Winter Harshfest @ The Charleston

An all-ages metal fest 🤘

📸: Courtesy The Charleston

Saturday, December 17 • 6 pm • All Ages

If the typical holiday soundtrack of “Santa Baby” and “The Little Drummer” boy isn’t exactly your jam, consider hopping over to Bremerton for a music fest that embraces the absurdly loud, abrasive, noisy, and chaotic side of hardcore punk and metal: Winter Harshfest. Think of the most extreme-sounding heavy metal band you have ever heard, cut their songs in half, speed them up by about three hundred percent and add a layer of ear-drum piercing shrieks and screams on top of that. While the style of music might be described as “harsh,” the vibes will be everything but that

The Charleston is a long-standing beacon of DIY community, hosting all-ages rock n roll shows for decades that have no doubt influenced generations of young Kitsap concertgoers. At first glance, a few of the band names on this lineup might make you literally LOL. Hands down the top three here are Malicious Algorithm, Bummer and Xerox. Beyond the absurd yet awesome band names is the real reason you need to check out Winter Harshfest: the riffs.

Portland’s Rank and Vile plays filthy, raw old school sounding death metal seeping with punk rock attitude. Blink for more than a couple seconds and you might miss a song or two by Seattle’s Endorphins Lost, who play a blast-beat powered mix of grindcore and powerviolence—two micro genres that put a heavy emphasis on lightning-fast speed. Throw on a Santa costume, drink a couple cups of coffee, and gear up for a long day of mind melt.

Lineup: 

BURIAL RITES (Bremerton grind) 

MALEFACTION (Tacoma death/grind/hc) 

NARC (SLC sludgeviolence) 

MANEATER (Olympia black/death metal) 

BUMMER (Seattle grindviolence)

RANK AND VILE (Portland deathgrind)

MALICIOUS ALGORITHM (Humboldt County powerviolence) ENDORPHINS LOST (Seattle grindviolence)

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Author

Kevin Diers

Kevin Diers is a freelance writer and radio host who lives in Seattle. You can listen to him on both Metal Shop and Loud and Local on 99.9 KISW or catch him interviewing wrestlers at the next DEFY show.