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It started in 2009 with small but "evil" intentions and a joke name, and now Skull Fest has grown into a three-day festival with dozens of bands, many preferring Crass to the Clash, representing the extreme punk and metal scene.
Founder Dusty Hanna, currently in SILENCE, launched it as a celebration for his and Jimmy Rose of Eel's 30th birthday.
"We had one day at Belvedere's, and we kind of picked the name Skull Fest as a joke 'cause it sounds like a really cliched festival," he says laughing. "We had these evil bands, so we thought 'Skull Fest.' "
They tracked down the singer for obscure '80s hardcore band Chronic Sick by phone at a New Jersey bar and talked him into reuniting the Jersey band for the gig, which also included Midnight and Nunslaughter.
To up the festival vibe, they moved Skull Fest 2, with Blank 77, to the summer the next year.
"There wasn't nothing on this side of the country like, say, Chaos in Tejas, was doing, where it had multiple venues going at once, with these big bands coming through," Mr. Hanna says.
With Skull Fest 4, there were more bands trying to get on the bill and more punks here to see them, so it expanded to multiple venues with bigger acts.
"We started out just doing punk and heavy metal groups," he says. "Within the last few years, we started to add more post-punk and death-rock-type bands like Arctic Flowers from Portland, Ore., and Spectres from Canada, and this year we have even more bands like that and even more New Wave-style bands like Future Punx and Sour Ground that incorporate keyboards. We also have noise rock with Wolf Eyes. That's a jump for us from what we normally do."
This weekend's Skull Fest 8 headliner is Final Conflict, an anarcho-punk band from Long Beach, Calif., that hasn't played here with the lineup of singer Ron Martinez and guitarist Jeff Harp since 1998 at Club Laga.
"They're kind of like America's Discharge, with anti-war lyrics," Mr. Hanna says. "Just a ferocious hardcore sound, inspired by the anarchist bands of the UK and inspired musically by the LA hardcore scene with a little bit of metal riffing thrown in."