We're now 11 months removed from Sense of Truth's most recent local concert, and through that time, the rumours of their debut EP's eventual release have been ongoing. We know that there's been holdups due to band member work commitments, the issues related to the album artwork, and now, their guitarist search, and over that span, the most we've publically heard are some scattered radio airplay and the samples on their MySpace page. With that said, I was browsing the newly redesigned website of Stereo Soul Studios, where they recorded their EP with Miguel Gauthier in February before he moved to Los Angeles. Since the last time I've been there, I found some interesting stuff on the recording studio page: Two full songs from the EP and it's apparent artwork! The songs posted are "Push & Pull" (a current preview track on MySpace) and one new track unavailable on other pages, "Vicious Cycle"! Nice to see that on the EP, I was thinking it'd make the cut! This reminds me of when Woods of Ypres' "Our Union (In Limbo)" was posted by Miguel in 2009 before the band acknowledged it. I won't give detailed thoughts on either "Push & Pull" or "Vicious Cycle" yet, as I am waiting to review the full EP, but they're solid tracks, click here to listen! (third band down.)Oh, and the artwork? Kinda plain, but it works well! As you can see by the picture, it's likely a self-titled release, and I still love their ambigram wordmark! Odd that this type of album cover could be so problematic, but really, I don't know much concerning album packaging. Nice stuff though, I'll keep you all posted!
Next up, here's a new band to add to the SMS listings! Well, not really "new", they broke up in 2009, but the page was only just added. Do you guys remember Operation: Killdozer? They were the local metal group from the spring of 2009 that featured notable local musicians like former Fitswitch bassist Jason Bourcier on vocals, WinkStinger drummer Jonas Gasperas, and Bear Hunters bassist Justin Lam, among others. I believe they only played two shows, the YMCA Battle of the Bands and at that year's SNFU concert, both taking place at The Grand Theater. I enjoyed them, but they didn't last too long, and for almost two years, I had no page for them.... until now! They in fact did have a Facebook group, which Jonas started, but the thing that threw me off was the self-deprecating tone of it, that featured fans and band members alike trashing Operation: Killdozer on levels that made the group look like it was anti-band. Well, it's in fact Operation: Killdozer's page, and it has some photos, amusing statements, and not a whole lot else. Still, there's enough to include them on the SMS, so click here to check out their Facebook group! If you wanna hear them, click here to check out a video of the band playing a song named "Pieces Of You"! Quality aside, it wasn't a bad performance!
Thirdly, here's some notes on a popular Sault Michigan bar/concert spot. Since we started covering Sault Michigan bands and shows in the summer of 2007, The Bird on East Portage Avenue have been a recurring sight when discussing local shows. However, we've never had an internet page for them... until now! As it turns out, they've had a MySpace page since at least April 2009, but it's not in use anymore. That's not all though, as they have no less than two Facebook pages! This one is a standard "fan page", while you can check out their page formatted like a normal Facebook account by clicking here. The latter page has been around since December, while the fan page was launched in February. What do they tell us about The Bird? Well, for one, that's not even technically it's name. Their official name is Golanka's Bar, a reference to the owner, but nowhere do people seem to call it that officially, as The Bird seems to be the casual use name for the bar (a'la The Rosie & The Frog.) Neither page has much in the way of concert news, though a past Splitshot concert weekend had a connected event page for it. Still, check the above links for photos, drink special news, and more! If anything metal concert-related pops up on a Bird page, I'll let you all know!
Now, here's some assorted updates to some of the links in our "Other Local Metal Links" section, where we store metal-relevant links that don't fit in other categories on the site. Firstly, I switched links for the defunct Northern Ontario music publication Northern Rocks Magazine, as their website has now expired, presumably due to a failure to renew the domain name. Shame, it was a good site, and the back issues were fun reads! I replaced it with their inactive Facebook group, so we didn't have to remove it! I did have to delete the MySpace page for Woods of Ypres' defunct independent label Krankenhaus Records, as it has no relevant information anymore, and the new MySpace layout crippled it's theme. Odd that there's no page for it's successor Practical Art Records yet, I'll let you know if I find one! Also, I deleted the link for SooNews.ca, which is now completely dead with all old archive news also shut down. I replaced it with it's successor site, LOCAL2, which is bound to have metal news eventually! Two more pages were deleted, those being the inactive local music forum The 705 Music Scene (which had all of it's threads taken down in lieu of it's replacement, the 705 Video Magazine) and the defunct concert venue Arcadia Coffeehouse, whose website was made private, so we can't view it anymore without an invite. For more, check the above links!
And finally, here's this week's classic video! I actually had two reasons for picking this one: A. The band in question is playing this weekend, and B. This video is being deleted from it's original site on April 29th. What do I mean? Well, Google recently announced that they're planning to delete all of the videos hosted on their old Google Video service, which basically became obsolete when they purchased YouTube. As such, this would cause the permanent deletion of all videos originally uploaded onto Google Video, unless you transfer them to YouTube or physically download them and re-post them elsewhere. I contemplated doing a miniseries of local metal-relevant videos from there on the SMS, but aside from the Gates of Winter videos that are now completely on YouTube, there's little there that would fit on the SMS. However, I did find one classic video on there, and it's a live video of As It Stands from before their initial breakup! This is of the band playing an original song (name unknown) at what I believe is the March 31st, 2007 Oddfellows Hall show where they opened for Dead & Divine the first time around! The band's current lineup is intact here, and the band sound good, but the audio's fairly scratchy. Despite the quality, you can tell their sound's really evolved since then, but it's still a good performance!Uploaded by an uncredited Google Video user in April 2007, this video can be viewed through April 29th at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3172072824223605483, when it (and all other Google Video uploads) will be deleted. So I ripped it from there to post on the SMS' YouTube channel, and NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS INTENDED! This video would be gone from the internet next week if I didn't grab it anyway, so give it a look below, and make sure to check out the much improved As It Stands TONIGHT at The Rosie!
That's all for today, but I will see you guys at The Rosie TONIGHT! Thanks everyone!
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