Local classical metal band Theatre of Night are slated to return to The Soo Theater for their annual local Christmas concert on Saturday, November 30th! The band has yet to confirm this booking on their own social media, but the Ashmun Street theater announced it on their own Facebook page on September 5th via this poster for upcoming shows during the fall/winter season. As you may recall, this venerable project played their first local concert since 2019 at the Ashmun Street theater on the Saturday after the American Thanksgiving last year, and said scheduling will be repeated in two months, so Theatre of Night will be kicking off the Christmas season in style! This will presumably be Theatre of Night's second local concert with new singer, bassist, and narrator/backing vocalist Marquita, Luke, and Sandi Bernard in the fold, but they have spent most of 2024 posting teaser "Reels" on Facebook, so who's to say if things will look exactly as they did last year.
Expect lots of metallized Christmas carols with a narrative theatrical flourish once again over the US Thanksgiving long weekend from this experienced and professional group no matter what, including another Christmas tour with extra shows downstate! The local concert will start at 7:00 PM, it should be all ages once again, and while admission price/ticket details are not yet known, note that last year's Theatre of Night show had admission by donation with a recommended amount of $20. Visit the above links for more details on what should be a fun and festive night of metal!
Next up, let's get further caught up on St. Ignace metalcore band Heavy Lies The Crown, who we last left off with after their headlining set at the 2nd Street Music Festival in their hometown last month and their announced guitarist switch, so what was next on their docket? The band had a busy weekend just over a month ago, as they first headed to Grand Rapids on August 23rd to open for shoegaze metal band Glassfield at Skelletones, in what was their last show with Nathan Switzer back on guitar (his replacement, Katharsys Theory drummer Kaycee Mason, debuted with H.L.T.C. last month but did not make the trip to Grand Rapids). The guys seemed to have some sort of hang-up on the 4 hour trip southwest, judging by this "Reel" of their vehicle stopped on the side of the road, but as the woman's voice says, "But we did make it!". To hype the show up, this video was posted of members loading gear into the venue.
Courtesy of their Facebook page, frontman Brandon West & drummer Blaze Beairl are seen entering Skelletones, alongside running commentary by the filmer. Not a ton to look at, but it's unique as local band videos go! If you actually want to see their set from this night, two videos were live-streamed on the 23rd, with the longer of the two embedded below (here is the shorter one). Unfortunately, both videos were shot vertically, the very blue lighting is not ideal for clarity, and the longer video is VERY quiet, so prepare your volume dials in advance. What we see in the clips looks brutal in good ways, and hopefully Nathan had a good sendoff, so check out Heavy Lies The Crown in Grand Rapids above & below!
The following day, H.L.T.C. headed to Alpena (2 hours southeast of St. Ignace) to play at this year's French Road Bash, an outdoor metal festival there that they have played at before. On that afternoon, they rocked the Bluegrass Bar Stage as the second of six scheduled bands there, with new guitarist Kaycee Mason's band Katharsys Theory co-headlining (the closing band was Alpena's own Citrus Orange). It was implied on Facebook that Kaycee was involved in the sound for the French Road Bash too, and it sounds like his new band approved of the results! Two videos from Heavy Lies The Crown's set were shared to Facebook, including one of them playing "Knucklebutter", but I'm not embedding it here because they did that thing where a horizontal video is uploaded in vertical dimensions with huge pillarboxing. Why do some pages leave tiny videos like that up rather than re-upload them in a normal 16:9 full-screen orientation?
Instead, embedded here is their set-opening performance of "Bounty" last month, and yes, it was uploaded in the orientation it was filmed in! From where the filmer was standing, bassist Christian Cook was often obscured by that tree, but this is a solidly heavy song that plays to Heavy Lies The Crown's strenghts, and the ambiance of them playing in front of a thick forest is sure neat! Give their French Road Bash videos a watch above & below, and hopefully the festival was a smash hit across the board!
Finally for today, we can officially say that we're caught up on Heavy Lies The Crown updates after this! Last week, Brandon shot and uploaded this video to their Facebook page where he reminded everyone about their new song "These Walls" (wrote during Nathan's return stint), which he says is "comin' out decently soon", later noting that it would come out this fall. He also reminded everyone about the recent lineup changes, including ex-drummer Jaxon Massaway's impending return as their second guitarist, and Brandon noted that this will mean that H.L.T.C. will have three drummers in their lineup! What he didn't mention there is that they are scheduled to make the 3 hour drive to Escanaba at the re-opened Delft Theater on October 19th (source here), though I haven't found much in the way of public details on that event. It will be neat to see Heavy Lies The Crown play a show in Escanaba (in da moonlight?) if it's still in the works!
It remains to be seen what else Brandon, Jaycee, Jaxon, Christian, and Blaze have in store for the rest of 2024, but stay tuned to their social media pages for more as it rolls in, and check out Brandon's update video below!
That's all for now, but stay tuned for weekend concert previews on the site next! Thanks everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment