Happy 5th Anniversary From The Sault Metal Scene!!

Hey guys, today marks our 5th anniversary at The Sault Metal Scene, having launched the original Facebook group on July 4th, 2007, and this year, my computer isn't holed up at Staples getting repaired, so our big plans can go up as scheduled (and of course, happy Independence Day to all of our Yooper fans!) You guys are amazing for all of the support and interest since 2007, I never dreamed we'd be around at this level this far along, and I can't thank you all enough! That said, as we've hinted at on the site recently, our main surprise this month for the anniversary is that, for the first time since we defined a coverage range, we're expanding the "local" boundaries for what we should cover on the site! Thanks in part to the results that we received via our poll on the site in May, I was convinced that there was sufficient support to go past 45 minutes drive time from the Twin Saults for our work on the site, but are we going to instantly jump to a 90 minute coverage range on the site, like most of you voted for? I definitely have plans in mind to go that far, but I want to take things slow, so while we've expanded the coverage range on the SMS, it will just be to one hour for now. Though this doesn't seem like a lot, it opens up a lot of new stuff for the site that I'll get to in a bit!

Why the smaller initial expansion? Basically, so we can acclimate ourselves to new shows, bands, and topics that will come up for the site before we gradually move up to a 75 minute range, and finally, 90 minutes. Doubling the range overnight would be a major adjustment and I want things to be gradual and easy to follow for everyone. Note however that the expansions likely won't include the Lower Peninsula, as it's a very different area with few direct local connections, and with the Algoma District and U.P. almost being the same size, I wanna keep things roughly as equal as possible between the two regions.

With that said, what's new with our current one hour range for Sault Ontario! Well, the new towns we're adding into our range include Desbarats, Richard's Landing, Batchewana Bay, and Port Findlay, among other communities in between, which does add a noticeable amount despite it's seeming smallness! Probably the biggest news is that we're adding two new bands formally to our coverage, those being two recently prominent area death metal bands: For All That Is Lost and Inhuman Methods! Both are definitely due for equal coverage on the SMS, and along with the new band we're adding in Michigan, we'll be profiling them in an upcoming special post to sort of welcome them into the full fold, so keep an eye out for that! For concerts and venues, this probably won't add a lot of new places to what we have been covering in Canada, but one aspect this will add is the CASS Cafe sets at Central Algoma Secondary School in Desbarats, which has been home to a number of bands and genres over the past so many years, including metal & hard rock, and I'm also planning to profile CASS Cafe videos in a series of some kind to share these with a deserving local audience! Stay tuned for more of these new integrations into our Sault Ontario coverage!

As for the Sault Michigan area, expanding just 15 minutes more adds a lot more areas to our coverage, so here's some of the more notable spots! In Chippewa County, we've added Raber Township & Trout Lake Township, but neither is really hopping for bands or shows that I've seen. However, the expansion takes us into a new county for the first time, that being Mackinac County, which lies just south of Chippewa, and they've given us some noticeable local additions! New towns added to our coverage range include St. Ignace, Cedarville, Hessel, Moran & Brevort Townships, and the Marquette Township, and these will give us some nice new additions! One is a new band, that being the defunct Cedarville hard rock band Oddfellow, who achieved some solid notoriety in their 2000s run, and they'll add some solid archive material to our links! For shows, we'll get a lot of new additions thanks primarily to the Kewadin Casinos in St. Ignace & Hessel, which both host live entertainment (especially in St. Ignace), and we'll profile these new additions on the site shortly! There are scattered bars and venues in this new range that can also count for concerts, especially from road-friendly bands like Banned, so keep an eye out for some dates (and more) in our newly added communities in our Sault Michigan coverage range!

With that all said, we'll be unveiling all of the new stuff on the site shortly, including a profile post of the three new band additions, a series of CASS Cafe videos, alerts on all of the new concerts that now fit in our local range, and anything else that's newly local on the SMS, so keep an eye out for all that along with the news and feature posts you know and tolerate from before! Also, keep an eye out for our relaunched Twitter page as well, as I'm gonna give that the old college try again today and hopefully I'll stay on top of things there also! Thanks again for all of the support, interest, and readership over the past 5 years, and here's to lots more to come! I can't stress enough how important every one of you guys are to how far this site has came, even if your comments were on the negative side of the spectrum, as they made my work better for all parties. The best is yet to come though, and I hope you guys are along for the ride no matter where we go! Thanks everyone, and remember, further coverage expansions lie in our future!