Black Ice is the Festival Keeping Calgary’s Underground Alive this Winter
Black Ice 2024 at Loophole Coffee Bar. Photo credit: Shannon Johnston.
Calgary’s year-round underground has never been quiet. Even in the colder months of December when local music might typically wind down, Black Ice puts it in focus. Now in its third year, Black Ice Festival returns to Loophole Coffee Bar December 7–13 with seven nights of noise, free jazz, drumless metal, indie rock, hardcore, emo, and punk. What began as a one-person proof-of-concept from organizer and musician Kaiden Jackman has become one of the prairies’ most consistent platforms for experimental, outsider, and emerging artists, all while staying DIY at its core.
“I started Black Ice in 2023,” Jackman explains. “I wanted to see if I could book a big string of shows together as a festival-type thing. And then the next year we brought it back as a bigger, better thing. We’re now on our third year, and it’s going really well.”
Black Ice’s Indie Rock showcase.
Run independently and hosted at one of Calgary’s most intimate venues, Black Ice stands apart from the typical festival model. Instead of large sponsors or multiple venues, the festival leans into a grassroots format with carefully curated bills, a limited-capacity room, and nightly genre spotlights that celebrate niche corners of Canadian (and occasionally international) music. This year’s collaborators include REVERIE, CJSW, DOA, Bookburner, and other DIY organizers who have helped stitch Calgary’s underground into a supportive, interconnected force.
While Black Ice accepts artist applications, the programming is driven largely by Jackman’s own curatorial instincts. “It’s usually a mix of both,” they say. “Some performers reach out to me, like the Sunday noise show this year, a lot of those artists reached out. But a lot of the time it’s me reaching out to bands because I think they would be a great show to see. I very much like doing curatorial stuff.”
Kaiden’s openness has led to surprising expansions. Last year an Austin, Texas artist reached out hoping to play during the festival and this year’s lineup includes acts from Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, Regina, Edmonton, and a death-metal-leaning grindcore band from Seattle.
With Loophole’s limited capacity, Jackman hopes attendees approach the festival with the same respect and intentionality that they bring to the programming.
“Show up early, be courteous to our door staff,” they say. “It’s a very limited capacity, so if you can’t get in, don’t be mad about it. Take it in stride. Maybe try to come to a different show that we’re putting on. And just respect the space and the people around you.”
Jackman doesn’t try to replicate other DIY festivals, though they’re quick to shout out the influence of events like Sled Island. “I pull a little bit from Sled in a way,” they say. “More so just in the sense that especially now, we’re doing a lot of collaborative things, and Sled very often does bills that are collaborations with radio stations and publications. But Black Ice is a very small-scale festival that’s running for an entire week. And it’s very independently run, focused on local music and occasionally some really cool out-of-towners.”
Black Ice is also a year-round project. Beyond the festival week, Jackman stays active with Black Ice–presented shows across genres. It feels emblematic of Calgary in 2024–25 that is becoming more collaborative, experimental, and deeply reliant on people who care enough to build something from scratch. It’s small-scale in the way the best DIY festivals are small-scale — intimate, risky, and deeply personal — while quietly stitching together a national network of artists who may not find a home in larger corporate festival ecosystems.
As Jackman puts it: “I like bringing people music that I think is very out there and interesting and unique. But sometimes it’s just stuff that I think is really good bands, and that I want to show off to people.”
Black Ice’s third year proves that those instincts have become something larger than a proof-of-concept: a cornerstone of Calgary’s grassroots music community, held together by curiosity, care, and the thrill of hearing something new in a room full of people who want to be there.
This year’s schedule:
Sunday, Dec 7 – Noise
Reaching Needles (Ottawa), High Grove (Montreal), Sainerine (Vancouver), Morrigan and Overzealous, Eldritch Moratorium
Monday, Dec 8 – Drumless Metal
Narcissistic Necrosis, Jouster, k.jackman, Old Mound (Edmonton)
Tuesday, Dec 9 – Free Jazz (Backwood Films)
FACT; Not Now, Hamelin; Friesen/Waters/Hume; The Phanerozoic Eon
Wednesday, Dec 10 – Indie Rock (REVERIE)
Fulfilment, Temps, Dial Up, Adoption
Thursday, Dec 11 – Hardcore (DOA)
Induced Trauma, Divine Apprehension, Abscission, Restrain
Friday, Dec 12 – Emo (Bookburner)
Garland Briggs, Still There, Druce Wayans (Edmonton), Thee Canadian Dispatch
Saturday, Dec 13 – Punk (Horrible Existence)
Lineup TBA
Most tickets are sold online, with additional door tickets available subject to capacity.
