A New Local Album Re-Release, Plus More Buckcherry Videos!!

Things have been quiet lately, but the SMS will be busier in the home-stretch of October 2021, and that starts with a new news post on this Sunday morning, including more new videos from a recent notable concert and leading off, a new album re-release, so here's what you should know!

As promised, defunct local power pop/hard rock trio The Din released the "deluxe edition" of their 2017 debut album "Give In To The Din" on multiple digital platforms yesterday, so what should you know about that? Early promotion for the re-release indicated that there would be 18 tracks, double the amount on the album in it's original form, and whether you expected this would comprise of an alternate version of each song or completely unreleased material, you'll be partially right on both fronts. Two of the nine songs are new in studio form, namely a demo version of the previously unreleased original "Differences" and a 98 second spoken word track named "Our Place In The Scene". The rest are pre-release variants of songs that did make the cut for the album, including an alternate version & instrumental mix of "Flux", first and instrumental mixes of "Potato (Should've Known Better)", a demo version of "Remember", ...

...a first mix of "In Search Of The Perfect Moment", and an instrumental mix of "75". You can stream all 18 songs, new & old, on Spotify and Bandcamp, while the album will run you $7.99 on Amazon or $10 on Bandcamp in mp3 format. Full links for it's streaming/download locations can be found on The Din's Distrokid page. I won't comment on the deluxe edition yet, as this will very likely be reviewed on the SMS this week, but give the whole album a listen/purchase above, and stay tuned for news on when The Din's teased live album "Technically Live" will come out, let alone frontman Mike Haggith's first live-streamed solo concert in over a year tonight on his Facebook page!

Next up, here's the rest of prolific local concert filmer Christopher Paci's videos from Tuesday night's Buckcherry concert at Soo Blaster! Chris started uploading these on Wednesday night, well after his first Bad Chug video was uploaded that morning, but too late for me to include in our last news post on Thursday, which was auto-posted at midnight and completed the previous day. Starting with the headliners, Chris filmed five videos of the Anaheim hard rock quintet playing their set-opener "54321", "Hellbound", "Rain's Falling", "Sorry", and as embedded below, the end of their cover of Bryan Adams' "Summer of '69", followed by their own song "Crazy Bitch", which was extended to over 10 minutes via frontman Josh Todd introducing the band, bantering with the crowd, and covering a bit of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary" before the final chorus. This is all fairly common for this song live, FYI.

While I personally am not a Buckcherry fan, it's great to see them finally make up their May (and November) 2020 date here and tour Canada successfully without any visible illnesses throwing a spanner in the works! I'd have liked to have seen more masks on fans, especially given how packed the floor was for Buckcherry's set, but remember, vaccine passports were mandatory to enter Soo Blaster for this one. Audio has it's scratchier moments, but Chris had a good angle of Buckcherry, and they were on form compared to their Kewadin gigs from the 2010s, so check out all of their videos from Tuesday night above and below!

Chris also filmed three videos of opening local punk trio Redundant's first public concert set in over two years, including of them covering Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison Blues", and an abbreviated 1:40 version of The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop", but embedded below is them playing their own original "What Will You Do". Nice to see Justin, Andrew, and Rick back on stage after far too long, and they seem happy and in their element on these strongly done tracks, though note that Chris was on the opposite side of the stage for their set. Give these a look above & below as well!

Finally, Chris had one more video of local/Ottawa hard rock quartet Bad Chug to upload that didn't go up at the same time as his prior song of theirs, so here it is! Also featuring Aaron on lead vocals, it's a slower number (but still heavy) compared to their first upload from Tuesday night, and appeared to feature Jacob using a talk box for backing vocals, which you don't see here too often! Like before, I couldn't make out enough words to tell if this was an original or a cover. Chris' vantage point of the stage was better here, so Aaron is much easier to make out, but this is at the expense of Kyle, who was at least very active! Give Bad Chug's second video a look below, and hopefully we hear more from them soon!

That's all for today, but stay tuned for our recap of the aforementioned Mike Haggith's revived live-stream concerts tomorrow, but remember that you can tune in tonight at 7:00 PM EST on his Facebook page to watch it live first if you are so inclined! Thanks everyone!