Photo credit: Jessie Lynn McMains
Watcher's Woods
Filth Fest, Milwaukee’s queer punk fest, is now in its third year. The two best things about the event seem to have little to do with each other, but both showcase its importance. The first is that each year, Filth Fest raises money for a different organization. This year's proceeds went to Project Q, the Milwaukee LGBT Center’s youth program. The other is that the event's lineups are outstanding, running the gamut from folk punk to hardcore to electro-pop.
I missed the first half of Saturday’s Filth Fest, a 10-hour marathon that began at noon, but the six bands I caught were great, representing a wide variety of punk and its offshoots. First was Watcher’s Woods, a Milwaukee band that would be reminiscent of New Order—atmospheric, dreamy, dark and danceable, with sequenced drum beats and live guitar, bass and vocals—if New Order had sung anti-civilization songs. To compound the comparison, they closed their set with a cover of New Order’s “Temptation.”
Next was Pansy, Milwaukee’s premier pornogrind queercore band—very metal, full of a heavy low end. Sadly, it was Pansy’s last show, and was the first time I ever got to see them, but they were so intense that I feel blessed to have ever seen them at all. After that was Rifle Diet, a crust/thrash/metal-punk band from Minneapolis. They played what was perhaps the best set of the night. The singer growl-screamed like she was exorcising demons, and the drummer floored me: He played rat-a-tat-tat d-beat drums, but I got the feeling he could’ve played any kind of music he wanted to. I head-banged so hard that I injured my neck.
Anybody But The Cops came next. They’re a trio from Kalamazoo who play advant-noise that you can dance to. They were followed by Dishpit, another Minneapolis band, who played the other best set of the night. Dishpit are a pop-punk band, but pop-punk in the noisiest, messiest sense of the term, with snotty, bratty vocals and songs about freaking out squares and straights. They play perfect pogo music, though I was the only dork pogoing during their set.
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The final band of the night was another Milwaukee group, Lauryl Sulfate and Her Ladies of Leisure. They play electro-pop/hip hop—think Le Tigre with a dash of Gravy Train—about topics as varied as access to contraception, the political implications of selfies and going to the club with your girlfriends. The highlight of their set was a cover of “I Heard It Through The Grapevine,” which morphed into a cover of “Kiss Off” by hometown heroes the Violent Femmes. Many audience members sang along, too: “I take one, one, one ’cause you left me…”
It was the perfect cap for an event that celebrated inclusivity. If you want to support LGBTQ+ organizations in Milwaukee, if you’re a punk who doesn’t feel comfortable at the average macho dude-bro hardcore show, or if you’re a queer person who doesn’t feel represented at mainstream Pride events, Filth Fest is the place to be.
