Single Day Passes Are On Sale Now At
Plus Single Day Lineups Are Listed At www.ColdWaves.net
Long-Running Industrial Music Festival Returns With
In-Person Event At Chicago’s Metro / Smartbar / G-Man Tavern
September 24-26, 2021
Featuring Front 242, CLIPPING., Stabbing Westward,
Consolidated, Youth Code, Dalek, Actors & More
Incredible fan demand has sold out all of the full-weekend passes for COLD WAVES, the beloved industrial music festival that returns for an in-person event September 24-26, 2021. It will be held at adjoining venues Metro, Smart Bar and G-Man Tavern.
Event producers have now released single day passes, which are on sale now at www.MetroChicago.com as well as outlining individual festival day lineups and activities (including the pre-festival kick-off events for Thursday, September 23) at www.ColdWaves.net and official social media pages. Fans are encouraged to buy now as the festival has sold out several times over the last 9 years.
The ninth edition of the beloved industrial music festival will feature Belgian giants Front 242 playing the fest for the third time; industrial/hip-hop trio CLIPPING. featuring Daveed Diggs (“Hamilton” and TNT’s “Snowpiercer”) making their fest debut; scene favorites Stabbing Westward returning with new music; the first show from audio-protest juggernauts Consolidated in 20-plus years; and the incendiary duo Youth Code.
Additional talent includes Dalek, Actors, Bootblacks, Barker+Connelly: Luxapan, Korine, Provoker, Odonis Odonis, Wingtips, Fee Lion, Pixel Grip, Paul Barker, Blixaboy, Void Vision, Acucrack, Zoltar, Bud Sweet, The Pirate Twins, Choke Chain, Morgue Vvitch and Philly Peroxide.
COLD WAVES will adhere to all state and city-wide regulations to allow a fully compliant event for attendees, and organizers will purposely limit the capacity of all venues for the duration of the weekend. As well, fully open doors, an outdoor sidelot with food trucks and seating space, plus access to the all-night Smart Bar “COLD WAVES Lounge” aims to provide patrons a safe, exciting and respectful event.
The Wax Trax! record label crew will also bring back a pop-up shop featuring hard-to-find and exclusive merchandise. Additional supporters include Electronic Saviors: Music to Cure Cancer, Resilience, Riveting Music, Schecter Guitars and Half Acre Brewing.
COLD WAVES has served the industrial/goth/darkwave/noise/metal community with the popular weekend festival since 2012. The forward-thinking, inclusive event goes beyond great music with a philanthropic mission to raise money and bring awareness to mental health, cancer research, and creating safe spaces in live music. Proceeds from the event will benefit the service industry mental health support group Darkest Before Dawn (www.db4d.org), a non-profit founded by Jason Novak, Kelly Britton and Dawn Szcymczak following the death of beloved Chicago musician and engineer Jamie Duffy whose untimely passing inspired the inaugural COLD WAVES weekend.
About COLD WAVES
On Friday September 7, 2012, a collection of musicians, peers, co-workers, friends and family gathered together to put on a memorial concert at Bottom Lounge in Chicago to celebrate the life of beloved local musician and sound-engineer Jamie Duffy, who passed away earlier that year. The memorial show was referred to as COLD WAVES: The Jamie Duffy Concert, in no small part due to the high number of “Cold Wave” artists who participated in it. Cold Wave is considered to be a sub-genre of industrial music and more specifically a melding of heavy, melodic rock and dark electronic dance music.
Since then, COLD WAVES has annually upped the ante, adding larger and more exciting (and rare) talent to the lineups, expanding to three nights and eventually other cities in a quest to celebrate the innovators and new talent in the dark music genres. Over the last few years the fest has proudly presented rare appearances from such luminaries as Front 242, Revolting Cocks, Filter, Nitzer Ebb, Godflesh, Meat Beat Manifesto, KMFDM, Stabbing Westward, Severed Heads, Clock DVA, Cold Cave, Pankow, The Black Queen, Fear Factory, Front Line Assembly, Pop Will Eat Itself, and many more, some bands appearing in the U.S. for the first time in 15-20 years.
COLD WAVES also focuses on raising money and awareness for the service industry and music venue staffing communities in their battles against addiction, depression and suicide. From bartenders and bouncers, to stagehands and engineers, this is a very high-risk demographic, often very under-insured and under-advocated. A portion of the COLD WAVES proceeds, including custom auctions and raffles go to Darkest Before Dawn, a local Chicago charity focused on exactly these issues, providing subsidized care and support for low-income members of that workforce. Alongside the DB4D charity, the festival invites other like-minded, socially relevant organizations to set up tables and materials throughout the weekend.