(A Sober) Varning XVII Reportback

All these excellent live photos were contributed by Rachael Shorr

A Varning from Montreal Festival is basically Christmas for Montreal punks – a highly-anticipated tradition, an international punk family reunion, and a huge party. Now in its 17^th edition, it’s currently our city’s longest-running punk fest, and lives up to its reputation of bringing in high quality bands from across Canada as well as the US, Europe and even Japan. You might think that the charged-hair, sword-wielding skeletons featured in all the posters and promo material are an exaggeration, but it’s not far from how the crowd actually appears, periodically spilling out of a shitty metal bar to stink up Montreal’s downtown tourist shopping core.

Armed with a full fest pass, I decided to take full advantage and try and do all 6 shows over 3 days, plus the Saturday punk market. Here’s my reportback:

I didn’t watch every single band but I tried to catch a little bit of most of them. First, to honourably mention some great local bands: PORTAL TOMB delivered their crushingly heavy hits well, even though bassist Ava had gone through a car windshield a few days prior to the fest and showed up with a nose cast and forehead stitches – a true crust warrior. Fuck cars!! WARKRUSHER crushed as much as ever, and I was glad to catch EULOGY again, a newer scandi-flavoured dbeat project featuring well-known local characters. I was wondering if local power-pop quartet PSYCHIC ARMOUR would feel out of place on the bill, but all the rock’n’roll nerds enthusiastically lapped up Sara and Evan’s guitar shredding.

There were a few bands that I saw earlier this summer at Scorched Earth in Vancouver that I was excited to see again. Victoria’s HEDONIST were high on that list – I’m not a huge metalhead, but they are clearly at the top of their game right now, and their name came up again and again when I asked people for their fest highlights. Vancouver crusters EXTENSIVE SLAUGHTER – were excellent and were also just a great crew to hang and enjoy both fests with. Edmonton’s LANGUID was “the sonic equivalent of drinking a beer” according to one of my bandmates. Philly’s ALEMENT also played both fests – I have seen them a few times now and had filed them in the category of “bands I can recognize are good but don’t really do it for me,” but at Varning something clicked and I was totally hypnotized by their set.

A high point of face-melting fun and chaos was Friday when ULTRARAT – a local raw dbeat trio that has recently re-activated, with Nick from MUECO filling in on bass for this set. Multiple power failures only added to the insanity... and at one point I looked around in the crush of absolutely annihilated punks with shit-eating grins, catching wafts of beer breath and poppers fumes and idly wondered if it was possible to break edge by proxy. I had fun though. Boston’s INNOCENT had a tough act to follow, but they delivered a high-energy set that was one of my favourites of the weekend. Overall, not enough dbeat at Varning this year!! Admittedly, I dipped before Friday’s headliners VARUKERS. I heard they were fun, satisfyingly nostalgic, and didn’t say anything stupid, which is a huge win for any old band.

While I spent the weekend moonlighting as a cruster, I’m a hardcore punk girlie at heart so I must shoutout some sick hardcore punk acts. INVERTEBRATES (Richmond) were super fun headlining the Friday matinée, and local faves TOTAL NADA miraculously brought energy and life to the ill-advised Saturday Aftershow. The hardcore punk bands at Varning are explicitly more of a palate cleanser than the main event, but any local hardcore enthusiast who missed the matinée with PEI’s CELL DETH and POISON SPEAR really fucked up.

By the time LIFELESS DARK (Boston) and DISTURD (Japan) closed the Saturday main show, I was seriously losing steam – both bands were great but neither blew me out of the water, which is objectively kind of an insane thing to say. Especially about LIFELESS DARK whose three previous Montreal shows have been major highlights of the last 10 years for me.

Some final shoutouts: Ottawa’s BOOT who not only brought energy to one of the toughest slots of the whole fest (opening the Friday Matinée show) but also proved that your Oi! revival band doesn’t have to be a boys club. I also wanna mention TRÄUME from Poland, who headlined on Thursday – I’m not the biggest post-punk fan, but I made sure to catch them at the behest of friends who saw them while touring Europe this summer, and they were really good. I felt additionally lucky to see them, as their travels to Canada were complicated by Russian incursions into Polish airspace around their departure... as Boris reminded us during TOTAL NADA’s set, it’s a privilege to be where we are in the world, and we’re lucky to be able to come together to celebrate and share our music with each other. The world is getting shittier and scarier, and I’m really grateful to them and all the bands that traversed continents, oceans and borders to come play in Montreal.

The music was great and we had lots of fun – but a few minor caveats:

Too much smoke. Props to the autonomous actor who unplugged the extremely overactive fog machine after a huge puff completely shrouded LIFELESS DARK during the opening riffs of their set. I could barely see the drummers the entire fest, and what’s the point of Varning if I can’t watch the drummers???

The average attendee age was probably pushing 40. A friend told me that when he came to his first Varning in 2008 he also thought “why is everyone here so old” so I guess it’s always been this way? Don’t get me wrong, I love ancient crusties and I aspire to be one, but I also want the kids to be able to hear actually great bands and participate in a multigenerational scene. I made a joke about how under-25s should get discounted passes, but I am actually kind of serious.

In battle there is no sobriety. Varning is a party, and people go really hard with the alcohol, drugs and smoking, even by Montreal standards. It’s a tough fest to be sober at – I heard this especially from friends who are early in their sobriety or are just trying to moderate their partying. Piranha bar is a minefield of temptation, annoying coked-up punishers and probably some sloppy dude randomly trying to kiss you. I’m not trying to shame anyone’s consumption, just noting that it’s a pretty integral part of the whole vibe of the fest and if that’s hard for you to be around it might not be your jam.

Speaking of “some sloppy dude trying to kiss you” I heard from a few people who had to deal with creeps or unwanted invasions of their personal space... some of this can be chalked up to the venue, which is not “our” spot by any means but it also overlaps with the point above. It’s definitely the kind of show where if I’m trying to take a breather alone after roughly 10pm, I find a decoy friend to stand next to lessen the likelihood of being creeped on. Yuck.

I guess I mentioned in the intro that there was a Punk Market on Saturday. I tabled PWYC punk/anarchist zines and was a bit more successful than at the night shows (where people didn’t take many zines, but rather used them as coasters for their beer). I did up my stud count and snagged a MURO shirt that Janick was trying to unload, so it wasn’t a total flop, but honestly there’s not much to say about it other than that it happened.

But on a more positive note – the fest was really well-organized this year. In years past all of the information, announcements, set times, etc., were only on Facebook (yes, Montreal is perpetually in 2005). The introduction of a proper, consistently-updated website this year was a game changer. The organizers also tapped me to design and print paper programs with the schedule and fest info, which I think were a big hit – I saw people consulting them throughout the duration of the fest. Organizers also made sure the info got posted and kept up to date on our local online calendar. I’m really happy that the organizers prioritized accessible, non-corporate ways of disseminating all the information and I think that it was part of the reason everything ran super smoothly.

Additional huge shoutouts to: 1. Whoever updated the food recommendation list to include mostly vegan/veg options 2. The people who prepared a huge, diverse buffet of delicious and healthy vegan food to feed the bands and volunteers all weekend. 3. The stage managers, who were on top of it and kept everything even slightly ahead of schedule, making sure the main shows ended before the Metro stopped running... until the last night when shit sort of went off the rails. It was bound to happen at some point. While incredible bands and great people can make for a good fest, the level of care and organization put into Varning this year made it truly great.