Memphis has some pretty great music festivals, if you think about it. We get Gonerfest in the fall, Memphis in Mud in the spring (if that’s your thing), and this year marked the inaugural multi-venue and ambiguous-to-pronounce Fareveller Festival. Something for everyone, right?
Well, no. For there rest of us, there’s this weekend.
Barreling in like a steamroller of angst through a preschool is the third annual Memphis Hates You Fest, and it will definitely knock whatever is left of your pathetic, holey and tattered socks off, before it punches you in the stomach and takes your milk money. And calls your sister fat.
This is not your father’s music.
What you have here is a collective of bands that are “Memphis-based, generally misanthropic, generally opinionated, and generally misunderstood and ignored.” That’s how festival organizer Nathan Raab puts it. I’d call it brutal.
Friday, May 28, 2011: MHY Fest Featuring Sons of Tonatuih, Epoch of Unlight, Incineration, Cremains, Ragpicker, Process of Suffocation and Galaxicon at Hi Tone Cafe, 7 PM
Definitely the more metal of the two nights at Hi Tone, this one will have something for every metalhead out there – Doom metal, post metal, black metal, death metal, grindcore, sludge metal. If you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, look up any one of these bands… or all of them. You want to see all of this.
Saturday, May 29, 2011: MHY Fest Featuring Music Hates You, Gypsy Hawk, The Dirty Streets, Hosoi Bros, These Wolves are Robots, The Heavy Eyes and Saurus at Hi Tone Cafe, 7 PM
Gypsy Hawk is coming in all the way from Pasadena for this show, and Music Hates You is from Atlanta, where the Memphis bands involved with this collective receive a warm reception on the regular. Expect plenty of metal mayhem from these two bands, but come early to see the punk/protopunk/stoner rock/stoner metal/psych rock from the lineup preceding them.
Sunday, May 30, 2011: MHY Fest Featuring The Unbeheld, Randolph Robinson + Band, Youniverse, Tanks, Dead-I-On, Chinamen and Blackset at The Buccaneer Lounge, 7 PM
Sunday night’s show is the most potpourri of the three, with all Memphis acts ranging from stoner and experimental metal to punk, alt rock and even alt country. Stick around for Randolph and The Unbeheld – two of this author’s favorites to see in Memphis.
You all have Monday off. So why not go out all three nights and see some of the best of what Memphis (And Pasadena, and Atlanta) has to offer? Don’t expect your face to be intact once it’s over with, but don’t let that stop you either.
