Happy 7th Anniversary To The Sault Metal Scene, Now With Punk!!

Happy 7th anniversary to The Sault Metal Scene! After a year off last year from any new major updates or changes for our 6th anniversary, we have a big announcement today that will affect our future coverage: The SMS is adding most (if not all) subgenres of punk music full time going forward to our coverage! You may be wondering what took us so long to formally fold non-hardcore punk genres into our range of local bands & concerts, but over time, it's made more and more sense. While I myself am a metalhead first, I've always loved punk and listen to bands like The Misfits, The Exploited, Pennywise, and many others with regularity, even if one local band called me "some metalhead" in their bio. I'm also well aware of how strong and vibrant the punk scene was in the Soo in the 1980s and 1990s, as vividly depicted in Paolo Colasacco's book "Going Underground", and through the available songs, albums, and videos from the era. Plus, our band range on the site has slowly included more and more punk bands over time just from natural evolution and the amount of hardcore punk shows that crossover into both metal & punk realms.

As a result, the ratio of punk bands that we covered on here just through the extant metal ties has shrank, and it's almost ignorant to continue not covering the few punk bands in town that don't crossover into hardcore and metal subgenres, especially as we cover many of their shows already, and it's my hope that this can help in building the punk scene back to levels that it once enjoyed in the area. As a result, we'll begin putting up some feature posts this week to properly "introduce" active punk bands in the coming days (among others, Treble Charger, Redundant, The Northern Tragedy, and The Billy Bastards are guarantees), and after known active punk bands are rolled in to our links and coverage, we'll begin the process of adding defunct and inactive local punk bands with surviving online pages (i.e. The Inner City Surfers, Smeltzer, The Scary Uncles, Room 206, and many others) to the site as well. Full punk bands will also be completely eligible for our monthly feature posts and reviews (including for our out of town series) once rolled in!

Also, I'd like to feature archive videos on the site as a feature mini-series like we did when we expanded our coverage distance, but I concede that might be easier said than done given the amount that exist online. I'll see what I can do though! Now, in terms of added genres, this does not affect the general and classic rock genres that remain out of our coverage range (it gets very tricky to define many of those bands without stretching, unless they do actively play and cover aggressive material.) As well, bands that could be classified as "emo" from when that was a big sound will be assessed band by band, as some didn't fully play a form of punk, but we'll approach that when it comes. Lastly, I'll note that (at least for surviving online pages), there isn't a lot of straight punk bands that we can add from the Sault Michigan area, even on an archive basis, but I will definitely do due dilligence to add what I can from across the river!

This should be an exciting time as we begin giving punk bands the attention they deserve on the site, so be sure to follow along in the coming weeks and beyond, and if you're a diehard metalhead, never fear, as metal & hard rock are still getting ample coverage like always! Thanks everyone, and for our Yooper readers, Happy Fourth of July!