Shontay Snow (Saviour) On Unify 2017: "Saviours appearance on this lineup has got nothing to do with my gender"

As we all should know, Unify 2017 dropped it’s lineup yesterday and well, it’s a pretty damn good lineup. No doubt about it.

Alexisonfire(!), Violent Soho, Letlive, I Killed The Prom Queen, House Vs Hurricane(!!!), Ocean Grove, among many other bands, will be playing Unify come next January. Following the lineup announcement, however, Pedestrain.tv pointed out that the Victorian festival lacked a significant amount of female artists with a recent article they ran, calling the event a “total sausage party” and saying that "Unify could do better. Much, much better."

In this piece, they stated that out of 119 band members, across the whole 26 band bill, only two of the performers are female; Alex Reade of Melbourne's Drown This City and Shontay Snow of Perth's Saviour.

As you can probably imagine, social media was buzzing in response to this piece, and a couple counter articles even popped up as well (such as one from I Probably Hate Your Band, some of whose points I do agree with). Now, this is not a new issue for the heavy music scene and the music industry as a whole, and it's a topic that comes around every now and then, with some very passionate responses (that's putting it lightly) for both sides of the argument.

However, I think that if we are going to talk about the female musicians on the Unify 2017 lineup, then I think that we should, you know, actually see what those musicians in question have to say!

So I recently reached out to both bands, and while Drown This City respectfully declined to comment, Saviour's Shontay Snow was more than happy to sum up her thoughts on the matter. You can read her full statement below.

"I understand there aren't many women on the UNIFY 2017 bill, however, the massive lack of representation of women in this industry, in this genre particularly, is not a result of Unify's lineup choices or the massive amounts of male bands out there already. It's a result of women choosing not to represent themselves in heavy music. If you are a woman, or a man, or somewhere in between and want to be a heavy musician, just be one. I am. I am also a melancholic folk artist, whatever works for you really.

Bottom line is, it really just seems that there aren't many female musicians currently releasing heavy music. Thus the 117:2 ratio on next years lineup.

Just to make things clear, I would be insulted if our band was chosen for ANY festival based on the fact that I am a female musician. However, I am very aware that Saviours appearance on this lineup has got nothing to do with my gender, it's because we worked hard and we deserve to be there. Dicks or no dicks."