Australia's UNIFY Gathering will be focussing on their own country's artists for the 2021 edition of the festival.
Brilliant Aussie festival UNIFY Gathering has confirmed details of its 2021 edition, with the announcement that it will host an all-Australian line-up.
While the 2020 festival went ahead without a hitch back in January (other than some occasionally tricky weather conditions), the music scene Down Under has since – like the rest of the world – been struck down by coronavirus. As a result, UNIFY have made the fantastic decision to only book Australian artists for 2021 to bring a sense of community back together.
A statement from UNIFY Gathering reads:
"It’s no secret that the music industry is one of the hardest hit industries by the current situation, and our hearts go out to the artists, crew, agents and managers that have lost their entire touring plans with no certainty of when it is coming back. This festival launched in 2015 with entirely Australian artists, and we’ve had the pleasure of having pretty much every heavy artist in the country perform across our six events. Now we want to invite all of them back for a celebration of this community and everything it provides. We hope to get back as many artists as we can. We’ll be pushing dates back a week to make it the January 21 – 24 weekend in 2021.
"In all of this chaos, one message stands as true as ever: music saves lives. It’s the inspiration in our lives and it’s the basis of communities that can band together to survive through tough times. We wanted this announcement out now to declare our intentions, and give the people in our community something to look forward to.
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"While UNIFY prides itself on connecting with the global heavy music community, it was with the local community of artists, crew, agents and managers that we launched our festival in 2015. In that first year, it felt like most of the Australian heavy music community got together to create one of the most memorable weekends of our lives. At the time, Australian heavy music artists were mostly unable to play festivals in AUS. We launched UNIFY because we wanted to see what it would be like for The Amity Affliction, Northlane, In Hearts Wake, Thy Art Is Murder and Deez Nuts to play full length and main stage festivals sets. Looking at that lineup, it included many of the bands that defined the next half decade of Australian music, and that poster has become an iconic moment in the history of this community.
"We also are aware that Australian artists are right now doing their best to reschedule current dates and look for opportunities that can work once life resumes. As such, UNIFY will also have no restriction on artists wanting to do tour dates surrounding our dates. We also won’t worry about putting through artists that played last year or the year before. It’s not about exclusivity for us, it’s about community."
UNIFY Gathering will take place from January 21-24, 2021. Stay tuned for more info soon.
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