Saultites In Out Of Town Bands Profile: Infathom

As August winds down, we still have a couple of monthly feature posts to share, and first, here's this month's Saultites In Out Of Town Bands Profile! For the first time in 10 months, we're looking at a band from the United States featuring a past or present Sault Ste. Marie resident, and this band has been keeping busy this year in the Upper Peninsula, so hopefully this month's profile is a good read! As always, we'll profile the local connections, history, and notable happenings of this band, even if they're not all from here, so let's get this profile going, and if anything's wrong or missing, please tell me! (Updated on November 26th, 2014) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Infathom (Munising, Michigan)

Lineup: (Saultites in RED; ex-members in italics)

Dillion Semasky (vocals)
Sean Hayes (guitar)
Keegan Nebel (bass)
Cody Hayes (drums)
Josh Stadler (guitar)

Official MySpace page: http://myspace.com/infathom
Official YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/infathom
Official Facebook page: http://facebook.com/infathomband

Local Info: Though the members of Infathom are all from Munising in the U.P. (2½ hours west of Sault Michigan), I think only one member ever lived here in the past, and apologies if I'm lacking anything here. Frontman Dillion Semasky has lived and attended Sault Area High School in recent years, even launching a short lived local solo band named Novesane last year that didn't appear to take off, along with a brief stint with Half A Man in 2011-2012, and some recent original rap songs. However, he's best known for his work with Munising metal band Infathom, and if you're lucky, you might see them locally here and there!

Band Bio: Formed in the spring of 2008, Infathom started as a metal quartet playing a mixture of covers from bands like Avenged Sevenfold, Pantera, and Papa Roach, but would introduce originals into their set as well. Their first few years aren't easy to document online, but videos of jam sessions and some performances are floating around, including sets at Munising area talent shows. Unlike many similar bands in the area, Infathom are known to cover acoustic songs and ballads occasionally too, which adds to their repetoire nicely! The talented young band seemed to turn things up in 2011, adding second guitarist Josh Stadler to the band and playing at a number of major concerts in the Upper Peninsula, including LemmaFest in Sault Michigan and the PigFest and Turn It U.P. festivals in the Ishpeming area this summer. After a dormant period from 2011-2012, Infathom have been turning it up (albeit as a quartet again) with a number of U.P. concerts, including at least two a year in Chippewa County, so stay tuned for more!

I find that Infathom show a lot of versatility to their sound (especially given their ages), rather than playing one sound only, and I'm impressed overall! It's nice to see a young band focus on newer metal that doesn't have to involve death growling, and they cover some bands you don't see covered often, so they definitely stand out! Dillion Semasky's vocals range from a good clean singing tone to some nice aggressive metal singing that fits with a lot of genres, and the rest of the band shows talent too! I can't speak for Josh Stadler's work with Infathom, but the Hayes brothers mesh really well, Sean's guitar work is pretty impressive, and Keegan Nebel's bass work stands out most of the time as well! Infathom pull off softer songs well too, and when given the right scenario, Dillion can impress as a pure singer as much as a metal frontman! It's a shame that Infathom went on hiatus at what is probably their peak as a band, but hopefully they'll reunite sooner rather than later to rock the U.P. as only they can!

Though Infathom have no albums to my knowledge, they have plenty of original and cover material from live recordings to check out at their official MySpace page! If you're looking for videos, there's even more of those to watch and get a taste of Infathom, so just search for them on YouTube! The band's old 2009-2010 YouTube channel is the best for volume of videos, but the channels of bassist Keegan Nebel and user Michael Cole have some of the best quality recent videos, so I recommend both for interested fans! Here's Infathom playing their originals "Blissful Insanity" and "Dying Breed" at PigFest this past June!


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And so ends the summer months for this monthly series at the SMS, but what out of town band are we profiling next month? I've chosen Paricide, an inactive metal quintet from Petrolia, Ontario (30 minutes southeast of Sarnia) that featured Sue Inside frontman & former Sault Ontario resident Shane Lipsit-Fraser in their lineup! Note that Paricide and the defunct local hardcore band Paraside are two completely different bands, in case someone gets them confused. Look out for our profile of Paricide at this time next week, between September 23rd and 29th! That's all for now, but stay tuned for more news and our review of Sykotyk Rampage's latest album "Zombies" this weekend! Thanks everyone!