Remember when we had a two years-long backlog for new album reviews from 2022-2024? Well, another one is loading up for mid-late 2025, as no less than three SMS amenable albums from local musicians were just released in the span of three days! Here's what you should know on all three for this stacked Sunday morning post!
In what may be a surprise announcement for many, local/Barrie alt-hard rock musician Mike Haggith released his 53rd studio album to his Bandcamp page on Friday, but there's a story here! In mid-2023, you may recall Mike launching his own e-mail subscriber program, where members called "Frequent Fliers" get a weekly e-mail featuring essays from Mike about his music, personal life, and day job as a commercial pilot, along with membership perks for album discounts and deals, plus a "secret album". Starting in June 2024 (I was in on this right away), "Frequent Fliers" got a letter a week in their subscriber e-mails for a password to unlock songs for the album, named "Frequent Flier". Based on my e-mail content, I knew precisely what was going on and what the album would have in it, but as it was a subscriber bonus, I didn't actively cover the "secret" album here... but what would happen when I had all nine songs?
Answer: Mike would unveil it to the public the following week, but "Frequent Flier" isn't as openly accessible as his other recent albums. The album is only available to buy in full at once on Bandcamp, and only three songs ("Brand New Day", "You Are The Sun", and "Home") are available to listen to for free there. It is not on other major streaming services, so if you want to hear the other six songs without being on the Frequent Flier program, you will either have to buy it on mp3 format there for $10, or buy physical copies on CD or vinyl for $20.40 or $51.90 at his new ElasticStage store for his MorningStar Records catalog (no more Kunaki). Otherwise, you can get everything for free...gradually, over the next year, by signing up for the program! If you like Mike's solo music already, you'll enjoy his essays and personal thoughts about life, music, and flying airplanes there, and the longer you're a Frequent Flier, the better deals you'll get for his online store.
A e-mail fan club exclusive album is very new territory for the SMS, but Mike has the dedication and fan connections to make it happen long term, and the proof is this album, as it did legitimately take a year for each song's password to arrive in my inbox letter by letter! If you don't want to wait, you can pay to hear the full album right away, but fans should sign up for all you get, and who knows, we could get a second "secret album" down the road! Buy "Frequent Flier" or join the program above, and check out the lyric video for "Brand New Day" below, courtesy of Mike's YouTube channel!
Next up, Friday the 13th proved to be a good day for local album releases, as Sault Michigan metal solo project X's & Y's put out their sophomore album "Ruination Coactive" as promised that day as well! The follow-up to last fall's "Obsidian Dream" can now be heard for free on Bandcamp, YouTube Music, Soundcloud, Amazon Music, Apple Music, and Spotify, representing a wider initial launch than their debut had, if not technically available "everywhere". If you want to actually buy Jason Mills' new album (released through AFR Records once again), it costs $3 on Bandcamp, $7.92 on iTunes, and $10 on CD. With Crooked Music now closed, contact Jason/X's & Y's directly if you want to buy physical copies, as I don't know if any brick-and-mortar stores in the E.U.P. would be carrying them. "Ruination Coactive" is a concept album themed around the classic Nintendo Entertainment System game Contra, with the songs inspired by each of the game's levels.
It's great to see Jason acting so fast to get his second proper paid album out (especially after the Werehold-era false starts), and given the Contra ties, there should be more interest from you metalheads who also love classic gaming! Along with another pre-release visualizer video for "The Gemini Machine" from the new album, X's & Y's proper YouTube channel has a full album upload in a single video, so check it out for yourselves below!
Finally, here's another new album release, as Sault Ontario folk punk solo project Agnosticism released their own new EP today! Project leader Mikhal Muto announced the album, named "Atticcore Fornication", via their Instagram page on Thursday (remember, this is Agnosticism's only social media account), where Mikhal said this would be their "last release for quite some time while I focus on other writing projects." Hails fans' ears may perk up at that statement, but Mikhal always has multiple irons in the fire! "Atticcore Fornication" is Agnosticism's fifth album & fourth EP on major streaming services, and first since last year's "A Letter Of Resignation", though Mikhal said that half of the songs are 2-3 years old now and he doesn't necessarily agree with their lyrics now, but wanted to finally get that material released. The EP does feature guest vocals from Kayden Simon on "Nightmares".
Kayden's unknown to me, but he played guest bass with Mikhal at an upstairs show at The Distraction in May of last year. You can now stream "Atticcore Fornication" for yourselves on YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and yes, even on Boomplay. If you want to actually buy the mp3 copies, the six-song EP is on iTunes for $5.94. Fans of acoustic/folk punk and emo will definitely be curious to hear Agnosticism's new material, and check out the EP's first song ("Sea Of Discontent") below!
With all of that said, what is the short term album review schedule for the SMS? I had pencilled in X's & Y's for this month already, so that's not changing, but Mike Haggith will now be slotted in for next month. I had already scheduled the new Realignment Project album "The Frustration Sessions" for August, so as to not review the same band twice in six months, so that would put Agnosticism in for September, and would shove our planned review of Spades GT's "United" (releasing next month) to October. Hey, our schedule is pretty well set in stone now, which is good! That's all for today's stacked all-new album release post, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site this week! Thanks everyone!
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