christmas metal festival

We held our first Christmas Mearfest party at the Beehive pub in Bow East London, the stage was in their broom cupboard under the stairs. The venue was small to say the least. Rather than charging an entrance fee was asked guests to literally BRING THE METAL, as in any spare tins of food they had to go towards our local (Aylesbury) food bank as it was Christmas and many people in this country are going hungry due to rising costs of living and the Tory way. 

Three up and coming bands, State of Anxiety, Wounded Cross and the mighty Kaine.

First up up were State of Anxiety from Kent, hit the stage running with their classic thrash metal approach, which got the crowds sweating in seconds, that and there was no ventilation at all.

Then, Wounded Cross played who came all the way from Rugby, Graham Orion Pax who incidentally designs all our Mearfest posters, performed his legendary doomstoner metal dance, much to the delight and to others dismay. 

Finally the east Anglian metal Gods KAINE! Who once again, stole the show, with their powerful NOW wave of British heavy metal, there were rumours of the tinsel draped Rage actually smiling at one brief point in the evening!

My wife Claire, who was three months pregnant at the time and was positively glowing by the red-hot radiator in the corner, was in charge of donations and merchandise sales. Many festival goers contributed their three years out of date garden peas and pear halves to the food bank cause. We managed to sell a couple of t-shirts in our Blue range, amassed some loose change from the local drunks in the pub for our donation bucket. All in all it was like attending a south London heavy metal sauna club crossed with a C of E harvest festival. It was a compact night shared with dear friends very old and nearly new. 

photos by gosha