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Dark Down South ready for family-friendly metal extravaganza

Headshot of Warren Hately
Warren HatelyBunbury Herald
King Parrot will make the trip out west for Dark Down South next month.
Camera IconKing Parrot will make the trip out west for Dark Down South next month. Credit: suppled

Music lovers of the heavier variety now have a major regional festival to look forward to later this month.

The pioneering Dark Down South open air festival will kick off in Kirup, near Donnybrook, from November 22 to 24.

The heavy metal festival will see headliners King Parrot travel from Melbourne with Adelaide’s Hidden Intent also making the trip across, while West Australian talent includes acts such as Bloodhunt, Kimura, All This Filth and King Zog.

Organiser Kim Zehra said many of the support acts were also from regional WA, with Bunbury and Pinjarra among the localities featured.

Bunbury bands Innasanatorium and The Subject Zero were scheduled to play along with Harvey’s Decapitated Chooks and Pinjarra two-piece extreme metal act DeadHorse.

“It is our heavier brother version to the sister festival we run in Kalbarri, the Kalbarri Open Air fest,” Zehra said.

“Dark Down South brings a completely new offering to WA and the South West because it’s all heavy metal of different genres.

“There was a big demand for a new heavy metal open air event in WA because there just wasn’t one,” Zehra said.

“We wanted to bring it down south to make it more accessible for regional people and also it’s something different for our metro metalheads to come and have a raw and real camp out.”

Despite the heavy sometimes grim music, Dark Down South is touted as an all-ages, family-friendly affair.

Zehra said organisers knew metalheads had families of their own and camping out was a great way to have family time as well as indulge their tastes in music.

With free camping and children under 12 free, tickets on sale via Oztix were expected to move fast.

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