LOCAL CONCERT ALERT (Gutter Creek) & A Bunch Of New Videos!!

Keeping our regular post streak going with this busy summer season (definitely a blessing after two years of pandemic curses), we have a bunch of new videos to check out on this Monday evening, but first, here's a LOCAL CONCERT ALERT to help end the summer season with!

Multi-national southern metal band Gutter Creek will make their local concert debut on Thursday, September 1st at The Rockstar Bar! This relatively new band (only forming last year) will be touring Canada in support of their self-titled debut album, and a Soo stop is a given as their guitarist is Sault Ste. Marie native Matt Hanchuck, who many readers will know from the Thunder Bay thrash metal band Wreck-Defy. While we have yet to see Wreck-Defy perform on a local stage, that band's bassist Greg Christian (yes, formerly of Testament) will be performing on this tour, and Gutter Creek drummer Derrick Kroll (ex-Alphakill) was a prior live drummer with Wreck-Defy, so this is the next best thing! Don't expect an identical sound to Wreck-Defy though, with Danish lead vocalist Soren Adamson (ex-Denied/Dignity) being very distinct from Greg Wagner, not to mention their more groove-based, southern rock-tinged (but still heavy) sound.

No word on potential opening bands as of this writing, but it is good to see The Rockstar Bar booking outside of Saturdays again, if in a few months! Expect a 19+ age limit and 9:00 PM start time on September 1st, and ticket prices are not out yet, so stay tuned for details on that front over the summer. Should be a solid concert for fans of straightforward, old school metal with a diverse lineup playing a nice mix of styles, and Matt's homecoming alone will be worth noting, whether you knew him before he moved out of town or from Wreck-Defy, so visit the official Facebook event page for more details, and we'll let you know when updates roll in!

Next up, if you've been wanting to see/hear some new content from prolific local/Thompson, Manitoba alt-hard rock musician Mike Haggith, you're in luck, as he live-streamed an hour's worth of live performance footage onto his YouTube channel on Saturday! While he never promoted this in advance on his Facebook page, Mike provided musical entertainment at this year's Relay For Life fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society on Saturday, and Mike live-streamed both sets at the C.A. Nesbitt Arena that day in Thompson rather than including the intermission. In the first video embedded below, you'll see Mike play (in performance order) "MorningStar", "If Ever Comes The Day", a cover of Tears For Fears' "Everybody Wants To Rule The World", a brand new song named "If Only You Could Hear Me", a cover of Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Freebird", "The Nature of the Times", and "Come On Home".

Set #2 (in the second shorter video) is almost all covers, with Mike tackling Simple Minds' "Don't You (Forget About Me)", The Foo Fighters' "Times Like These", The Barenaked Ladies' "The Old Apartment", and Tears For Fears' "Shout", before closing with one more original song, namely "Take Back The Moon".  Filmed from the floor of the stage pointing up at Mike, the videos look clear but both suffer from a low framerate and very muffled audio quality, with the hockey arena venue setup likely a partial factor in that. Shame there weren't more responsive fans either, but Mike's performnances are technically sound and with fun banter in between, so give everything a look above and below!

Also, here's some new concert videos from another relocated local act, namely local/Barrie crossover thrash quartet Spades GT, who posted two more videos from their show at at The Rockpile in Toronto last month onto their YouTube channel over the weekend! One is of their existing Jack Spades-era original "Crossroads", but embedded below is their first brand new song that they never played before their move and name/lineup changes! The song is entitled "Hands", and it definitely fits in with the existing Spades oeuvre, if via a slightly more deliberate pace and relatively longer runtime. Solid stuff, washed out visual quality aside, so check it and "Crossroads" out above & below, and stay tuned for more from Spades GT!

We'll close today with a new song from Sault Michigan progressive metal solo project X's & Y's' YouTube channel last last month! Entitled "Oculus", this is the newest instrumental track planned for the Life's Eclipse successors' upcoming debut album "The Obsidian Dream" (if you believe the video description, it'll be track #7). Slower and bassier than Jason's prior song "Solid Glass", this still delivers some brutal riffs and djent action while it lasts, so give it a listen below!

That's all for today, but stay tuned for a surprisingly stacked batch of mid-week concert previews on the site tomorrow! Thanks everyone!