Almost universally acknowledged as the worst music festival anywhere, this year Messtival is making an appeal to an audience of unwavering loyalty: cultists.
Despite investigations by health inspectors, lobbying from the Department of Tourism, Heritage, and Culture, and warnings from the Catholic Church, this will be the Anagance-based event’s ninth year. Often mistaken for many things, including a good time, Messtival organizers have cast aside all illusions that this is anything more than an elaborate ceremony for its dogmatic disciples who continue to flock annually.
“All that is terrible, dark, festering, sarcastic and altogether unpleasant is governed by an entity that dwells between dimensions and permeates our unconscious with feelings of doubt and displeasure. Call it Satan, Baphomet, Nylarhotep, it’s true name and form are unknown and unrecognizable to us mere mortals,” explains cult leader Ian MacMillan. “Messtival, and the organization of TBA Collective as a whole, have been harnessing the power of sarcastic partying year over year to bring about the release of our overlord unto our realm so that it may reign as is intended. Messtival has been an elaborate ruse to bring about the end of partying- how ironic, a party that has the sole purpose of ruining all parties moving forward…”
Which does a lot to clarify the large number of festival attendees despite the abysmal state of the festival. It’s simply the nature of the beast. That being said, festival organizers are still enthusiastic about this year’s ceremonies, particularly the observance of the duck race ritual.
“In a way, the festival has always been cursed, but in another way it is blessed as our attendees will be awarded the first opportunity to lay at the base of our amorphous tentacled gelatinous lord and marvel at it’s unspeakable glory… also we have an excellent line up this year and will have some fun activities throughout the day which includes a duck race, video games, yoga, live art, art installation, interactive video installations, trippy light shows and all the other random, weird stuff people have come to expect from Messtival.”
“As far as chanting, I anticipate there will be only as much as is required.”
“I am really excited by our live art crew, we have some great artists on board, a few who have never painted at Messtival before! Lysanne Lombard paints the weirdest, creepiest paintings and I feel she is a perfect fit for the cultish theme we have going this year. Emily Powers paints awesome vibrant cartoony paintings that are funny and tell a story. We will also have Hillary Noddin and Chelsea Gauvin grace our art stage for the first time.”
“Our duck race has more than doubled in size as it tends to be one of the more popular events year over year.We hope to offer face painting by donation but with the strict rule that we will only allow black metal style corpsepaint. We are super excited for our lineup as well. We have tried to get Tupperware Remix Party to play Messtival for years as I feel they’d be a perfect fit and we finally have them on board. After Funk stole the show last year so we are excited to have them back. We have a lot of favourites returning and some newer blood in the lineup as well. It’s going to likely be the worst one yet.”
No word on how much new blood will be spilt. The people of Anagance were also suspiciously unavailable for comment.
Messtival commences as the sun reaches its zenith on the sixth day of August. For more information consult Tobin’s Spirit Guide, or visit www.messtival.ca