Happy New Year, everyone! After a slight delay for personal matters and just the sheer wattage of research and editing that this annual post takes, here is our 2024 year-in-review post, as we take one more expansive look at the year that was before we dive headfirst into 2025 at large! It was an eventful year for local metal, hard rock, and punk musicians, concerts, and related entities, so here's a good chunk of what went down last year!
As always, we'll start with concerts in Sault Ontario, and where there were no major hard rock shows at the Gardens in 2024, lots of familiar and high profile faces rolled through last year on tour, like B.A. Johnston, BALM Squad, Blood Opera, Cory Marks, Cross Dog, The Damn Truth, The Hazytones, K-Man & The 45s, Matthew Good, The Ripcordz, Selias, Teenage Head, Total Chaos, The Trews, Wax Mannequin, and many more! On the festival circuit, the Go North Music Festival, Rotaryfest, the Poutine Feast, Toystock, and The Northern Vibe Festival all came back with stacked lineups, while the inaugural It's The Pits Festival rocked Robbie Adamson's church in Leeburn in June. Also this year: Lime frontwoman Madii Schomogyi won the fifth annual The Soo's Got Talent, The Distraction ramped up their upstairs and downstairs bookings to local and touring bands alike, the Downtown Plaza began occasional use as a concert venue, the split between the Dragonfly Run and Jay's Piston Broke Pub leading to the similar ARCH Run that same weekend, ...
...the return of extreme metal to the former Roosevelt Hotel when Vaegon headlined at Jay's in July, the Band Together To Rock Cancer fundraiser for Mustang Heart guitarist Lorenzo Fabbri in September, the debut of the Fraternal Order of Eagles Club as an occasional venue last fall, and many more shows from local and touring artists alike with varying degrees of hype and attention. A lot more is sure to be on the docket in 2025!
Meanwhile, Sault Michigan and the Eastern Upper Peninsula had an eventful year in 2024 for concerts! Three major hard rock concerts hit The Dreammakers Theatre at the Sault Ste. Marie Kewadin Casino last year (Saint Asonia & Black Stone Cherry on February 24th, Skid Row & Buckcherry on March 23rd, and ex-Ratt singer Stephen Pearcy on September 21st), while Ace Frehley, Great White, and Slaughter toplined the '80s Rock Invasion outdoor concert at the St. Ignace Kewadin on July 20th. A surprising number of multi-band shows happened in the EUP last year, including the second annual Lake Superior State University Battle of the Bands in October (won by Molly & The Other Guys), the H.L.T.C.-headlined 2nd Street Music Festival in St. Ignace in August, and two Serious Business-promoted shows at Pickles Bar & Grill in Brimley late last year featuring The Nameless, The Sole Aggressors, and touring headliners
Of course, many single-band concerts also happened across the river last year, with touring bands like Fyrbird, Oz, Peril, The Rock Show, Scarkazm, and Sunspot all making their way to our neck of the woods, while many local hard rock bands played solo shows of their own. from Dirty Musky to Unfortunate Sun. 2025 should be another strong year for Yooper bands and their fans alike, so follow along for updates!
There was certainly no shortage of general news items beyond concerts to take note of in the past year! Beyond the local stage, groups like Bone Yard 225, Exit 808, Hails, Handsome Sandwich, Heavy Lies The Crown, Spades GT, Tarnished, and Treble Charger all played shows outside of our coverage range, and Ha!ls' shows were notable in particular, as many of their road gigs were in Michigan (downstate, even!) The border crossover extended to a handful of punk acts from Michigan playing shows at The Distraction and Soo Blaster in 2024, something long welcomed at this scale, and there's more ahead next year, including from Sault Michigan talent! In 2024, we lost veteran local musicians Jeremey Salatuk and Dennis Becker, while we said goodbye to FirstLocalNews (nee Sault Online), Tazzi's Cafe, the planned Crucifest in Leeburn, and Sault Michigan's Crooked Music, but we also saw the complete Mikey & His Uke series of covers of Green Day's album "Dookie", ...
...the rebranding of Dryer Fire as Piecing It Together Shows, the Rendells' purchase of Case's Music, numerous local bands judging Shooters' Talent Quest karaoke competition, Bone Yard tacking "225" to their name, and numerous local musicians releasing new studio material not yet tied to full albums. I'm sure 2025 will be just as eventful as 2024 was, if not moreso!
While our immense two year+ backlog of new album releases to review on the SMS was finally cleared out in November, 2024 was still a very healthy year for new local metal, hard rock, and punk CDs, albums, and EPs! In terms of shows that had release parties, we saw relocated local solo project Sell This!' new album "Empires Everywhere", punk trio Vanity First's full length album "Identity Crisis", and HeadFirst's... first EP "Head Trauma" in early-mid 2024, while Vanity First guitarist Mikhal Muto also put out new albums by his solo projects Agnosticism and Choking On Appendages last year. Progressive metal duo Convergence started 2024 with their new EP "Dead & Dreaming" one year ago, while Late & Loud released their second soundtrack for their D&D podcast Late & Legends, and Sykotyk Rampage released their first "Waerlogas Sagas" concept album with an attached comic book to accompany its triple length runtime!
Meanwhile, Michigan's Eastern Upper Peninsula wasn't left out for new albums, with Heavy Lies The Crown quietly releasing their second full length album "Built For Us" in January, while veteran metal guitarist Jason Mills put out his solo project X's & Y's' debut EP "The Obsidian Dream" last fall. Good stuff by some very talented artists, and we should see more new albums & studio material ahead this year!
A relatively small but talented roster of new and debuting local metal, hard rock, and punk acts cropped up in 2024, and as a live concern, none were seen more than veteran classic/hard rock cover duo Dodge This, who played often in the second half of the year! Studio-wise, new bands like Bullet Train and Choking On Appendages immediately made a local splash with original music, while the previously Winnipeg-based Sell This! delivered their own politically charged cello punk shortly after making their live debut here in January. We also saw the live debuts in 2024 of online page-less metal quintet The Sault Side Squad, tech metal band (and Them successors) Bardo, and (as a live band) Jason Ladouceur's long-gestating project Without Compromise. Yoopers also welcomed Fake Chow successors Unfortunate Sun to Sault Michigan this year. Look for them and more new bands ahead in the coming 12 months!
The past year saw no shortage of lineup changes in local bands, with none seeing as much of a metric shift as the Sault Michigan band who began the year as Double Jack. After just one 2023 set, they were nigh unrecognizable by the spring, with a new name (Exit 808) and, aside from drummer Jackie Moon, a completely different lineup now led by two singers, and they've showed no signs of slowing down in the EUP and beyond! Frequent Exit 808 guest bassist Blaze Beairl also found himself part of big changes with St. Ignace's Heavy Lies The Crown, as they switched lead guitarists twice and Blaze joined on drums when Jaxon Massaway moved to rhythm guitar. Sault Michigan also saw big changes with Tarnished, as Josh Fair permanently left the drumkit to play guitar and the band parted ways with bassist Parker Talentino, while singer Henry Boucher left rising young punk band The Sole Aggressors. Sault Ontario had its own fair share of turnover!
Among others, Brandon Ruch replaced Mitch Sirie & Dave Bahun in Handsome Sandwich & Bookclub respectively, Beej Syrette replaced Adam King in Double Down, Matthew Voros joined & James Roy Daley left Spades GT, Matt Fronzi & Elly McWatters joined Mike Haggith's newly named Big Finish Band, Frank Deresti & David Peredun became Treble Charger's new rhythm secton, Carmen Muto joined Hails (and maybe Vanity First?) on second guitar, Redundant parted ways with bassist Andrew MacDonald, and Phil Greco joined the new look Fort Creek lineup on drums. Look for more lineup shifts from local bands in the coming 12 months!
2024 also saw a handful of notable local bands and solo projects end their active runs or fall inactive, with none doing so more prominently than classic/hard rock cover quartet Soundcheck, who spent much of December on a farewell tour leading up to their final gig at the YNCU Curling Centre on New Year's Eve. The SMS also moved acts like Far From Fine, Tattoos & Scars, and solo artists Bold Noize & Mike Cliffe to our inactive links in the past 12 months. More familiar groups have been publically inactive since early-mid 2024 and could be moved to our defunct links this year, notably including Sylo (with frontman Eli Russell attending college out of town) and The Wyld Stallyns (with frontman Rob Speers focusing on solo gigs for much of the year), not to mention The Bear Hunters, Galactic Alignment, Hollow Sky, Mike McCleary, Molten Imp, The Northwest, and Sell This! as well. Hopefully we see some of these talented artists return to activity in due course!
As always, we'll end things with comebacks and reunions, and in terms of sheer time since we last saw the band in question, none ended a hiatus as long as local hard rock quartet Half Past, who played their first show in 12 years in February, and have followed that up with multiple notable concerts since! A few other acts ended 4+ year breaks in 2024, including Treble Charger at their Algoma University fundraiser concert in March, Pillory with some high profile metal concerts in the Soo and Leeburn this summer, and former Haggith frontman Curtis McKenzie's return as an acoustic solo musician for the first time since before the pandemic. Last year also saw the returns of A Dire Setback, Crucify The Whore, The Karstens, Redundant, and Sylo after a year or more away from the stage, while Heavy North Entertainment returned to local concert promotion after seven years away with the Selias concert in September. Here's to more big returns and reunions in the Twin Saults 2025!
With 2024 now well and truly in the books, we now look ahead to 2025 starting with this weekend's hard rock concert previews and our first "Where Are The New Albums?" post of the year, so look for those next and for much more as we begin another exciting year at the SMS! Thanks everyone, and again, Happy New Year!
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