Southern Metal Music Festival

So there's death metal and speed metal, classic metal and hair metal. Bet you didn't know there's something called "Southern Metal," though, didja, much less enough of it 'round these parts to fill a whole three-day festival. Indeed there is, and the genre's pretty much what you would expect: heavy riffs, loud squeals of feedback mixed with a drawl-y Skynyrd aesthetic. Unlike other sharply defined types of metal, which stick to a specific checklist of characteristics to qualify, Southern metal picks bits from all sorts of subsets, combined with blues riffs and sometimes even country. For real—if you don't believe us, check out southernmetalmusic.com or myspace.com/southernmetalmusic for details, or just head to the festival and see for yourself.