Warfest, As Ecletic As Raw - Featured on Musicinpress.com April 2012

Warfest, As Ecletic As Raw

Posted by Angelo Florendo
Courtesy Musicinpress.com
April 2012
Hollywood, CA

Anyone who has tried to park on the Sunset Strip can tell you the pain of finding an affordable and safe place to leave your car. This particular saturday; however, the payoff was huge: this year's Warfest, hosted at the famous Key Club. This all-afternoon event, on the last day of March, showcased both punk and reggae bands, with a small psychedelic art exhibit held downstairs for purchase.

I arrived at the venue at 7pm with three hours paid into the parking meter; enough time to catch the final acts which included D.I. (former Social Distortion drummer, Casey Royer's band) and Agent Orange on the Mohawk Main Stage. Everyone in attendance bumping their heads and rubbing shoulders, continued charging the place with energy, if static electricity. The rawness from the bands' fast tempos and heavy distortion music opened the main stage up with circle pits and occasional moshing.

The downstairs Plush Lounge displayed a toned down, mellow energy than the punk bands that played upstairs. Unfortunately, I only had the chance to catch reggae headliners Fortunate Youth halfway into their performance. The dancing and swaying induced from their music replaced the mosh pits from upstairs. Likewise, the groovy bass leads and keyboards replaced the abundance of high gain amplifiers and punk beats. The psychedelic experience felt complete with an assortment of brightly colored art influenced by Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix portraits, among other things.

To call Warfest 2012 a contrast of musical interests is not be out of the question, but in a good way. The event appealed to more than one genre of music and provided an outlet for artists of all forms and mediums to display their works in an accessible environment for everyone to appreciate. I left the venue around 10pm enriched and ecstatic by the wide variety of bands that performed, while at the same time relieved that there wasn't a parking ticket on my dashboard.

VIEW PHOTOS HERE: http://warfest.net/album/warfest_musician/64