Defunct Local Band Profile Series: 7/47 & Social Suicide

After a few days' delay due to being out of town and busy (my apologies!), here's this month's Defunct Local Band Profiles, as we once again look at 1 or 2 defunct or inactive local metal, hard rock, or punk bands (two this month), in order for fans to know more about them and check out their available media! This month's installment is a double profile, as the first band didn't have a lot of surviving info, but both have familiar faces and clear talent from each side of the border, so here's what you should know!
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7/47

Genre: Classic Rock/Metal

Hometown: Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

Members: (Members not in their last full lineup in italics. This lineup information is incomplete, mainly regarding the identity of their female lead singer from their last posted video. If you can fill in any blanks, let us know!)

?????, lead vocals

Mike Pascoe (The Highest of Fives, Free Refill), vocals/guitar

Jack Slater (The Highest of Fives, 415E), bass

Joe North (The Eleventh Hour), drums

Tyler Wall (Free Refill), guitar 

Info/Analysis: 7/47 were a young hard rock band that formed through Joey Beairl's Guitar Studio rock camp program in Sault Michigan in mid-2009. Featuring two members of Free Refill in their original lineup, 7/47 quickly began playing covers at various venues in the area that summer, even taking a road trip to Christmas that August. Updates slowed down until the next summer, when 7/47 played an outdoor set in Mackinac City, which came after the addition of an unidentified female lead singer and the departure of guitarist Tyler Wall. No public updates followed, and 7/47 are believed to have dissolved by the end of 2010, though Mike Pascoe & Jack Slater have since reemerged in The Highest of Fives. As seen via 4 surviving videos on Jack's YouTube channel, 7/47 had a strong sound that showed the kids developing sound well, and their last singer had a good voice too, though Mike's vocals weren't as developed yet. Check out 7/47 live above & below!

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Social Suicide

Genre: Technical Death Metal/Grindcore/Punk

Hometown: Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

Members: (Members not in their last full lineup in italics. This lineup information may be incomplete, as the band went through many lineup changes that weren't always credited publically. If you can add something, let us know!)

Tyler St. Amour (Them, Fountain of Betrayal), vocals/bass
Anthony Boudreau (Them, Infamous), guitar
Keeghan Rosso (The Pixo Control), drums

Storm Perry, guitar/drums
Andres Duchesne (Pillory, The Bear Hunters, The Issues), guitar
Ray Cowan (State of Misery, March Into Regression, Unbound), guitar

Audio/Video: Social Suicide never posted online media from their run, but they did write original material and had covers in their setlists when they did play live. For reference, Tyler and Anthony's current band Them likely have the most similarities to Social Suicide's late-era sound, and may play some of the same material.

Info/Analysis: Launched in August 2011, Social Suicide quickly began plans to play gigs at Superior Heights Collegiate, write original material, and play proper concerts the following summer, but a spate of lineup changes and internal conflicts slowed things down throughout their three year run. The band did play sporadic house party events in the early 2010s (including their "debut" in June 2012), but never at a formal local concert, despite signing on with Blood Shed Productions in early 2013. Last updating their Facebook page in January 2014, Social Suicide quietly disbanded last year, though frontman Tyler St. Amour and guitarist Anthony Boudreau soon regrouped in Them with new instrument roles. Though it's surprising that Social Suicide didn't accomplish more in their run, be sure to check out Them to get your fix!
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I hope you guys liked this month's Defunct Local Band Profiles! So, who's coming up in this series in May? Through completely random selection, I've selected defunct Sault Ontario thrash quartet Pillory, which will mark our second straight profile in this series on a band that featured Tyler St. Amour and the late Andres Duchesne in any of their lineups! Another Sault Michigan profile will follow in June, but look for this on or around May 10th, and stay tuned for more updates shortly! Thanks everyone!

LOCAL CONCERT ALERT (The Bear Hunters), New Videos, And More!!

Hey guys, I have some more local metal news for you all today, including a LOCAL CONCERT ALERT, some new videos, and some assorted Sault Michigan news, so let's get things going tonight!

Local melodic death metal quintet The Bear Hunters have been confirmed as part of the lineup for the first annual Searchmont Music Festival! Yes, the popular area ski resort is throwing their hat into the festival ring with a fundraiser festival scheduled for September 10th inside and outside of the resort, and The Bear Hunters are confirmed for this year! Odd choice of a picture though, as "The Bear Hunters" implies that they're hunting bears, not that a bear is hunting. Full details on the festival are not out yet, but admission will be $10, it looks to be all ages, and the outdoor portion will consist of open mic and acoustic performers, with plugged in bands like The Bear Hunters rocking inside. Music for both stages will run from 12:00 PM to 11:00 PM on the 10th. Other announced performers include solo artists Al Davis, Douglas Cousineau, and Rusty McCarthy, along with local bands Moondance, The Trippy Hippies, The Dirty River Band, and Green Cafe, with more likely to be announced. Most of the acts are new to me, but this should be an entertaining festival, and thanks to The Bear Hunters, some metal will easily be welcomed! Stay tuned for updates at the above links and at the SMS as they come in!

Next up, we have some new videos, and first, local hardcore quartet Changing Waves have their own YouTube channel! Launched in April, I only just found out about it the other day, and yes, there's some concert footage there! One concert video from an undated Roosevelt Hotel performance (metal night on August 4th?) was posted there twice on Thursday, and both are of the band covering System of a Down's "Suite-Pee"! Why was it uploaded twice? Well, the first upload is sideways, possibly due to the original video dimensions, so they corrected it in a later upload, but you can still see the sideways version at this link. Overall though, it's nice quality, and it shows their hardcore take of the S.O.A.D. favourite well, with each member visible, though the camera shakes a bit and the video missed the beginning of the song. Good stuff overall, and it's nice to see more videos of Changing Waves, so check out their "Suite-Pee" cover at the above links and below, and also visit their channel for an interesting acoustic song by band members(?) called "Gimme My Cat"!



The other new videos is courtesy of Brimley hard rockers Half A Man, who are still hard at work on their upcoming debut album! On Thursday, the band uploaded a rough mix of their original song "Drunk" onto their official YouTube channel, and you can check it out below! It sounds good, and it's nice to hear a studio version finally (especially given that this is one of the first Half A Man originals we heard last year), but I'll hold on detailed comments until the album comes out and I get a chance to review it. Also featuring video footage of the band members playing the song individually and shots of their recording computers and equipment, check out "Drunk" below and get ready for the new album!



And finally, here's three assorted shorter stories from the last little while from Sault Michigan-area bands, in alphabetical order by band name:

• I'll likely be moving Sault Michigan quartet 7/47 (featuring members of Free Refill & The Highest of Fives) to our inactive Sault Michigan band links tomorrow due to inactivity. The Guitar Studio products were last visibly active on August 21st of last year when bassist Jack Slater uploaded videos from a Mackinac City concert onto his YouTube channel. 7/47 had promise, but hopefully the members' current bands remain successful!
• According to their respective Facebook pages, young local rock bands Abstract & Banned competed at a battle of the bands of some type outside of Joe's Bar in Rudyard earlier today. For the life of me, I couldn't find official information on this battle, which is why we didn't plug it here, but keep an eye out in case we hear any fallout! For what it's worth, Banned's Facebook page indicates they didn't win.
• Pickford hard rockers Beyond The Surface have quietly welcomed guitarist Blake Mastaw back to the band, and are also now looking for an official singer again, presumably to replace the long-since departed Danielle Petingalo. Click here if you live in the Pickford area and are interested in singing for Beyond The Surface!

That's all for today, but stay tuned for more hopefully tomorrow, and if nothing else, look out for this month's YouTube Channel Profile on Monday! Thanks everyone!

As It Stands' Return & Nixxon Dixxon's End, Plus 7/47 And AtrophiA News!!

It's assorted news time at The Sault Metal Scene, with the latest Woods of Ypres news, some needed updating I made to one of our recent profile posts, and a local band's reemergence, but first we welcome back (and say farewell) to two prominent local bands! Here's what you need to know on this Monday afternoon!

As It Stands are BACK! The local hardcore band last seen in January 2009 have reunited with their classic lineup intact, and have been announced as the local openers for September 2nd's Endast/Blood Drunk concert at Foggy Notions! Their involvement in this show is confirmed at both a brand new Facebook event page and at As It Stands' MySpace page. The event page also confirms that the concert will have a $5 cover charge and an unnaturally early start time for a show at Foggy's, that being 6:30 PM, running through 11:00 PM. Despite the start time, nothing I've read indicates any difference to the age limits, so it's probably still 19+. Check the above links for more, I can't wait for this concert! Great to see As It Stands back, they were one of the more prominent local hardcore bands of recent years, even releasing an EP at their peak! This will be their first show that I know of in almost 20 months, after which the band broke up and reformed as Out Of The Mouth Of Babes, with Josh McNally & Matt Maccarone singing at varying points. We only got to see OOTMOB live once, in February at Nite-Life Dance Club's portion of Algoma Hope4Haiti, and though I can't confirm whether OOTMOB are still active or not, As It Stands are definitely back in action! I'll keep you posted with updates on their return show with Endast and more, and IF ANYONE HAS A COPY OF THEIR EP, LET ME KNOW!!!

Next up, I can confirm what I'm sure many of you were fearing: Nixxon Dixxon are breaking up. This past weekend's shows at The Bird were their last. As far as I can tell, the breakup is mostly due to Jake LaLonde's relocation to California to attend The Musicians Institute (no, I don't have word on if he made the finals yet), and though it's a shame that they're not staying together with at least a temporary drummer, I appreciate that they don't want to replace their friend and bandmate that easily! No statements have been made concerning their end on their MySpace page, but frontman Brandon Carr worded his thoughts very well on his personal Facebook page. Here's what he had to say:

"All those years in Jacob Lalonde's basement and Chris Hubbard's garage come full circle. And thanks to Kyle Beaumont, we sure had some good laughs. All that goofing around never felt we were trying to get better, just doing something that made sense to us. Through thick and thin we always have each other, and making music with ya guys sure helped push away a lot of those empty feelings. Nixxon Dixxon's last gig"

It's clear to me that Nixxon Dixxon loved playing together, and they've came a long way in the process. Once just a young local cover band, they've rapidly grown in recognition and success, and they are literally going out on top. Not many teenagers can say they opened for Bret Michaels, let alone twice, and they definitely had the talent to back it up! When I said they were one the most talented bands in Sault Michigan, I meant it! Age restrictions and my lack of a vehicle precluded me from seeing a full show of theirs, but I always enjoyed the YouTube videos I saw and the songs I heard on MySpace (frankly, they should repost them.) Sault Ontario music fans got a chance to see Nixxon Dixxon at December's Kiss Battle of the Bands, and the fact that a Sault Michigan band few had heard of made it to the finals surprised many, but not me. I had them as a dark horse to win, and deservingly so! I don't know what the future holds for them, but I wish Jake the best of luck in California, and I hope the rest of the guys get back in a new band soon, cause there's too much talent there to not use in music somehow! And if they do re-emerge in the local scene, we'll be watching!

Thirdly, remember 7/47, the young local hard rock quartet featuring Free Refill drummer Mike Pascoe on guitar? Well, we hadn't heard much from them since last August (their MySpace page is very outdated), but they never broke up, and recently played a set in Mackinac City with a new lineup! I have no idea what the occasion was for this show, but it appears to be recent, and you can see the banner on stage for The Guitar Studio Rock Camp, who 7/47 were formed through. I can't 100% verify who's in the current lineup, except for bassist Jack Slater, who uploaded three videos from said show onto his YouTube channel! I'm assuming that Mike Pascoe and drummer Joe North are still in 7/47, but going by photo evidence, it looks like Tyler Wall (Mike's former Free Refill bandmate) is not in 7/47 anymore. Of course, if I'm wrong, let me know! Most striking to me is 7/47's new female singer, who actually has a pretty good voice, though it got wavery at points on heavier rangier stuff. Jack uploaded videos in the past week of 7/47 covering Sublime's "Santeria", Seether's "Broken", and the video I'm embedding below, their rendition of Halestorm's "It's Not You"! Good stuff, check it out below, and hopefully we hear some updated information and local dates from 7/47 soon!



It's odd, this post is taking a roller coaster effect. A band returning, a band ending, a band returning, and now, a band that's already ended! As you know, I've been trying in recent months to include monthly feature posts, generally for band profiles and such. Well, I want to try and update old ones as new information about certain bands comes out, and that scenario recently came up for AtrophiA, the first band I profiled in our Defunct Local Band Profile Series. I went back and made some edits to my SMS profile on them, and because it's not a front page story, I'll tell you what I changed to bring it up to date! I added former bassist Ryan Gray to the lineup (you'll recognize him from bands like Sindicate and Batteries Not Included), I added that they used to be called Metal Militia, and biggest of all, I posted a video! I thought that the AtrophiA profile looked too bare without a video of some kind, so I ripped the videos that guitarist Andrew Chiarello posted on Facebook, combined them together into one video (as none were full songs), and posted it to our YouTube channel WITH COMPLETELY GOOD INTENT to give the profile an embeddable video to check out!

NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT IS INTENDED!! Besides, people should see these clips more, and YouTube videos are definitely more widespread than videos on Facebook! Good quality too, check the clips out below, and check out the newly updated SMS profile on AtrophiA by clicking here!



That's all for now, but stay tuned for news from Gates of Winter and Woods of Ypres (including, maybe, the answers to all the questions?) And yes, tomorrow will bring our newest Saultites In Out Of Town Bands profile, so watch out for that as well! Thanks everyone!