The Great Kat: Those near the front of the stage may want to step back a bit when Kat comes on. Once a classical violinist, the Juilliard graduate now is the first and foremost practitioner of “hyper-speed” metal, an unusually complex classical/metal fusion. She also curses like a sailor and vowed to turn all the men present at the fest into her slaves.

“I’m brilliant and I’m going to make everybody in Milwaukee worship me for that,” she screamed in a recent phone interview. (To get the full effect, feel free to insert an obscenity every other word or so in any of her statements quoted here.) “Nobody even comes close to what I’m doing and I take it as a personal insult that there are people in your city who have never heard of me.

“When I’m done with them they’ll be begging for a chance to lick my shoes.”

Rock: If you think life goes by too darn fast, you might go crazy listening to the Great Kat, a Juilliard-educated guitar player whose talent is giving a metal spin to classical music, and then playing it at supersonic speed.