We made it to March 2026, so let's kick off the month with a post devoted to two different acts with a lot to get into, so here's what you should know!
It's been too long since we took a dive into Sault Michigan hard rock trio Crush's Facebook page, so what have the guys been up to in recent months? Well, aside from last month's show with About:Blank at The Savoy Bar, which neither band plugged on social media that I was able to find. On December 9th, they posted this brief video of an unidentfied band member greeting the statue of the French fur trader located inside Sault Ste. Marie's roundabout (that'd have been a bit of a climb up!), while another video from four days later during their St. Helen concert the previous month sees frontman Alex Traynor's surprise encounter with a lighter in an unexpected place. I can only assume that it was that road trip where Crush fell in love with the Big Boy restaurant chain, which became a running gag in posts over the winter! The next video sees guitarist Josh Fair play an acoustic Christmas song from December 19th.
Presumably titled "Randolph The Reindeer", this is jokey and somewhat ribald, so whether you want to watch it out of season or not, keep that in mind! Adding to the seasonality (apologies for the delay in getting to these), the Tarnished spinoff band posted a video called "What's Eating Santa Claus?" on Christmas Day, where a drunken and belligerent St. Nick has car trouble, drives to a gas station for smokes, goes to a bar, and gets into other antics. I would have to guess that the guys in Crush are familiar with the Trailer Park Boys, and it's an amusing video if you don't mind watching it 2+ months late! Lastly is their new 10+ minute video where the guys bake cookies, and to make things comically complicated, frontman Alex Traynor is blindfolded, bassist Isaac "Iggy" Royer is listening to loud music on headphones, and Josh isn't allowed to talk (see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil).
I'll let you guys find out how the cookies turn out, but there are definitely laughs to be had as Alex tries to tell Josh what visual signals to give Iggy so he can do the primary recipe, and hey, you don't see other local bands doing this! The video ends with the announcement of two upcoming concerts in May (at least these ones got announced!), but both will see Crush hit the road for downstate gigs in Ann Arbor and Battle Creek. Unfortunately, I can't embed the cookie one here because Facebook content matched the song that Crush used over the show announcements (Carly Rae Jepsen's "Call Me Maybe"), so give it a watch at this link, and here's "What's Eating Santa Claus?"!
Finally for today, I wanted to acknowledge the Milwaukee goth metal project 616's cover of Ozzy Osbourne's "Patient Number Nine" that made its way to major streaming services last month. On some streaming platforms, the song is labelled as "feat. Woods Of Ypres", which definitely caught fans of the defunct Sault Ontario blackened doom metal band by surprise. Things were clarified in a thread on the Woods Of Ypres FanClub Facebook group, where it was revealed that 2008-2010 Woods guitarist Bryan Belleau (who appears on "Woods IV: The Green Album") performed on the cover. This isn't a brand new collaboration, as Bryan previously covered "Wet Leather" and Type O Negative's "Everything Dies" with 616 in 2022, while this article plugging a podcast appearance from a year later indicated that Bryan's old Woods and Gates of Winter bandmate Steve Furgiuele was also remotely working on material with 616.
It's not clear how involved Steve is with 616 beyond that, but a comment implies that he (if not another former Woods alum) may be on the new cover too. Bryan unquestionably appears on 616's 2023 EP "The Living Dead Sessions" and he returned for this Ozzy cover, but why is it branded as featuring the band? Bryan (who lives and performs in British Columbia now) responded in the comment section, where he confirmed that while "it was filtered through Mama Gold" (late frontman David Gold's mom Esther), he "did not explicitly endorse Woods of Ypres at any point during the recording of this", and "the path forward will be solely my name". 616 frontman Matthew Lidwin said that "it was my ode to mention (the band) in the title" and "to pay my respects to the Gold family", and Esther defended Matthew herself, saying that "one song was 'influenced' by David's style", and that the "best compliment in life is when another, with admiration, copies a style".
When I gave my thoughts on the "Wet Leather" cover on the SMS at the time, I noted a definite HIM influence from 616, but Matthew's vocals on the "Patient Number Nine" cover really remind me Tobias Forge from Ghost. I don't get massive Woods of Ypres vibes from it (remember, Bryan only recorded one album with them), but it is definitely well performed and produced on all fronts, so if this seems interesting, definitely give it a listen below! I'd be a little more specific when tagging it in the future though, as Woods Of Ypres effectively = David Gold for most fans.
That's all for now, but stay tuned for this month's "Where Are The New Albums?" post next! Thanks everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment