LSSU Battle Of The Bands Results, Plus Videos From Two Acts!!

As you may know, Lake Superior State University held a fan-voted battle of the bands at their on-campus Arts Center on Thursday, marking the first battle of the bands in either of the Twin Saults since before the since the NLFB Meltdown battle in Sault Ontario in 2017. Oddly, LSSU didn't announce the results online after the fact, but we now know who won and how the competitors did, so who won this rare Sault Michigan battle? New local punk quartet The Sole Aggressors, who took home the $150 cash prize after winning the fan ballot! Apparently, they won by just three votes over rising young Dafter singer/guitarist Molly Escherich (who won $50), while the third place band was reportedly new local hard rock quartet Double Jack. The fact that these three acts made the podium and the more established Heavy Lies The Crown, Kevin Blakeney, and Tarnished did not may be seen as an upset, but remember that this was fan voted.

I'm writing this before I see videos from Thursday, so the actual performances should not be discredited, but many would see a fan-voted battle of the bands with no judges as being a popularity contest and not a true measure of each act/set. Still, this is the first local battle of the bands of any kind in over six years, so I'm just glad that one was held, and hopefully more (from LSSU or otherwise) are held in the future! Videos have turned up from half of the competitors on Thursday, not including The Sole Aggressors, H.L.T.C., or Kevin (yet?), and while Kevin didn't knowingly lean to heavier music in the past, we will have more from the two un-filmed bands on the site next week, and congratulations to The Sole Aggressors for their big win! A lot of our post-battle knowledge comes from Molly Escherich, who posted about it a good deal on her Facebook page and also uploaded videos from it to her YouTube channel!

Molly was actually the first performer at the Arts Center on Thursday, and her entire 15 minute set was filmed for her channel, where she covered Eddie Rabbitt's "Driving My Life Away", Pop Evil's "100 In A 55", System of a Down's "Aerials", and Slipknot's "Snuff", before playing an original song named "We Are Still Here". I severely doubt that this will be the last time we talk about Molly on here (check back for our next Sault Michigan/battle post), but she has a good voice and guitar abilities, and has a natural audience rapport, and it is very encouraging to see someone of her age covering songs like these in the E.U.P.! Check out her set below!

Finally for this post (there's more coming next week), let's skip ahead to the fourth band to play at LSSU on Thursday, namely local classic metal/hard rock band Tarnished, in their first gig with new bassist Parker Talentino, who reportedly joined the band a month ago. As it turns out, frontman Alex Traynor is Molly's guitar instructor, which is neat to learn! Molly (or a friend/family member) filmed Tarnished covering Local H's "Bound For The Floor", Van Halen's "Eruption" (naturally leading directly into their cover of The Kinks' "You Really Got Me"), and Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song", which didn't quite take them to their 15 minutes allotted on Thursday, but I can't confirm if the filmer missed a short song before "Bound For The Floor" or not. I also can't confirm why they only played covers, perhaps to ease Parker into live gigs and/or maybe as a play to grab maximum audience attention with familiar songs?

Performance-wise, everyone sounded good, and if this battle had judges, Tarnished would definitely have won brownie points for showmanship and Alex's guitar skill, especially on the "Eruption" solo! Parker seemed to fit in well on bass too, if a little stiff during this mini-set. The Achilles heel with this video was that it was shot vertically, and while that wasn't a problem for Molly, it rendered Alex, Parker, and Josh very tiny in the background, not to mention that Molly's set had zoom and Tarnished's didn't. Still a very strong and heavy performance for classic metal fans, so give Tarnished's battle set a watch for yourselves below!

We'll have more from the battle and Sault Michigan bands in general next week, but that's all for today, and stay tuned for more from Sault Ontario acts next week as well! Thanks everyone!