardcore?

Five years of heavy at VI Hardcore Fest

Five heads are better than one—just ask Troy Lemberg. After taking on the task of organizing last year’s Vancouver Island Hardcore Fest solo, he’s pretty relieved that this year’s show—the festival’s fifth anniversary—is a collaborative effort between himself and four others.

“It took a lot of the load off. Last year I was pretty stressed out,” he admits. “It was one day and 17 bands. I was originally planning to do two days last year and I had to combine it into one. This year, we can all divvy up stuff to take on.”

And it’s a good thing, as the VI Hardcore Fest has expanded this year: two days, 30-odd bands from Canada and U.S. and a new venue in James Bay’s White Eagle Hall.

“It has a stage, something we haven’t had before,” says Paul Smith, another of the fest’s organizers. “We want to see some stage dives.”

Lemberg says the focus of this year’s festival was to get a wider range of acts than in the past. “We have a lot of bands from all over this year. We have Winnipeg bands, a band from Alberta, a whole bunch of Vancouver bands,” he says. “In later years, we want to expand just from being hardcore to being loud music.”

Part of the motivation for this, says Smith, is there aren’t really many options out there for people into heavier music. “We’re pretty much the only hardcore-specific festival in Canada,” he says. “There are a few giant hardcore/metal fests, but any festival dedicated solely to hardcore, we’re pretty much the only one.”

Some of the bands playing this year include California’s Creatures (“They’re probably one of the more up and rising bands playing. They just got signed to Eulogy Records in the States, which is one of the bigger hardcore labels out there,” says Lemberg), Set Foot, Slingshot and A Crow’s Glory out of Vancouver and local bands such as Vile Style, Black Cloud and Mutiny. It’s a big lineup for just 30 bones—and even bigger when you consider many of the out-of-towners will be bunking with the organizers.

“A lot of them are younger kids or DIY and they’ll just bring their tent over and camp . . . I’m taking three bands in my house, two in my back yard and then all the people camping,” says Lemberg. “With these kinds of bands, they don’t usually ask for hotel rooms or ask for a lot of money, so we just give them a room in our houses.”

Now that’s hardcore. M

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VI Hardcore Fest
1pm Friday-Saturday, July 3-4
White Eagle Hall, 90 Dock
Tickets $18/day or $30/both
vihc.net