Unify 2017 A Heavy Music Gathering—the title says it all. TEO made the road trip to Tarwin Lower in Victoria to check out the festival and see what all the fuss was about.
Unify already kills it on so many levels; you’ve got ace bands, chill vibes, good food and great times. And while everyone brags about how insane Unify 2016 was, 2017 was a huge step up. Here’s what we learnt:
Always bring a sactruck
Or just anything with wheels, really—unless you like making three trips back to your car to grab all your gear. The resourceful people loaded eskies, tents and shades onto sactrucks to wheel it all into the festival. Then again, a table carried by two people and stacked with gear will work as well.
Be prepared for the weather
Even when the forecast says sunny and 23 degrees. This is because weathermen lie and, come on, it’s Victoria. After getting drenched for the first band up on stage, Ocean Sleeper, a plastic poncho was everyone’s best friend for the majority of Friday and Saturday.
Sleep is not necessary at a festival
The party never stops. No one called it a night after Northlane tore it up.
Crowd surf always
They’re not bruises, they’re stories. And metal crowds always look after each other.
Nice, Gary!
Yell this to everything.
And also YTB (yeah the boys). Community spirit, I tell you.
Everyone is your mate at a festival
Comment on a rad shirt with burgers and chips on it and you’ve made a friend, or stand in one spot long enough (when you find a spot where the internet actually works) and be invited into someone’s camp for drinks. Making friends is easy.
Girls can growl just as good as the guys
Take Melbourne band, Pagan for example. What a way to kick off Saturday. YTG!
Who’s Scott Green?
Everyone. Everyone’s Scott Green.
You can see every band at Unify
It’s not like other festivals where you might miss out on Letlive because Every Time I Die is playing; there’s only one stage and it has a killer lineup. There’s Columbus, Polaris and King Parrot, just one after the other. You don’t have to go anywhere.
Trophy Eyes is big
Unify 2016—virtually unknown. Unify 2017—pulled a huge crowd and let the crowd scream their hearts out to ‘Chlorine’. These guys made it big with their album last year and the hype has not died down.
An Alexisonfire on-stage reunion will never disappoint
This was everything. Dreams came true that night.
Unify know how to do acoustic
The acoustic Sunday was glorious; the rain stayed away, the sun came out (we waited all weekend for this) and everyone sat on the grass and blissed out to the tunes. Shontay Snow of Saviour was just heavenly. Marcus Bridge of Northlane resulted in girls and guys swooning. By the way, Little Brother (who is John Floreani of Trophy Eyes) is hilarious when stoned, yet still sang beautifully.
Let me leave you with this little nugget: Unify is a festival that is so incredibly good, it has people buying their tickets each year without knowing who’s on the bill. And the festival is only in its third year. This is what the Australian heavy music scene needs, and Unify is delivering the goods with staggering quality. We’ll be back Unify. We’ll be back.
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Photo: Supplied
