We're a month+ behind on updates from St. Ignace, Michigan's own Heavy Lies The Crown, so what have the guys been up to over the last weeks of the summer season? On July 25th, the guys unveiled another custom H.L.T.C. skateboard deck that they had for sale on their Facebook page, adding to their eclectic range of merchandise, though it was sold within two days. On the 26th, the guys decided to settle on deathcore as their primary genre, owing to the heavier sounds on their next album, which is a good sign for fans! We did cover their rare public gig at 376 North 2nd Street in St. Ignace on August 5th, but there was much more fallout from their set at at the Michigan Brown Trout Festival in Alpena the previous month via loads of photos of their set, letting fans get more looks at original bassist Danny Tucker's one-off return. After a stretch with no videos, we got lots of them last month!
On August 14th, singer Brandon West shot
this brief video to plug their set at
Michigan Metal Fest in Battle Creek on the 19th, followed by
another quick video asking fans if he should shave his beard in time for said event. He did not, as it turned out, but it would be trimmed down later on. As for Michigan Metal Fest proper, they live-streamed some videos from Born Of Osiris' set and guitarist Ted Olson meeting performers, while you can see lots of pictures of their afternoon set at
this link. Yes, current bassist Christian (Bailey) Cook was back for this show, if not the St. Ignace gig on the 5th. Their next show saw Heavy Lies The Crown return to Alpena on August 26th to play at the French Road Bash for a second straight year, with Brandon hyping their set in
this live-streamed video that morning. His teased beard shaving belatedly occurred between that video and their set, as seen in pictures from the event, albeit leaving a five o'clock shadow.
Their set at French Road Bash (opening again for Katharsys Theory) went well, but got less media attention than their surrounding gigs. As you may recall, H.L.T.C. played another rare Upper Peninsula gig this past Sunday when they took the 52 minute drive west from St. Ignace to
Bates Corner Bar & Grill in Gould City to open for
Tantric and
Redburn, and if you're wondering why we didn't actively cover it on the SMS, it's because Gould City is a 90 minute drive from Sault Ste. Marie, and The Sault Metal Scene's coverage range is an hour's drive from city limits on either side of the border. Still a huge show for such a comparatively small town, and I hope it went well for all involved, including local metal band
Tarnished as fellow openers! Lots of pictures from their set were shared, including some effective views of the staging for this outdoor concert, and hopefully we see some videos in due course!
Heavy Lies The Crown's newest Facebook post from this morning heavily implies that they are working in studio again, so fingers crossed that their teased new album is back in production! As for videos to wrap up with, there was
this heavily filtered clip from
their "Jell-O" music video uploaded as a "Reel", and
this jokey clip of 16 bit video game sprites of the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (White Ranger-era) rocking out to H.L.T.C., but embedded below is Brandon's wife Sara's live-stream of their entire 20 minute Michigan Metal Fest set! This was made for her personal Facebook page but was publically shared to the band's Facebook page two days later. Brandon, Ted, Christian, and Jaxon don't begin performing until 3 minutes into the live-stream, and honestly, there isn't a ton of point in outlining what songs they played because the audio from this camera is
not good, and sounds very much like a really old computer webcam.
I do think that they played some yet-to-be-recorded originals (the first song, whose name sounded like "Bartend", didn't match their existing studio material), but between the distant vertical camera angle and the audio quality, I can't fairly judge what Sara shot. Kudos for trying though, and it looks like they had a receptive crowd in Battle Creek! Yes, they only had a 20 minute set, Michigan Metal Fest's lineup was huge. See how you can make out below, look for more from H.L.T.C. on the site this fall, and stay tuned for weekend concert previews next! Thanks everyone!
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