Last Month's Poll Results & The Debut Of SMS March Mayhem!!

It's poll day at the SMS! I apologize for this being late a day, I was working out a lot of kinks in what will constitute our next poll(s). This will be interesting, to say the least, but before we get to that, we have a poll from last month to outline the results to! As you may remember, we posed thia question to you guys last month: "What was your favourite local metal concert of 2010?" 31 votes, decent total, could have been better or worse! Remember, this poll included almost all of the choices from the prior half year polls on 2010 concerts, and does this declare a definite winner? Give it a look and see, as here are the results!

Frightlight at Coch's Corner on June 16 (7 votes, 23%)
Garden of Bedlam at Foggy Notions on February 27 (3 votes, 10%)
Turner Up at The Canadian Nightclub on March 27 (3 votes, 10%)
Algoma Hope4Haiti at Nite-Life Dance Club on February 20 (2 votes, 6%)
Sense of Truth at The Canadian Nightclub on February 26 (2 votes, 6%)
Lion Ride & Sense of Truth at The Canadian on May 22 (2 votes, 6%)
Garden of Bedlam & Half Past at The Canadian on April 2 (2 votes, 6%)
Endast & Blood Drunk at Foggy Notions on September 2nd (2 votes, 6%)
Total Chaos at The Oddfellows Hall on Nov. 21st (2 votes, 6%)
Sativa Rose at The Roosevelt Hotel on December 23rd (2 votes, 6%)
Other (2 votes, 6%)
Garden Of Bedlam at The Rockstar Bar on November 12th (1 vote, 3%)
Sativa Rose at Foggy Notions on December 31st (1 vote, 3%)
Caveman Morrison at The Roosevelt Hotel on April 9-10 (0 votes, 0%)
Crued at The Canadian Nightclub on May 1 (0 votes, 0%)
Downtown Showdown at The Oddfellows Hall on May 28 (0 votes, 0%)
Kiss at The Essar Center on August 10th (0 votes, 0%)
Gunz N' FN' Rosez at The Rockstar Bar on September 23rd (0 votes, 0%)
Grady at The Grand Theater on November 16th (0 votes, 0%)
The Mark Rand Band at Coch's Corner on December 29th (0 votes, 0%)

So, how do the results look? Well, seven concerts tied for last with no votes, none more surprising than Kiss at The Essar Center in August. Seriously, NO ONE picked that enormous concert? Very surprising. Garden of Bedlam's Rockstar Bar show in November and the New Years Eve concert at Foggy Notions tied for 12th place with a single vote, both of which seem a bit off given the reception they both got! Amazingly, right above them was an eight way tie for fourth place with two votes each, and while all deserve a high placement, the logjam is something I'm not used to seeing. You think there'd be more of a spread! The second place options tied with three votes each, those being Garden of Bedlam's Foggy Notions show in December and Turner Up's March show at The Canadian Nightclub, though voters on that choice may have just picked them in general for the whole year. I expected they'd get higher, no worries there! And in first place, just as they were for the first half of 2010 poll, was the "secret" Frightlight concert at Coch's Corner! The secretive nature of it kept people wondering, and if you were there, you'll recognize why this had such a big impact! I still wish I could have attended, but there you have it, the winner of the "favourite concert of 2010" poll is Frightlight's secret show in June!

So, what is this month's poll? I've decided to try something different, as inspired by the current NCAA college basketball tournament! I've long been against polls on the SMS which compared bands individually, as I don't want to seem preferential or biased towards specific bands. However, I had a good idea for a poll event that would feature bands competing in a fun, hassle-free tournament a'la "March Madness" to see who could be considered the "winner". After getting a positive reaction from some SMS readers when I proposed the idea, I'm running with it, and we'll see how it goes over! So, I'd like to announce the debut of The Sault Metal Scene's March Mayhem! (EDIT, 4:24 PM: I replaced Turner Up in the bracket to reflect their demise as an active band, and replaced them with Skull After Betrayal, with alphabetical adjustments where needed.)


Click on the image to see the full bracket, which will be updated frequently! This will be an eight week tournament event featuring four matchups a week (until the "final four" are decided) involving 28 of the higher profile active metal and hard rock acts in Sault Ontario! I wanted to get it to 32, but I was having trouble getting that high. The 28 bands I chose are all active at present (well, maybe not Bring The Fallen, but nothing's official), and they'll face off in this single elimination tournament, a'la "March Madness"! Nothing's on the line here besides bragging rights, it's simply for fun, curiosity, and to see if something like this would even be popular for the SMS to attempt. In case anyone's wondering, the seeding is done by alphabetical order, as I found it's the only fair way to do it, I couldn't rank bands and risk alienating or seeming biased towards any of them. That said, if you've noticed As It Stands, Garden of Bedlam, Lion Ride, and Woods of Ypres got byes to the second round, it's only to ensure that after the first round, the tournament can have a 16-8-4-2-1 breakdown like a usual tournament, with no screwy rounds. Those four bands were given the free pass for their recent local prominence, not on personal preferences, so that's why they'll skip the first round.

SMS March Mayhem will take place over the next eight weeks, with the opening round taking place over the next three weeks through April 9th. The second round will be two weeks long, ending on April 23rd. The quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals will all run for a week each, ending with a final winner on May 14th! So each individual matchup will be it's own poll, running for a week, with four matchups taking place each week until the semifinals. So the first four 1st round matchups alphabetically will run until next Saturday, so VOTE TODAY! Here are the matchups!

Which death metal quintet will take the battle between The Bear Hunters & Bring The Fallen? Can Browbeat frontman Dutch Vanderploeg overcome his old band Caveman Morrison in this contest between local hard rock trios? When Changing Waves collide with Destroilet, will old school hardcore trump the new? And can Gates of Winter pull out a victory over Frightlight despite their slow activity and low profile of recent years? VOTE TODAY on your left to help decide! Remember, the Bear Hunters/Bring The Fallen winner faces As It Stands in three weeks, the Frightlight/Gates winner takes on Garden of Bedlam, and the winners of this week's other matchups face each other! You have ONE WEEK to pick the winners of these matchups, so get voting!

Stay tuned later tonight for a new news post featuring some more big recent news, and I'll see you guys TONIGHT at The Rosie for Browbeat! Thanks everyone!