We'll start with a special Monday night concert preview, as Edmonton punk/hard rock quintet The Devil's Sons will make their local concert debut TOMORROW NIGHT at The Whisky Barrel! A very atypical headliner compared to the usual acoustic fare seen at the Gore Street nightclub, The Devil's Sons will bring a raw and rollicking brand of punk n' roll (even including a keyboard player!) to local audiences tomorrow with an in your face attitude and familiar influences, and it will be interesting to see how they go over at The Whisky Barrel, especially to see if more heavier and plugged-in bands stop by there! Local support will come by way of thrash metal trio The BAG in their Whisky Barrel debut and their first public date since last month's ARCH Run. This fast rising young group should set the tone well and hopefully keep things as heavy as possible without the venue getting too much shock given how different this show is from the norm there!
Presented by promoter Mikhal Muto, tomorrow's concert is FREE and has an 8:00 PM start time, but it remains a 19+ event. Despite the timing on a work/school night for many, this should be a fun concert, and with no cover, hopefully that ensures a decent turnout at 113 Gore for all of the action tomorrow! Visit the above links for more on tomorrow night's festivities, and for a preview, here's The Devil's Sons live!
Next up, here's some videos from last month's Ripcordz-headlined concert at The Stellar Door underneath The Distraction, as per prolific local concert filmer Christopher Paci's YouTube channel! For unannounced reasons, these were only uploaded last week, but of course, better late than never! Chris filmed 13 videos from all three bands at The Distraction's intimate basement space (which The Ripcordz highly praised after the fact), with eight of them coming from the headlining Montreal hardcore punk legends' first local set in almost a year. The filmed Ripcordz videos included Paul and crew playing "Anarchy", "Girls In The Pit", "Elvis Death Cult", "All Gods Must Die", "Hippie Kids", "Your Mother Wears Army Boots", "X" (which Jack Spades frequently covered in the 2010s), and as embedded below, "The Fence". If you missed the Ripcordz and Total Chaos shows at The Stellar Door, these will likely be your first public looks at the venue, so how is it?
Hard to say to an extent given how packed of an audience they had downstairs here, to the point where The Ripcordz themselves are hard to see behind attendee heads, but it does have the ambiance of the basement punk show that many fans recall in days gone by. Musically, these aggressive and cutting hardcore punk originals will get the job done for fans, and the audio is even a little crisper than Chris' videos of their Loft show last year, so definitely give The Ripcordz' 2024 local concert videos a watch above and below!
Chris' five videos of the two local opening bands include two of alt-rock band The Haze (who played as a trio here) covering two Arctic Monkeys songs, namely "When The Sun Goes Down" and "Bigger Boys & Stolen Sweethearts". If you recall the marketing for the former Skinbox last year, they were advertised as playing 1990s-2000s alt-rock and Arctic Monkeys covers, so the name and drummer changes didn't seem to portend a sound change. In that sense, they were an outlier on this bill, but there's been far more diverse lineups locally than this. The Haze are a talented group, and hopefully they made some new fans before things got heavier! The middle band on August 10th were hardcore punk/crossover thrash quartet Hails, who Chris filmed three videos of, including their Slumshine holdover "Thrashmastertenbillion", this song that I couldn't immediately title, and as embedded below, a longer-ish 3 minute song that also wasn't introduced by name on camera.
Most of Ha!ls' own videos on Facebook are incomplete, and whether by design to encourage live concert attendance or not, it would be handy if they had more full songs to help identify such videos from other sources! On both The Haze's and Hails' videos, the smaller audience near the band's area helps us see more of the basement, and yeah, it's a basement. That said, the aesthetics and ambiance lend itself very well to a punk show, and it looks like everyone had a great time! Ha!ls deliver some ripping thrash/punk originals here, and Chris had a better shot of both local bands than he did for The Ripcordz, so check these out above & below as well!
Finally for today, here's three shorter assorted news items from the last little while, and as usual, these are in alphabetical order by artist name:
- A new video of Bardo guitarist Christopher Neveau playing part of their new original song "Blood Moon" (which he at least co-wrote) was shared from his personal Facebook page to their Facebook page on Friday! Unfortunately, it is a "Reel", so I can't embed it here, and it was uploaded in full horizontal orientation and thusly pillarboxed (why not make it a normal landscape video then?), but the performance is solid and shows his underrated skill level, if with very muffled audio! Give it a watch above, and hopefully Bardo had a good debut at last night's Selias concert!
- In their first Facebook posts since June (reportedly due to "life's trials"), newer local hard rock trio Bullet Train revealed earlier this month that they are working on not one, but two demo EPs, and the first one was in post-production as of September 9th! "The next set of tunes" were also on their way, along with "a new killer kit and studio setup", and a release date for the first demo (which will reportedly be available on CD) will be made in the coming weeks (which clearly means more than two weeks). No word on if their three public singles so far will be on either EP, but this is exciting news for Bullet Train, so follow them for further updates!
- I have removed defunct local glam metal quartet Dirty Virgin from our inactive band links due to the quiet deletion of their Facebook group, which was their last surviving substantive band page. Primarily active from 2007-2010 before reuniting as a support band for two Canadian Nightclub gigs in 2011 & 2012, the 2009 YMCA Battle of the Bands runners-up were ahead of their time in bringing a 1980s throwback sound & visual style to local concert venues, and it's a shame that they didn't last longer. Hopefully we hear more from Bobby, Lionel, Matt, Ryan, and Dickie in the future, and don't miss original guitarist Matt Clement in his current London-based rock band The Stone Doves!
That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site this week! Thanks everyone!
