The author (Far Left) and his friends pose for a photo. It’s no secret that Michigan has been largely tapped for metal festivals in the last few years. Ever since the demise of the Rockstar Energy Drink Mayhem Festival (which has since announced a comeback), the disappearance of Dirt Fest, and to a lesser extent, the cancellation of Warped Tour, the Great Lakes State hasn’t seen a whole lot of metal festivals come through besides large-name touring artists. On top of that, the three-day camping metal/EDM festival Carnival of Chaos was cancelled in 2019 as well, eliminating one of the only options Michigan metalheads had left. It is for these reasons and more that the third-annual installment

On January 13th we had our first round of Battle of the Bands performed live through our station 89.1 WIDR FM and streamed on widrfm.net! The two bands battling were Rob Lindsay & His Supergroup and u know / i know. First up was Rob Lindsay, performing with members of his supergroup Diego Agoytia, Micah Stemaly, Nick Calcaterra, Josh Vreeland, Matt Jett, and Kyle Petronio. Describing their sound as a mix of jazz, rock, pop, Latin, and modern classical, they had quite a fantastic performance. After an intermission where we stripped down their set and assembled the next one, u know / i know was up. A combination of funky jazz and indie rock/pop, they blew us away with their music. Performing w