It's been a month since we last covered updates from St. Ignace, Michigan deathcore band Heavy Lies The Crown on the SMS, so here's what the guys were up to in late January and early last month! When we left off on January 28th, H.L.T.C. had just announced the third annual third annual 2nd Street Music Festival at 376 North 2nd Street in St. Ignace for August 9th, and after that, they shared a "Reel" on their Facebook page of them playing an original song at last year's 2nd Street Fest. My negative thoughts on the conceit of "Reels" are well known, but it is nice to finally see a public video of Heavy Lies The Crown's set from last year, reportedly on the hottest day of last year too! Still, I'd much rather this have been a normal, horizontally framed (and externally embeddable) video without forcibly pillarboxing it into vertical dimensions with captions in the dead air. The following day, the band asked fans who they would want to see play at this year's festival.
The band did suggest the possibility of hosting two separate nights of music, one explicitly for metal bands that don't have to be local to the area, and one just for fellow local bands, but we'll let you know if this plan goes into place! Another "Reel" was shared on January 30th featuring footage of them playing "Bounty" at the French Road Bash in Alpena last August, but in this case, it's a re-posting of an actual video that we featured and embedded here at the time. That same day, Heavy Lies The Crown updated fans as to their album recording sessions, and at the time, "approximately four songs are complete with vocals, with a couple more remaining". Will the new album be more of an EP given the implied number of songs? They also hinted that "we are working on something exceptionally innovative for a song or two", so we'll have to see what they're getting at there! What else did they have to say on January 30th?
H.L.T.C. were (at the time) looking to book concert dates in the Lower Peninsula on Friday, April 11th and maybe a show in either Western Michigan or in Wisconsin on April 18th, but did they get a gig on one/both nights? Stay tuned! The following day, singer Brandon West posted an update where he noted that he was "going to get together with the boys today" to "track some vocals, and who knows, maybe write a filthy little number". That post was attached to a video of a soundboard in pink lighting, but while it's not a "Reel", I didn't embed it here because it's 9 seconds long and has no audio. Also on January 31st, they revealed that one of the songs on their debut (and formerly self-titled) studio album "Knucklebutter" was about a comic book character, heavily implied to be Spawn in the comments. I think the song in question is the final track "A Hell Bound Heart", if you're curious.
Vocal tracking for their new album was still ongoing as of February 1st, and two days later, the guys announced another upcoming concert date, albeit one five hours south of the Soo. On Saturday, April 12th (hence their search for a downstate booking the previous day), they and four other metal bands will open for Clarksville, Tennessee deathcore band Autumn Lies Buried at Nassaru's Metal Memorial Show at The Music Factory in Battle Creek. Hopefully everyone on board pays tribute to Joshua in the most fittingly brutal way possible! On February 4th, H.L.T.C. noted that they settled on the name they did because the full quote "heavy lies the head that wears the crown" was too long for a band name. The next day, another "Reel" (and an unusually narrow video at that) was shared to Facebook, this time from their set at The Vernors Room at The Crofoot for the Born Of Osiris show in Pontiac in May of last year. Fuzzy visuals but the metal is loud and lively!
Remember, it was the Pontiac show last year where current drummer Blaze Beairl debuted with Heavy Lies The Crown, albeit as DJ mixing at a turntable (Jaxon hadn't moved to rhythm guitar/left for his travelling day job yet), while this was early in Nathan Switzer's brief return to the band on lead guitar. Why couldn't that video have been a normal embeddable one, I don't know, but check it out above, and we'll have much more from Brandon, Kaycee, Christian, Blaze, and Jaxon(?) on the site soon, especially given how much they've been posting in recent weeks! Thanks everyone!
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