It's now time for this month's Defunct Local Band Profile! In this monthly feature, we are again looking at a randomly selected defunct or inactive local metal, hard rock, or punk band, and while this project shares much in common with their leader's still extant solo work, there's a lot to like for fans of extreme metal, so here's what you should know!
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Hometown: Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario
Genre: Experimental/Death Metal
Lineup:
Chase James Wigmore, all instruments
(While officially a solo project, Chase did allude to featuring collaborators on some material, though none were ever credited by name)
Audio/Video: Awokest released two albums to major streaming services like Youtube Music in early 2019, namely "Enter The Nightlands" and "Solving The Human Condition", which both remain on sale today on "name your price" models on Bandcamp. A free YouTube-only EP named "The Tweakening" preceded both in the fall of 2018, and a third full-length album named "With Focused Psychosis I Wrote This" also stalled out as a YouTube posting. Other albums were teased with names, artwork, and occasional audio samples, but none saw an intended full release. You can check out songs and videos credited to Awokest on his eponymous YouTube channel, plus the DogRun Stray, Dick Jerkins, and Blood Shed Productions YouTube channels, plus their Facebook page. Here's one of the few Awokest-branded videos featuring Chase on camera, namely his 70 minutes-long "Stray Dog Saga" from mid-2019!
Info/Analysis: Publically launched in late 2018 (though some material was originally recorded as early as 2010), Awokest was originally conceived as the project for prolific local solo musician Chase Wigmore's new extreme metal material, while reserving his folk punk/acoustic music for releases under his own name. While primarily a studio project, Chase did play a solo gig under the Awokest banner in September 2018, when they opened for The Truth Of All Death at the former New American Pub. 2019 was spent releasing and teasing the release of original music, not all of which came out as planned, with updates drastically slowing down in the early 2020s (pandemic acknowledged) despite teasing new albums into the summer of 2020. The Awokest name last surfaced publically via their song "We Are All Going To Die" on YouTube in November 2022, which was placed on his eponymous studio album of the same name later that month
Chase has largely consolidated his original material (genre irregardless) under his own name since 2022, so Awokest as its own entity is likely done & dusted, but fans of his extreme and death metal output will like what Awokest had to offer! "Enter The Nightlands" was mostly made up of existing originals under different project names, but "Solving The Human Condition" effectively brought its dark concept to light with brutal originals, and their other material has a lot of black and death metal intensity! That said, Chase continues to record metal music eponymously, so keep tabs on what he's got cooking up nowadays!
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I hope you guys liked this month's Defunct Local Band Profile! This series will return on or around August 10th, when our Sault Ontario summer stretch ends with our next randomly selected band, namely inactive local Tool tribute band Parabol! Look for that next month and for weekend concert previews on the site next! Thanks everyone!
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