2020: A Look Back In The Year Of Local Metal, Hard Rock, And Punk

To end this very strange year, here is our annual retrospective post on the what went down in the local metal, hard rock, and punk scene in the past 12 months! Of course, ⅘ths of it was spent in a pandemic largely devoid of concerts, so I have made necessary changes to how we usually block out our year-in-review posts, but hopefully I hit on every major relevant story in 2020! Now, let's look back at the year that was... such as it was!

Before everything changed, we were lucky enough to have 2½ months of normalcy in the local scene, with three major hard rock concerts taking place in February, including Mr. Big frontman Eric Martin & Trixter bassist P.J. Farley at The Dreammaker's Theatre at the Sault Michigan Kewadin Casino on the 15th, Theory of a Deadman & W3apons at The Sault Community Theatre Center the next day, and Tom Keifer, Kix, and Faster Pussycat at The Hair Scare Live at The Dreammaker's Theatre on the 22nd. Sault Michigan welcomed out of town bands like BRKN Love, Peril and Scarkazm to the area for pre-pandemic concerts, while Bon Jovi Forever returned to Sault Ontario on February 22nd themselves. Other notable early 2020 shows included The Apocalypse Afterparty joining other Soo's Got Talent finalists to kick off Bon Soo at The Machine Shop, and Handsome Sandwich & the debuting Bridge Heads helping close Room 21 on Valentine's Day, among other events.

Unfortunately, everything abruptly started changing for the worse on March 13th when the first wave of concert cancellations and postponements were announced due to the arrival of COVID-19 in North America and the beginning of it's spread, leading to the 3 month lockdown through June, social distancing measures, mask mandates, indoor capacity restrictions, and smaller lockdowns in Ontario and Michigan in the ensuing months as case counts rose. The concert calendar locally ground to a halt, costing the Soo area major March-June concerts from notable touring acts like Black Label Society, Matthew Good, Candlebox, Buckcherry, Queen: It's A Kinda Magic, Sandman, Peril, Whoop-Szo, Scarkazm, First Jason, The Anti-Queens, The Lows, Destroyer, Tripp 'N Dixie, and many others. Rescheduled dates are unclear at best, if announced at all, given the unknown climate of 2021 ahead, but we'll keep you posted!

The pandemic also cost the area virtually every annual concert festival and yearly event you can think of, and public concerts only resumed on a limited basis at some venues in the late summer, notably including Tarnished's Rock The Block event at Crooked Music in Sault Michigan in July, and the Blood Shed Productions-organized Squatfest in Heyden in August. Otherwise, the hard rock concert calendar in late 2020 was primarily the domain of weekend bar cover bands playing at the few venues willing to host bands with capacity and business-hour restrictions. Fort Creek and Soundcheck defied the pandemic with concerts at both local Reggie's taverns, while Tym Morrison hit the downtown Reggie's and the new Motley Market in recent months, and The Wyld Stallyns played a one-nighter at The Rockstar Bar in August during that venue's brief return of live concerts. With the new Ontario lockdown, things are pretty dead again, but fingers crossed for a 2021 uptick!

A number of local musicians adapted to the new normal (especially during the first lockdown) by holding live-streamed concerts on social media, with Mike Haggith's #LockdownLive series, Tym Morrison's regular slate of at-home gigs, and Tarnished's numerous acoustic duo concerts (despite ongoing audio difficulties) the most prominent for heavier genre acts. Mike and A Dire Setback also moved their CD release parties to at-home streams to give them the launch they deserved, while some annual events like Rotaryfest and The Sky's The Limit shifted to virtual editions in 2020, The Wyld Stallyns made an unadvertised appearance in The Zonta Club's Purses, Pies, and Pinot gala, and new events like SooToday's Come Together Sault Ste. Marie, Coronafest, and Northern Superior Brewing's Songs & A Six Pack gave musicians an outlet to perform at a difficult time.

News didn't stop in 2020 outside of the pandemic, and there were good and bad stories to report that had nothing to do with COVID! In January, GFL Memorial Gardens welcomed the touring Queen musical We Will Rock You, while The Rad Zone re-opened in it's new Queen Street location. Room 21 closed in February, but the Soo welcomed The Borderline to the internet radio airwaves, giving a much needed local alternative! During the first lockdown, veteran local punk musician Mikey Hawdon launched his series of daily quarantunes on his uke(lele), which grew to much bigger and better things in recent months! Also this year: Shaun Antler kicked off her local musician archival project, Long & McQuade moved into it's big new location on MacDonald Avenue, Reggie's Place re-opened under new ownership, Tarnished got airplay on 9&10 News' The Four, The Inner City Surfers released their new single...

...frontman Dustin Jones' main band The Rising Tide (and Tarnished) released their own new music videos, Gary Croad replaced Tommy Korcal on drums with Tarnished, and Shit Liver released their long-gestating 2016 Canadian tour documentary. This was a difficult year, but thankfully, it was still a newsworthy one for unrelated reasons!

If being locked down at home did one thing for local musicians, it encouraged them to write and record in studio, and we got a surprising number of local metal, hard rock, and punk albums this year! The aforementioned Mike Haggith ("If Ever Comes The Day") and A Dire Setback (their self-titled album) got their new discs launched via virtual release concerts during the lockdown, while Sault Michigan's Tarnished put out their own EP "Down To The Wire" in July, not long after their Rock The Block concert. Blood Shed mainstays Crucify The Whore released "P.C. Sells... But I Ain't Buyin'!" and their second "A Couple Of Degenerate Bastards" split with Chase Wigmore this year, while Chris Raginskis' debuting 9 Times Dark project released "Vicissitude" in August. 2020 ended with a bang with two long awaited album releases, namely The Bear Hunters' "The Dead Testament" last month and As It Stands posthumous EP "The Lost Tapes" two weeks ago. Here's to even more high profile new albums in 2021!

Given that most bands couldn't play concerts as normal in 2020, the lack of debuting bands was understandable, though we did see the public concert debuts of The Bridge Heads and Fort Creek this year, while The Isolation Sessions leaned into social distancing in their early branding and videos. It would be unfair to call out bands for being inactive in 2020 for obvious reasons, but there were a few notable bands to publically throw in the towel, like Sault Michigan classic rock mainstays Highway 63 this summer, while both X's & Y's and Sault Ontario's Parabol saw their Facebook pages quietly deleted with no public notice then or since. As well, a handful of groups have not been heard from since the second half of 2019, like Treble Charger, AlgomA, Rotopsy, Pillory, Telephone & Address, The Guitar Gangsters, and Coral Fang, who were all moved to our inactive band links this year. Hopefully 2021 is a better one for band activity!

As always, we'll end things with comebacks and returns to activity from prominent bands, and while few had the opportunity to play a concert as part of their resurgences, some familiar faces still made their presences known again in 2020! Acts like Ashoka At The Show, Black Cloud, Foothill Road, Mike Cliffe, Mike McCleary, The Shaner, and SweetKenny all came back to activity this year with new studio material or live performance videos,hopefully presaging more to come in the new year! Also, Ottawa's Bad Chug reunited and relocated to Sault Ontario with a Buckcherry opening slot still waiting in the wings, That's Chester posted a new Pink Floyd cover to honour late bandmate Eugene Orlando, Skeyes of Seven resurfaced to compete in a Corus Radio song contest, ex-No Arrow drummer Joe Falco resurfaced with solo videos on Youtube, and Destroilet came back to sell new t-shirts. Here's to more from them & others in the new year!

2020 was not a great year, but there was enough good in it where you can't completely write it off. That said, 2021 has to be a better year for the local metal, hard rock, and punk scene, how can it be worse? I'll be forgoing our usual "new year forecast" post tomorrow because, frankly, no one knows what 2021 has in store, let alone when we'll have some semblance of a normal concert calendar again, so why waste time when everything could be wrong? In any event, I hope everyone has a Happy New Year, and we'll see you back with next month's "Where Are The New Albums?" post on Saturday, with more news to follow when available! Thanks everyone!