New Videos From Heavy Lies The Crown, A Surprise Full Concert Upload, And Much More!!

At press time, I haven't heard of any 100% confirmed hard rock concerts in the Twin Saults and area for this weekend, but I will definitely let you guys know either tomorrow or on Friday if anything crosses my radar! In the meantime, today's post features some assorted recent updates, a surprise new full concert video from an artist you may not expect, and leading off, some new videos from a recently prominent local metal band!

St. Ignace, Michigan progressive metal quintet Heavy Lies The Crown posted two new solo playthrough videos onto their YouTube channel in the past week, so what can you see in these? One features guitarist Ted Olson playing "Time Diffuser" (or something else, as he put it) alongside the original recording, and this captures his performance across multiple camera angles. Solid and technically sound as you might expect from this very talented axe-slayer, so check out Ted's well-edited and performed rendition at the above links! Embedded below is singer Brandon West's own solo playthrough (singthrough?) video, this time tackling "A Hell Bound Heart", f.k.a. "Thing #1". Like Ted's video, post-production editing was done to spice things up, including some fade transitions and mirroring, along with the multiple camera angles, but the same basic idea is here, just vocally rather than on guitar.

Again, a solid and well edited performance that may help satiate some demand to see Heavy Lies The Crown live, and it'd be neat to see something similar from the other members of the band go online at some point! Give Brandon's video a look below, and check out more from H.L.T.C. above!

Next up, here's a mild diversion while news is slow: A near-full video of legendary comedy musician "Weird Al" Yankovic's concert at The Dreammakers Theater at the Sault Ste. Marie Kewadin Casino in June 2007! This may seem out of left field for the SMS, but Weird Al has covered hard rock and punk songs multiple times in his long career, some of which are staples of his live setlist. To keep the SMS on relative brand, I'll only link to songs in our genre range here, but kudos to the Weird Al Concerts YouTube channel for posting this on Saturday! Touring in support of his 2006 album "Straight Outta Lynwood", Weird Al's set began with that album's polka medley "Polkarama!", which featured brief yet amusing vocal/accordion covers of the likes of Weezer, The Killers, and Velvet Revolver, while his very first proper song is "Canadian Idiot", his parody of Green Day's "American Idiot".

13 minutes into the 76 minute video, you can see Weird Al perform "It's All About The Pentiums", his parody of the rock remix of Puff Daddy's "It's All About The Benjamins" (the rock remix had Rob Zombie and Dave Grohl on it, so yeah, I can't ignore the inspiration!) Tenth filmed from this set is a 17 minute medley of assorted parodies that weren't performed in full on this tour, which is as good a way as any to witness his wide depth of covers in a short time! Within, he does perform "Bedrock Anthem" (The Red Hot Chili Peppers), "Pretty Fly For A Rabbi" (The Offspring), and "Gump" (The Presidents Of The United States Of America), among other songs. Immediately following, he performs "I'll Sue Ya", a style parody of Rage Against The Machine songs, while the last heavier detour is "Smells Like Nirvana" (parodying "Smells Like Teen Spirit, obviously).

For a 15 year old recording, these videos hold up really well, with the filmer getting solid audio from a near-front row vantage point, so don't let the age of the recording scare you off. Weird Al sounds great in these performances, almost album quality, and his energy and costume changes are excellent. Give the whole concert a watch below, there should be multiple things here for your musical and/or comedy tastes, and click here for SooToday's coverage of Weird Al's local concert proper!

Finally for today, here's three assorted shorter news items from the last while, and as usual, these are in alphabetical order by artist name:

 

• I have moved Sault Ontario "shield rock" duo Swampgut to our inactive band links due to a year's inactivity. The band has not issued a public update since releasing their self-titled album on Bandcamp on February 19th of last year, and while their lack of a proper social media page outside of there may not help, singer/drummer Frank McCormick's related visual arts page on Facebook hasn't had an update in longer still. Swampgut was active from 2011-2015 before coming back in late 2020, culminating in the album release, and hopefully this isn't the last we hear from Frank & Rob!
• I have removed inactive local metal band Unbound (a.k.a. With Blood Build Character version 2.0) from our band links due to the quiet deletion of their Facebook (and only surviving online) page at some point in the past year. Successors to State of Misery, Unbound are sadly best known for the passing of their original singer Justin Fratpietro before they could even publically launch in January 2013, and their only concerts took place in Justin's hometown of Thunder Bay in his memory, before falling inactive that spring. Unbound didn't have much luck, but hopefully Ray, Christopher, Kevin, and Nick are doing well nowadays!
• While they have not publically elaborated on the release of their teased EP, local punk quartet Vanity are already back in studio, revealing on their Facebook page yesterday that they were recording a song at Mission Control Studios, complete with photos of the band tracking their parts there. Very cool to see a young band like this already working at Mission Control, and we'll let you know when more comes out on this song and/or the EP!
  

 

That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site soon! Thanks everyone!