Thursday, December 10, 2015

Defunct Local Band Profile Series: The Issues

It's now time for this month's Defunct Local Band Profile, as we round out another year in our monthly profile series on a local metal, hard rock, or punk band that deserves some current attention despite being disbanded or inactive! As always, this month's band was randomly selected, and there's some familiar faces within (if you can read past the censor bars over their eyes & mouths), so read on below for this month's Defunct Profile!
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The Issues

Genre: "Derd Rock"/Extreme Metal/Punk

Hometown: Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

Members: (Members not in their last full lineup in italics; Real identities of some members are not 100% verifiable, particularly those of Vinyl Muto & Joey Velcro, while there may be missing ex-band members as well. Message us if you can confirm anything!)

Bret "Velvet Bretfield" Shuttleworth (Pillory, Lazer Queen), vocals
Robbie "Rockit" Sartini (Pillory, Crimson Crusade), lead guitar
"Vinyl Muto", bass/rhythm guitar
Chris "Mullet Studburn" Shelbourne, drums/vocals

Alan "Power" Wells (Winkstinger), vocals
Andres "Denim" Duchesne (Pillory, The Bear Hunters), guitar
"Leather" Luc Schmiedendorf (Bankshot), guitar
"Joey Velcro", guitar 

Audio/Video: While The Issues weren't a prolific live band (or one that released a formal album), they did record a number of original demos that were posted to their Facebook & MySpace pages with varying lineup formations. Four songs are on each, with two each solely on one page
 ("Kick" & "In The Past" on Facebook, and "Puppet On A String (Trixie)" & "Last Stand" on MySpace.) Stream them above, and here's one of their heaviest tracks, "Lambs To The Slaughter"!



Info/Analysis: A unique & somewhat mysterious project that was originally active from 2007-2009, The Issues made an impression with fans early on with their varied metal & punk originals, irreverent sense of humour, fake concert postings, and use of censor bars and aliases to disguise band member identities. Notably spawning future alumni of Winkstinger & Pillory, activity was mostly in studio until the band went on hiatus, only to reunite in April 2013 with a new lineup rounded out by late guitarist Andres Duchesne's Pillory bandmates. Despite this, future public postings were limited to archive song uploads with older lineups, and nothing has followed since March 2014, likely indicating that they're inactive once again. I wish The Issues had expanded to live concerts, as they had a fun range of songs, from the punkier "Dirty Baby" to the heavy "Last Stand", and their sense of humour was welcomed, but hopefully they bring their "derd rock" back in the future!
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I hope you guys liked this month's Defunct Local Band Profile! We'll start the year in Sault Michigan, as January 2016's randomly selected band in this series will be the recent hard rock duo Lift The Broken, but as they have no public media, we've added a second randomly chosen band from Sault Ontario with a similar lack of info (starting a new 2-1-3-1-2-1 pattern between the twin Saults) to fill things out. That band is defunct local punk quartet (and Shit Liver predecessors) OBCD, so check out this double band profile on or around January 10th, and stay tuned for more news this weekend! Thanks everyone!

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