Monday, February 13, 2012

"Woods V" Release Updates, Studio Updates From Sault Michigan, And This Week's Classic Video!!

Here's some more news for this Monday evening for you SMS fans, so here's what's on tap! Tonight, we've got this week's classic video, new studio material previews from a couple of Sault Michigan bands, and leading things off, some cool news relating to Woods of Ypres, so here's what you need to know!

Let's kick off today's post with some Woods of Ypres news, and as this week's banner on the site would imply, "Woods V: Grey Skies & Electric Light" is officially on sale now.... well, it is overseas! Due to longer processing lead times over here, it won't be in stock for American markets until April, but if you order from Earache Records' European store, you can get your orders shipped right away so you can give David Gold's final recorded material a deserved complete listen! Click here to pick up "W5" on CD and/or vinyl from the European Earache distro, and note that there are still packages to get the album with a t-shirt or poster. I haven't heard anything about an iTunes release for "Woods V" yet, but I'd have to imagine it's coming soon. For the record, I haven't heard of either "Keeper of the Ledger" or Siegfried Meier's vinyl-exclusive alternate mix of "Finality" being up to stream online yet, but I imagine it'll only be a matter of time before both turn up in some fashion. Lastly on this CD, I know I haven't mentioned any reviews of "Woods V" yet, but I plan to feature many in an upcoming post. Without David to tell fans about the majority of them, they often slip my casual radar, which is why they haven't hit the SMS yet. Stay tuned for more "W5" news as it rolls in!

Before we completely move to our next story, I wanna note something about Woods of Ypres' planned European debut this past Saturday, where they would have opened for British thrash standouts Evile at the HMV Next Big Thing event in Manchester, England. At the show, Evile paid tribute to David by playing their 2011 song "In Memoriam" for the first time ever, which is an awesome gesture, and videos of the performance are now online! Click here to check out at least three videos of the performance, and kudos to Evile for doing this for David's memory!

Next up, Sault Michigan/Grand Rapids epic metal quintet End of Existence are keeping the anticipation up for their planned debut album at the end of the month, as they posted an album teaser video onto their YouTube channel yesterday! It's just 1:41 long, and the visuals are mostly effects over their orange globe logo, but it does feature a 70 second snippet of a previously unreleased original song named "12.21.12", presumably referring to the Mayan apocalypse theories centered around that day. It's definitely a promising and heavy clip, but I'll hold full judgement until we both hear the full album and I get a chance to review it. Little else is known yet about this 13 song release, but as we inch closer to the end of February, we should hear more, so keep an eye out! For now, here's a teaser, and as more comes in, I'll have it here!



Thirdly, here's some news and updates from new Sault Michigan metal sextet Hoist The Sails! Like End of Existence, this band featuring Analog Deficiency & Seeking Reverence alumni have been hard at work on new material of their own lately despite no announced live debut date yet, and we can now get some more tastes of their work thanks to a couple of new postings on their Facebook page. One is the first full original song from their planned EP recording sessions, entitled "Mind Over Matter", and you can now stream it at this link. How does it sound? Very good, actually! It has a catchy groove, excellent guitar work, and interesting dual harsh vocals in the verses, and the clean singing doesn't sound out of place either! These guys definitely seem to know what they're doing musically, and it's hard to believe this has came together so suddenly! The other new media on their Facebook page seems like it'd be another preview, but it's actually a comedic clip of singer Travis Theel doing some intentionally bad clean vocals with some band member reactions, and it shows that they have a good sense of humour about everything! I see big things from Hoist The Sails if they keep on this same path, and hopefully we hear much more from them soon, so keep an eye out for updates, and check them out at the above links

And finally for today, here's this week's classic video! After a three week run of videos not tied into an upcoming concert (thanks in part due to a lot of light weekends), this week's does tie in with a band at an upcoming show, that being local deathcore quartet (and this Thursday's Rosie metal night participants) The Valentine's Day Massacre! Before frontman Steve Rhodes joined the former View To A Kill, he made local waves as State of Misery's singer in late 2010 and early 2011, as you may remember, and some off-YouTube videos from their run are still floating around online. One is of them playing their original song that I think was called "Bleed" at a jam session circa December 2010, which was one of four posted to the band's Facebook group on January 3rd of last year. The quality's similar to the other three videos (two of which we've already put on our YouTube channel), but it shows State of Misery's original lineup doing what they did best, and the song is brutal with catchy elements! I may have the title wrong, as they had a couple songs with titles similar to "Bleed", so if I'm incorrect, please let me know! This video was originally filmed by attendee Ashley Lacasse, and you can see the original video at http://facebook.com/photo.php?v=114911331914493.

NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS INTENDED!! All credit for this video goes to State of Misery and Ashley for the work they did in this video & performance, I'm just trying to share this video with a wider audience like it deserves! It's a solid performance, and State of Misery definitely attracted a good local following in their brief run, so give this newest classic video a look below, and go see Steve's current band rock The Rosie on Thursday!



That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news as the week moves along! Thanks everyone!

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