For our first proper news post of the month, let's dive into recent updates from hard rock acts on both sides of the border, and we'll work our way north with videos and updates from two E.U.P. acts, so here's what you should know on this Wednesday night!
We'll start with new videos from two Sault Michigan hard rock bands, starting with (some of) the long awaited footage from local metal band Tarnished's set at the Rock Recovery Battle of the Bands in Alpena last month! Their first two songs are now viewable in separate videos on their Facebook page, including Alex, Parker, and Josh playing their original "Metalyn" to start their set, and as embedded below, a brand new original song named "Intoxicated". Unfortunately, the videos are uploaded in vertical portrait orientation with pillarboxing despite being standard definition 4:3 videos, and I have no idea why that is. If you can get past the formatting, you'll find strong performances (they must have been for Tarnished to place third against downstate competition), and "Intoxicated" is a promising track that would be interesting to hear fleshed out in studio! Check out Tarnished's first two songs at The Aplex above & below!
Next up, here's our first look at fellow local hard rock band Exit 808's current-ish lineup, as per their Facebook page on Monday! Despite the timing, none of this appears to have been an April Fools prank. Exit 808 revealed there that they've actually been working with Heavy Lies The Crown frontman Brandon West (who shared the stage with the then-Double Jack at the LSSU Battle of the Bands last fall) towards recording their cover of Black Sabbath's "N.I.B." in a proper studio setting, posting it that day as a Facebook video. With the band now having two vocalists, Amy Beach & Dillion Semasky split vocal duties here, trading verses & sharing choruses. While recent fill-in bassist Blaze Beairl is tagged in the post, the bassist here is actually Bob Libick from the Marquette hard rock cover band Spun (and Nudge. before them). Many Yooper readers will recall seeing Spun & Nudge. often at points west and at local gigs.
Kudos to Bob for helping out here! No word yet on a full time bassist, for the record. This cover is well done with strong recording quality (given what H.L.T.C. do for themselves, it's no wonder), and while there are better technical examples to really show the band off, starting with a familiar classic makes sense. They juggled Amy & Dillion as well as you could for a song that never had two singers, but I might have had them alternating lines, not just verses, a'la the recent version of "Hellraiser" with both Ozzy Osbourne and Lemmy Kilmister's vocals. Check out Exit 808's new studio cover below, and stay tuned for more from them!
Now let's head to Sault Ontario for the latest from local/Barrie alt-hard rock musician Mike Haggith, who's been very quiet since last fall's Soo's Got Talent finals in terms of his own solo output. On March 22nd, he shared a video from his personal Facebook page to his solo project's Facebook page featuring him and most of his local backing band playing his song "Carousel" at a jam session last month. Always good to see Mike back in town! The (sadly vertical) video features Mike playing alongside A Dire Setback guitarist Chris Nielsen and Mike's old Din bandmate Brandan Glew (now of The Wyld Stallyns), both returning to his live band for 2024. No bassist is present in the video, but ex-Gnaeus bassist Matt Fronzi (now of The Golden Scoundrels) is tagged rather than Jacob Quarrell. Matt did play with Mike at The Soo's Got Talent semifinals last year when Jacob was double booked, so he should fit in if true!
As well, Brandan's ex-Re:Born bandmate Elly McWatters is also tagged, perhaps implying that she will do backing vocals this year, as she had previously done at some of Mike's bigger festival sets. The video was captioned that "summer is just around the corner", implying that we'll see Mike & crew on stage in a few months' time. The guys aren't really positioned well to be captured in frame (the vertical angle doesn't help), but if this tight and melodic jam is anything to go by, Mike's dates this summer should be a good time! Give it a watch for yourself below!
Finally for today, here's the second original song from new local hard rock band Bullet Train! This union of ex-Sense of Truth frontman Cory Murchison and ex-Fort Creek bandmates Robin "Bones" Lee & Anthony Fabiano posted this "at home demo" to their YouTube channel as a scheduled premiere on Friday, and like with their debut original "Atmosphere", song #2 ("Illusions") is accompanied by a lyric video featuring AI-generated imagery. Also like on "Atmosphere", the song is a charged take on recent events, with Cory singing about waking up to what you're being told by larger forces, or history could repeat itself. Analyzing the lyrics and intent of them is a little beyond my scope, but Bullet Train definitely have more of a contemporary topical influence than Cory's prior bands, so keep that in mind. The song has a slower and more deliberate pace, but it's still a heavy rocker that fans of Cory's will like musically, so check it out for yourselves below!That's all for today, but stay tuned for weekend concert previews on the site next! Thanks everyone!
Before we begin this otherwise all-Sault Michigan post, I wanted to apologize for missing local classic/hard rock cover quartet Soundcheck's late notice show at The Water Tower Pub last night in our weekend concert previews. The band only announced the show on their Facebook pageafter the preview post went up (the venue never confirmed it online), and I didn't have time to rush a second post to cover it here, so it was exclusive to our Facebook page. Hopefully everything went well for Soundcheck and fans alike! FYI, the Water Tower Pub hosts ex-Thin Ice frontman Nathan Albidone tonight. Now, here's what you should know from two notable Sault Michigan bands over the past few weeks!
It's been three weeks since local hard rock bands Tarnished and Exit 808 (née Double Jack) hit the road for Alpena to compete in the Rock Recovery Battle of the Bands at The Aplex there, so why I have I waited this long to cover it on the SMS? Honestly, it's because Tarnished said that "we will be uploading our performance soon" on their Facebook page back on March 5th, but it has yet to surface, so we might as well talk about what has been posted before it gets even later still! After the former Double Jack won third place over Tarnished in the fan voted LSSU Battle last fall, the tables were turned downstate, as Tarnished finished in third place this time! The newly renamed Exit 808 missed the podium, though drummer Jackie Moon told me that they were ineligible to be voted on as per this battle's rules, as they don't have original songs yet. The winners of this battle were Elmira-based original hard rock band Driving Dawn.
I'm not 100% sure, but Ithink Oscoda hardcore punk band The Crunks finished in second place, and the other competitors were Ossineke acoustic duo Steve Hatley & his wife Brenda Ziesman Hatley. Manistique hard rock duo and frequent Kewadin Casino performers Fyrbird did not compete on March 2nd for unannounced reasons. While Driving Dawn won the studio recording time and electronic press kit three weeks ago, they donated the $500 winners purse back to the Freedom Recovery Center in Alpena that put this battle on. Given the center's work towards addiction treatment and recovery in Northern Michigan, that's a wonderful gesture, and kudos to Driving Dawn for helping out even further! Believe it or not, Tarnished's third place prize (as per this photo from co-promoter Vivero Industries) is an AI generated music video created by The South Of The Straits Show, a Traverse City-based podcast who has made videos like this before.
I'm not anti-AI in certain applications, and I'm curious to see how this turns out, so stay tuned when/if Tarnished get this video made and released! While the wait for Tarnished's video from the battle continues, photos from the event can be seen on the band's Facebook page. As for Exit 808, they have had a lot more to post from the battle since, so what should you know there? Along with a bunch of pictures on their Facebook page, two videos were shared of Exit 808 (featuring guest bassist Blaze Beairl) covering Black Sabbath's "N.I.B." and, as embedded below, both Van Halen's "Eruption" and their cover of The Kinks' "You Really Got Me". To a point, these videos best show off guitarist Alex Zimmerman's skills, both with a behind the head solo on "N.I.B.", and of course, "Eruption" is no easy song/solo to play (that EVH guitar is well earned!) Blaze fits in well too, but remember, he's not joining permanently.
Frontwoman/Blaze's mom Amy Beach fits better vocally on "You Really Got Me", but it's good seeing her in higher quality videos again, and while Exit 808 weren't eligible for the podium here, it looks like they got a good response in Alpena! Check out their videos above & below!
We'll close with some more recent updates from Exit 808, starting with their recent name change. The band revealed on Facebook late last month that they changed their name from Double Jack because there's already a Michigan-based cover rock band named Double Jack! That band (active since 2011) is primarily seen in the Midland/Bay City area, so while geographic paths likely wouldn't cross, having something more distinct does make sense. Less than a week after the battle, Exit 808 surprisingly announced that they've added a second vocalist to their ranks, namely former Infathom singer Dillion Semasky! Local fans will recall seeing Dillion front the Munising-based metal band in a handful of E.U.P. dates in the 2010s, while he also briefly served as a singer with Brimley's Half A Man in 2011-2012 (another situation where he joined a band with an existing vocalist). It's great to see Dillion back in a band, let alone a local one!
You don't see too many local bands featuring two distinct singers who don't play an instrument, so it'll be interesting to see how Exit 808 juggles this in future shows (once they get a permanent bassist, message them if you want more details). Stay tuned for much more from Exit 808 and Tarnished when news goes public, and look for more news and notes on the site in the coming days! Thanks everyone!
It's now time for our monthly Saultites In Out Of Town Bands Profile! This feature series once again looks at a metal, hard rock, or punk band from outside of the Soo area that just happens to feature a past or present Saultite in any of their permanent lineups, and we're taking a rare dip into the Michigan side of things this month for a late 2000s fixture in the Northern Michigan punk scene with a local tie! Here's what you should know!
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- NA (Hillman, Michigan)
Lineup: (Saultites in RED, ex-members in italics)
Nathan Post (vocals/bass)
Dustin "Doc" Vanderveer (guitar) Mikhail Swift (drums)
Local Info: NA's only member with a local residence was drummer Mikhail Swift, who is a 2012 computer sciences graduate from Lake Superior State University, and lived in Sault Michigan during his enrollment. While he played in the Lower Peninsula hardcore band She Screams Of Royalty during that time, he wasn't active in any local bands while in the Soo from what I can tell. Now residing in Grand Rapids, Mikhail's local tenure definitely counts for us to cover NA in this series!
Band Bio: Launched in August 2006 under the name Nothing To Lose, NA (short for The Noise Addicts) were a ska punk trio from Hillman, Michigan, a small town outside of Alpena. Debuting at that summer's Fieldstock Music Festival in Presque Isle, the band transitioned from covers to originals in 2007, recording their debut EP "Gotta Live Sometime" that year. Amidst various Northern Michigan concerts, the band recorded one final demo named "The Original Copy" that was released in 2008 featuring altered & new tracks. After sporadic concerts through mid-2009, NA went on hiatus, during which time Nathan Post & Mikhail joined forces once again in She Screams Of Royalty, before NA reemerged in August 2010. That band played their final announced shows at a Hillman church in early 2011, concluding with a show that June, and falling inactive for good by year's end, with members now focusing on separate musical projects.
Surviving media of NA is mostly limited to videos from their original 2006-2009 run (save for one studio MySpace track & the video below), but what I've seen & heard paints a promising young punk band! Nathan, Dustin, and Mikhail had good chemistry and had solid songwriting ability, especially considering their ages at the time, but I will concede that I don't detect a lot of the "ska" influence" in their media. Nathan had a solid voice for the genre, and I imagine NA had a good following, but give them a look to see what you think! The above links feature select videos and materials from their run, along with this MySpace video and a handful of videos on Dustin's YouTube channel, including this posthumous music video for their song "No More Incentive" featuring live concert, jam, and recording footage, and assorted other moments from their run together!
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I hope you guys liked this month's Saultites In Out Of Town Bands Profile! Next month in this series, we're planning to look at Parallel Truth, a multi-national progressive metal band featuring Saultite and former Gates of Winter collaborator Jon Morrison, so look for that on or around August 26th! That's likely all for today, but stay tuned for more news and notes soon! Thanks everyone!
We'll start with new videos from two Sault Michigan hard rock bands, starting with (some of) the long awaited footage from local metal band Tarnished's set at the Rock Recovery Battle of the Bands in Alpena last month! Their first two songs are now viewable in separate videos on their Facebook page, including Alex, Parker, and Josh playing their original "Metalyn" to start their set, and as embedded below, a brand new original song named "Intoxicated". Unfortunately, the videos are uploaded in vertical portrait orientation with pillarboxing despite being standard definition 4:3 videos, and I have no idea why that is. If you can get past the formatting, you'll find strong performances (they must have been for Tarnished to place third against downstate competition), and "Intoxicated" is a promising track that would be interesting to hear fleshed out in studio! Check out Tarnished's first two songs at The Aplex above & below!
