Fire in the Mountains: A metal festival built on nature and mental health awareness
Northwestern Montana is home to the land of the Blackfeet Nation. Bordered by Glacier National Park, the reservation was established in 1855 and is home to 17,321 people. The Blackfeet reservation, however, is also home to the metal festival Fire in the Mountains.
Each edition of Fire in the Mountains has featured a roster consisting of acts across the heavy music spectrum. Among those performing at this year’s Fire in the Mountains are Full of Hell, Baroness, Midwife, Wayfarer, Yob, and a special 20th anniversary performance of Between Two Worlds, featuring Abbath, Ice Dale, and Armagedda. This year also features three legendary bands making their return to the stage: the doomy SubRosa, the gothic country titans 16 Horsepower, and the almighty Neurosis.
With the festival first taking shape in 2015, the organizers behind Fire in the Mountains (FITM)—in collaboration with the Blackfeet Nation and Tribal Council—have worked to make it evolve into a more profound experience of community and activism. FITM has a strong emphasis on nature; considering the land the festival takes place on, and the various activities and workshops audiences can enjoy and participate in, the organizers have curated a an experience wherein people can feel connected to nature while being reminded to take care of it.
The other major factor to FITM is its focus on mental health and suicide prevention. Per the festival’s website: “Fire in the Mountains is dedicated to confronting a critical and urgent issue that significantly impacts the Blackfeet Nation, and all of Indian Country: suicide. Suicide rates among Indigenous peoples are significantly higher than the national average (which has risen thirty percent since COVID!), reflecting a deep-seated crisis that demands immediate attention and dedicated resources.”
FITM organizers work in collaboration with the Blackfeet Nation and the Firekeeper Alliance—the latter a mental wellness and suicide prevention nonprofit that serves the Blackfeet Nation—as a way to give back to the community. “We have a contract with the Tribal Council where they have a certain revenue share from basically every dollar that comes into the festival. Just goes directly to the tribe” Shane McCarthy, Head of Programming/festival Co-Founder, shares. He adds, “Beyond that, we are kind of involved in a lot of other things where, at the festival, the Blackfeet Nation curates some of the opening ceremony performances as well as certain other performances interwoven throughout the festival days. There’s a lot of cultural talks, panels, workshops, as well as mental health and wellness talks, panels and workshops that all tie back to the issues at hand on the reservation.”
Along with an internship program that brings Blackfeet Nation youth into the festival to learn about what goes into such an event, McCarthy says there are efforts to bring in contractors and vendors from the Blackfeet Nation into the festival. “We also hire a bunch of Blackfeet contractors for various aspects of the festival, like either helping build or provide certain things, like renting certain things, or just working for the festival for the week. Like driving artists on the artist relations team, working in the parking, working in security, just kind of all the jobs that a festival brings. We try to bring first to the community there. Then vendor-wise, we open up the Blackfeet Vendor Village too. It’s actually coordinated through the Firekeeper Alliance […].”
“Firekeeper [Alliance] was born in response to human suffering,” Charlie Speicher, Executive Director of the Firekeeper Alliance says. “Suicide is a massive problem that disproportionately impacts Indigenous communities, and we wanted to do something to create a safer world for the people we love.”
In addition to the numerous performances taking place, FITM also hosts an array of workshops that festivalgoers can partake in. These workshops range from Music as Medicine: Coping, Connection, and Catharsis, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons: Rematriation and Cultural Healing, Riffs As Ritual: Mental Health and Guitar, to Plant Relatives: Piikuni Ethnobotany and Food Sovereignty and more.
Speaking to this year’s workshops, Speicher says, “We are intimately connected with many brilliant, insightful, and inspirational characters in our community. As we are a nonprofit organization focused on suicide reduction in Indian Country, we really try to zero in on promoting protective factors and coping mechanisms through these workshops. So not only are festival attendees experiencing an amazing presentation, but the hope is they can take away a tangible skill or piece of knowledge to integrate into their own wellness ‘toolkit’ of sorts. Our specific theme for workshops this year is ‘Hope and Meaning.’”
On the musical curation side of the festival, McCarthy—who is also the vocalist/guitarist of Wayfarer—says there’s isn’t so much a vetting process but ensuring the acts they work with best represent the festival’s values. “It’s usually kind of like, you get the feeling that this is just the type of thing that would make sense in the environment. And sometimes that’s for a variety of different reasons. You know, if it’s the sounds purely or if it’s the thematics [sic], if it’s the way the band carries themselves and represents themselves or any combination thereof.”
“My first impression [of FITM] was that the lineup looked fantastic and the location appeared breathtaking; that is what initially piqued my interest,” Gina Gleason, guitarist of Baroness said. “What draws my attention compared to more typical music festivals is FITM’s ability to build a sense of community through action, such as mutual aid events in local communities. Additionally, their commitment to sustainability and their focus on education and outreach regarding suicide prevention make FITM stand out. While other festivals might focus solely on ‘entertainment,’ FITM understands that community is everything and puts that sentiment into action.”
Full of Hell vocalist Dylan Walker offers a similar sentiment. “It seemed much more sincere in its intention and outlook than most American festivals,” he says. “It had a visible identity through the Blackfeet Nation and seemed to be about more than a plastic event. It reminded me of Roadburn in a lot of ways, because it also felt curated in a very personal way. You could tell from a distance that it was done with love of DIY and underground culture in mind.”
Both Walker and Gleason believe that heavy music has the power to provide a lifeline to those struggling with mental illness. “I find that music, especially heavy music, is extremely cathartic and community-based,” says Gleason. “Whether you are playing in a band or attending a show, having a space to connect and share something vulnerable with friends has always helped me carry mental and emotional weight.”
Walker adds, “This band [Full of Hell] and this music has given me all of my friends, my sense of pride and identity, and purpose. I believe very strongly in the therapeutic and spiritual nature of art in general. I think it’s essential to the human experience and is a brilliant vehicle for us to interpret the universe. It can be anything you want it to be, even if it’s just the release of playing as hard and loud as possible, it’s something important and larger than yourself.”
“To do it for this reason, that was the thing we needed. It was a reason bigger than our own egos, a reason bigger than ourselves, a reason bigger than our band to reach for.” – Steve Von Till, Neurosis
While everyone involved with Fire in the Mountains is thrilled to be part of the experience, the festival marks an extra special occasion for guitarist and vocalist of Neurosis, Steve Von Till. Von Till has been involved with the festival as a solo act in the past and is also a board member of Firekeeper Alliance. Reflecting on his initial experience with the festival in 2022, Von Till says, “I’ve been to a million festivals in my musical life, and with this one, I liked that it was epic music and epic landscapes. But I really love the ecological, kind of—pack it in pack it out, get back to the earth, connect with the land aspect.”
He continues, “But even more than just the bands and the artistic part, there was this underlying idea that there are also more important things to talk about. Like the connections between music and landscape, and how that might heal us, having Indigenous perspectives. Truly reconnecting with the healing and with the land and music—a higher part.”
As part of Firekeeper Alliance, Von Till works with Blackfeet Nation youth, providing music workshops and helping to get them equipment for school. “This year I’m helping to do hands-on projects with the students, like incorporating field recording and spoken word and drone guitar. Getting stuff donated; I helped them get field recorders donated for this project. I helped get a new computer and recording studio set up for their small little studio in the alternative high school.”
This year’s Fire in the Mountains marks the return of Neurosis. Following the band’s 2016 album Fire Within Fires, Neurosis remained silent for nearly a decade. It was eventually revealed in 2022 that, a few years earlier, Neurosis had parted ways with their longtime vocalist Scott Kelly; learning of the abuse Kelly had been causing his family, the band issued a statement, vocally condemning his actions. This discovery tore into Neurosis, the remaining members uncertain of the band’s future.
Eventually though, the band found themselves together again. “A couple of years ago,” Von Till says, “We got together and just put our feet in the water, the four of us together, to see what it felt like. And instantly the music, you know, it just felt good for me to plug into my big amps again and stand in front of them. […] But we still didn’t know… we were wallowing a bit and waiting for the direction to reveal itself. Like we were being patient. We weren’t going to force it. It was too important.”
Von Till goes on to share that it was through conversations with Speicher that he and the band came to realize Fire in the Mountains would be the appropriate venue for Neurosis’ return. “It was my private conversations with Charlie, as Firekeepers, sitting together in his home in East Glacier, Montana, and him asking, ‘Is there any chance that Neurosis could be the band that Firekeeper would choose as the headliner to represent the message of Firekeeper Alliance?’ He gave me the reasons why that was important to him. Which, you know, we hear those stories and over time, I guess hearing it from the perspective of the Firekeeper Alliance and the mission and how heavy music [is implemented into] this Fire in the Mountains thing of where it’s really put into practice as medicine, as healing […] So, to hear it with fresh ears and fresh eyes from a new perspective, I took that back to the others and said, ‘Look, we see this skeleton of this music. We have this one opportunity, but they would need to know.’”
In secret, Neurosis recruited Sumac guitarist/vocalist Aaron Turner to join them and began work on what would become their 12th studio album, An Undying Love for a Burning World. In March, the band delivered a surprise to the metal community with the release of this album, announcing Turner’s involvement, and that they would be playing at Fire in the Mountains. For Von Till and the band, creating the record and being offered the chance to play at FITM represented the signs they needed for their return. “That became the light; that invitation became the inspiration. […] To do it for this reason, that was the thing we needed. It was a reason bigger than our own egos, a reason bigger than ourselves, a reason bigger than our band to reach for.”
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Looking forward to this year’s Fire in the Mountains and sharing what they hope people get out of the festival, Charlie Speicher, Shane McCarthy, Dylan Walker, Gina Gleason, and Steve Von Till share the following:
Charlie Speicher: “If you’ve lost someone to suicide, or if you ever had those feelings yourself, this event is for you. And if you haven’t spent much time in Indian Country, I think you’ll be blown away by the beauty, hospitality, and culture of this place. So get your asses out here this summer! And check out our website for more information and resources! https://firekeeperalliance.org/”.
Shane McCarthy: “What I would say is that, if you’ve ever been curious about having an experience like this—powerful music, powerful presentations in a powerful place—that you should really look at [coming to] it. Because these things are not as crazy to do and take part in as it may look. And I don’t think anyone has ever regretted coming. They’ve just regretted not coming.”
Dylan Walker: Generally, hopefully people leave having enjoyed themselves. On a deeper level, I always hope that even just one single young person sees the bands on stage and realizes that they’re just normal people taking a chance and that they can go home and do it too. This community and the band I’m in have given me everything and I can only hope to inspire others to go for it themselves. Everyone has a voice.”
Gina Gleason: “I hope those in attendance gain a deeper knowledge for the Blackfeet community whose grounds we are guests on and also broaden and strengthen their sense of community and support systems through the festival!”
Steve Von Till: “Wake up early, go to all these workshops. I mean, that really is what separates it. The bands are going to be incredible. I am so incredibly stoked on 16 Horsepower. And of course, my brothers in Yob and Full of Hell. It’s going to be a blast. But go to the workshops, learn from the people that live there. Enjoy this beautiful, sacred place. I mean, it really is. For them, it’s historical and very important. There’s been nothing like it.
“[…] It was the Indigenous perspective, and the being welcomed by the native inhabitants of that land, the fact that [the festival is] dry [no alcohol on the grounds] and that it is all based around this core of openly talking about suicide and mental health, and how this community and this stuff can wrap its arms around each other and lift each other up: That made it by far the most profound thing I have ever witnessed and ever been a part of and ever been lucky to be a part of.”
Fire in the Mountains takes place from July 23 – 26 in Blackfeet Nation, Montana. Learn more by visiting the Fire in the Mountains website.
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