Fastidio Festival

Here is the translation of the Italian text into English:

A new way of thinking about the Festival is born: to create a space where music, art, and underground culture can unite into a single community. Twelve bands from all over Italy will alternate on stage, twelve projects that are the most authentic and vibrant expression of the Italian independent scene.

Palermo turns up the volume and is ready to launch a new idea of community: the inaugural edition of the Fastidio Festival, which will take place on Friday, July 17, at Spazio Open of the Cantieri Culturali alla Zisa in Palermo, prepares to welcome music, raw sounds, free ideas, creativity, and underground subcultures. Twelve bands from across Italy, as well as artisans, creators, and figures engaged in music and cultural dissemination: an artistic community in motion that will flood the day dedicated to the most authentic sounds of the contemporary independent scene. This is the Fastidio Festival, a not only musical event that contributes to transforming one of the city's most vibrant cultural spaces into a meeting point for music, creativity, and sharing.

A bold initiative that arises with the aim of creating a meeting place dedicated to those artistic realities that often remain outside the more visible circuits, but which represent a fundamental part of the independent cultural scene. The line-up brings together twelve projects from Palermo, Catania, Florence, Pisa, and Trieste, offering a broad and transversal overview of the Italian underground, in a day that traverses different languages and sounds, united by the will to build new connections among artists, collectives, creators, and the audience.

From Florence, we have the Zebra TSO, a band with clear ideas: no plastic with a politically correct flavor, but fresh and raw meat like the timbre of their bass, octaver, and drums. Irreverent like BoJack Horseman, they combat sadness with anger, apathy with pain, and lies with lies.

Also from Tuscany, this time from Pisa, arrives the Tonno: provocatively defining their sound as "normal music," blending indie rock, emo punk, and early 2000s Italian alternative, and combining it with lyrics that balance between songwriter sensibility, irony, and saudade.

Trieste gifts us the talent of Katana Koala Kiwi, a band with influences ranging from indie to electronic music, making them sometimes as sharp as karst stone and, at the same time, sweet as Terrano liqueur.

From Catania, we have the Mother Giraffe, a formation with a precise identity that creates post-punk tracks, exploring themes of social anxiety and the alienation of modern life; the Helen Burns, a band that has shared the stage with international and Italian artists, opening shows for Nile Marr, Animaux Formidable, Afterhours, and Italia 90; the Kōhei, a project that spans noise, alt-rock, and post-punk, with a direct, loud, and energetic approach and a rough, dissonant sound aimed at a strong live impact.

Palermo will be represented by Kaliningrad, a five-member band that merges the millimeter precision and cerebral structures of Math Metal with the ferocity of Thrash and the atmosphere of Death. The To Open A Mind and their sound, described as crossover, represents an intriguing fusion of electronic elements with an appealing mix of pop, metal, and alternative. The Mostardacida, a band that blends the urgency of hardcore with the immediacy of melodic punk, turning personal anxieties and generational frustrations into short, intense, and sincere pieces, through irony, melancholy, and emotional chaos. The SWA, with their masked rock, mathematical, syncopated, occasionally noisy and punk. Just bass and drums, instrumental, delirium of odd times and screams. Bunnyblack, a noise duo rooted in 8-bit electronics on Nintendo Game Boy, distorted guitars and vocals. Their sound is raw, lo-fi, shaped by post-punk tensions, dark wave atmospheres, and shoegaze reverbs. And Karon, a Prog Metal project with a massive dose of Death.

"The Fastidio Festival was born from the need to create a real space for underground music and for all those artistic realities that often remain outside the more visible circuits, despite being extremely alive and active. We didn't want to just build a line-up but a context where artists, collectives, and the audience could meet in a horizontal and accessible manner. This zero edition represents a concrete first step towards building a network that can continue to grow over time," explain the organizers.

Alongside live music, there will also be artisans, creators, and figures engaged in music and cultural dissemination, contributing to transforming the festival into an occasion for an entire creative community to meet. The ambition is to create a stable appointment capable over the years of supporting, enhancing, and connecting the various realities of the Italian independent scene.