Sunday, September 5, 2010

New Kiss Videos, Upcoming Album Updates, And A Look Back At 2008's Case's Music Battle Of The Bands!!

I'm back with at least one more assorted news post before we review Sykotyk Rampage's "Bella Disgusta", and today, we have some newly uploaded videos, and some new details on a couple upcoming local metal albums, so let's start with a pair of new videos!

Hey Kiss fans, we have two new videos to share from last month's Kiss concert at The Essar Center! These come courtesy of YouTube user bigphatwilly, who uploaded these videos onto his YouTube channel on Friday. Neither are of the highest quality video we've seen compared to similar videos of either song, but here's what you should know! One is a two minute clip including the first part of "I Was Made For Loving You", preceded by Paul Stanley's crowd rallying that led to his zipline voyage to the other end of the arena. The audio isn't bad when it's just talking, but when the song starts, it does get staticy. However, bigphatwilly's seat gave him a great angle of where Paul landed for the song, so that's worth noting! Click the song's title to check it out! The other is embedded below, and it's his video of "Detroit Rock City"! It's a far angle clip that has some blur, but it captures the pyro explosions pretty well! Other than that, it's about the same audio and video quality as the "I Was Made For Loving You" video, but cause it's longer and has the full song, it's embedded below, so check it out! And for more new Kiss videos, click here or visit the above links!



Next up, here's updates on a pair of local albums! I've edited our September "Where Are The New Albums?" post to reflect these, but that was posted three days ago, and I'm not sure how many of you go back to read stuff that old, so I'll tell you guys what's new on that front! Firstly, recording sessions for Garden of Bedlam's full length debut, tentatively titled "Everything Will Die", have NOT completed yet. At Thursday's Endast show, frontman Buzz told me that there were still some vocal tracks to finish up at Stereo Soul Studios, and he said that the Kiss situation and opening for them threw their recording schedule out of whack. But never fear, they are almost done!

The other new update comes from Sykotyk Rampage, who recently made some changes to their release schedule. Rather than releasing a double album named "Genius Mushrooms With Thoughts Of Intellect" with 25 songs, they will split the album into two separately packaged albums with 12 songs each. One, retaining the original name and album artwork, will have the first 12 songs in order, while the second half will now be titled "Genius Mushrooms With Thoughts Of Stupidity" (artwork on your left), and will feature the remaining songs, with the exception of "Silence", which was removed from the track listing. Maybe it really was just silence, explaining the removal? Both halves of this concept series which delves "into the realm of hallucinogenic musical brainscans" are still scheduled for a December 1st release, but if their last two albums are any indication, they could very well be released later than that. For more information on Sykotyk Rampage's 24th and 25th albums, check out their discography on their Facebook page!

And finally for today, here's a classic video find that I couldn't help but post online to help keep it well exposed! Yesterday, when I was researching Stillbroke bassist Nathan Bouliane's first tenure with the band, I came across SooToday's review of the 2008 Case's Music Battle of the Bands at The Canadian Nightclub which Stillbroke competed in. And wouldn't you know it, there was a video attached, which was filmed by SooToday's Tyler Simpson and later edited and posted with the article! It featured 30 second clips of all 9 competing bands, including Behind Society, Caddy Street Avenue, Fountain of Betrayal, Horizon, Imination, The Soo Country Rollers, Stillbroke, The Unforgiven, and Vitamin X, followed by the award announcements from former Case's Music owner Mike Case. The winners in the high school division were Stillbroke, and the elementary school division winners were Fountain of Betrayal, with each band recieving $100 and recording time at Green Room Studios. I know Stillbroke used theirs to record "Sick & Tired", though I'm not sure what came of Fountain of Betrayal's recording time. Individual awards went to Stillbroke's Jesse Frigault for best singer & Nathan Bouliane for best bassist, Caddy Street Avenue's Andrew Dal Cin for best drummer, and one of The Unforgiven's guitar players for best guitarist, though I couldn't make out his name in the video, which I'll show you guys in a second!

It's been over 2 years since this battle, and I wanted to point out some other interesting notes from it, if that's alright! Firstly, I noticed that SooToday's above article referred to the bands as "the future of the Sault music scene", but of them, I think only two are still active under that name, Stillbroke and Caddy Street Avenue. There's lots of familiar faces though, like The Unforgiven, who I remember seeing at an outdoor show at Bellevue Park that year. Interesting to see Stillbroke's original form too, which also included current drummer Sam DeDominicis on guitar & original members John Armstrong on drums & Joe Kargianakkis on the keyboard! You may recognize John, Joe, and Nathan as members of the local indie band The Outside Lights as well. I'm really interested in what happened to Fountain of Betrayal (pictured), cause for elementary school kids, they were pretty talented, and were metal to boot! It's odd seeing some musicians in multiple bands too, but I've heard that happening before at other Case's Music functions. The bands were of varying quality and genre, but most of them had some real promise! And, it's nice to see that all of the awards except one went to the metal and hard rock bands, but that's the metalhead in me talking!

The Case's Music battles were a great way to help out young local musicians, and here's hoping they come back in 2011! Because the SooToday article isn't liable to be read frequently enough to give this video proper exposure, I decided to upload it to The Sault Metal Scene's YouTube channel to give it the exposure it deserves! Remember, I didn't film this video, Tyler Simpson from SooToday did, he deserves 100% of the credit, and I'm uploading this with THE BEST POSSIBLE INTENT! The original video file can be downloaded at this location, or from the original SooToday article, and I MEAN NO HARM OR INFRINGEMENT! That being said, check out the highlights of the 2008 Case's Music Battle of the Bands below! (The Unforgiven are 0:31 in, and Stillbroke are at 4:31, with Fountain of Betrayal and the awards immediately following them.)



That's all for now, but stay tuned for my review of Sykotyk Rampage's "Bella Disgusta", which is looking likelier and likelier to be our next post! Stay tuned for that, and more!

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