Tarnished Updates, Plus A Look Back At An Old Favourite Local Band Of Mine!!

I'm hoping the site will see more updates and content as we enter the home stretch of July, and fingers crossed that starts with today's post, which has something new from a prominent local band who you may have seen live on stage(!) recently, but we also have something old for local metalheads who frequented live events in the mid-2000s. Here's what you should know!

Sault Michigan hard rock quartet Tarnished have indeed released their debut EP "Down To The Wire" earlier today! Despite not promoting the release anew on their Facebook page, you can now buy or stream it on Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play, Deezer, and iHeartRadio, all as helpfully linked on the band's Distrokid page. On Google Play, the album costs $7.99, though no word as of yet on if it will turn up on other platforms, not to mention it's presumed CD copies ahead. "Down To The Wire" features five songs, including "Cocaine Riot", "Cabin Fever", "Metalyn", "Shortcut", and "The Path". The opening track may interest fans of frontman Alex Traynor's prior group Banned, who first played "Cocaine Riot" live in concerts back in the early 2010s, as seen here. With "Down To The Wire" now on sale, I should confirm that this will be our monthly CD review for July 2020, so look for it at some point in the week ahead, and buy or stream the whole thing above!

While we're on the subject of Tarnished, let's get back to their Rock The Block concert at Crooked Music this past Saturday night, and despite the social distancing guidelines and restricted attendance, it was a hit! So much so that Tarnished are planning to host a second Rock The Block show near the end of August (perhaps on Saturday the 29th?), and they are looking for musicians interested in playing. If you're chosen to perform, you'll receive $25 and get a 45 minute set, and if you are interested, e-mail tarnished.musicviews@gmail.com or message the band on Facebook. Of course, the fluid situation with the COVID-19 pandemic is very much a concern, even if left unsaid by the band, so hopefully things don't get any worse in the next month. Finally for today's Tarnished topics, the guys quietly deleted the two live performance videos from Saturday that had faulty audio (from their own and Letters From Abel's sets), but one of the two has new video footage on the band's Facebook page!

Our first full look at Tarnished with new drummer Gary Croad (and working audio), this sees them cover Queen's "Another One Bites The Dust", as filmed by Crooked Music co-owner Christy Crook for her personal Facebook page, before being publically shared by the band. Despite a vertical camera angle, the video is nicely shot with solid audio, and the lively performance of this Queen classic is well done across the board, so give it a watch below!

Finally for today, with news remaining slow right now, I wanted to give a long overdue spotlight to one of my favourite Sault Ontario metal bands from my teenage years, albeit one who never had a known online page, namely thrash metal quartet Soldiers of Misfortune. This way, they can have some collected literature online. Featuring frontman Mark Kulmala, guitarist Jesse Cook, bassist Alex "Xander" White, and drummer Jonas Gasperas, Soldiers of Misfortune were active from circa 2004-2007, and were mainstays of the local metal scene in the mid-2000s, with many of their concerts still featured in local news articles of the time. Commonly seen sharing the stage with Gates of Winter and Fitswitch in 2005 & 2006, readers may recall S.O.M. opening for out of town bands like Burn The 8 Track, Lights Below, and Sunday Night Cruise, and taking part in major events like Gates of Winter's debut EP release party, Heatwave 2005, and Hempfest 2006, while they did have at least one battle of the bands win.

Soldiers of Misfortune's last documented concert was when they and The Crossed opened for iT and Gates of Winter at The Oddfellows Hall on December 29th, 2006, and they were not still playing live concerts when The Sault Metal Scene launched in July 2007. Jesse & Jonas have continued playing together in metal/hard rock bands like Operation: Killdozer, Winkstinger, The Elements, and The Wyld Stallyns, while Mark and Alex have largely diverted from metal in their succeeding music (like My Father's Son and Cowboys & Indians respectively), and both have furthered their musical pursuits since moving out of town. I was too young to see Soldiers' nightclub shows, but when I got to see them at all ages events (primarily at The Oddfellows Hall), they were reliably a highlight with their hard hitting cover attack, and in my circle, they were a big reason to attend certain concerts!

One of the first local bands I ever saw live in 2005, I fondly remember Soldiers of Misfortune covering songs like Pantera's "Shattered", Van Halen's "Hot For Teacher", and Ozzy Osbourne's "Mr. Crowley" (to one old friend's chagrin), and their enthusiasm, talent, sense of humour, and Jesse's occasional costumes were always a welcome sight even back then. Unfortunately, no public video or audio clips are known to exist online, and the guys may not mind given how they've progressed as musicians in the past 14 years, but I do miss Soldiers of Misfortune, and it would be great to see a reunion show if the cards fell the right way!

That's all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site this weekend! Thanks everyone!