Hollow Concert Review & The Mares Of Thrace Concert Preview!!

(Edited at 9:14 PM) Hey guys, it's time to review last night's Hollow reunion weekend concert! How'd they do years after their breakup? How was Bossy's for a concert venue? I'll tell you guys, and stay tuned afterwards for my preview of TOMORROW'S Mares of Thrace show at The Rosie! So first, I'll talk a bit about Bossy's Pub N' Grub, the Pim Street bar/restaurant formerly known as Smack Daddy's that hosted last night's concert in lieu of the still-flood damaged Canadian Nightclub. It's just seconds down the road, so it was convenient to go to instead! It's a smaller venue, with the bar on one side and seating on the right when entering, with a large patio accessible on the right side as well. The tables were nearer to the stage area with booths mostly at the back. It sort of reminded me of a cross between Foggy Notions & Madison's Pub in terms of it's atmosphere. Small and sort of empty, but clean and well maintained, with a good amount of TVs too for sports and such. Nice spot, I can see myself coming back to Bossy's!

So last night marked the second of two reunion concerts for the local metal band Hollow, who were a frequent and prominent sight in the local music scene in the late '90s and early 2000s. Now, being just 22 years old, I was way too young to have seen their original local run, or that of related bands like Carbon Black, so I went into this with only assumptions, word from other people, and the two original songs posted online. That said, Hollow sounded really good, and they didn't look or seem like they'd been disbanded for so long! If they were rusty on Friday, they sure weren't last night! The quintet launched into a solid setlist of covers ranging from Metallica and Megadeth to Pantera and King's X to The Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Stone Temple Pilots, and more than held their own on each one! I was glad to see that their setlist had lots of songs I hadn't heard recently with other local bands, and we got some nice surprises, including a mash-up of "Enter Sandman" and Journey's "Don't Stop Believing"! Now that was unexpected, but they really pulled it off! The only thing that really surprised me about their setlist was the lack of Hollow or Carbon Black originals. It would have been cool to hear "Flesh & Bones" or "Misconception", but what we got last night worked well!

The whole band seemed to be on form last night from the audio and video I've seen of the members. Tym Morrison was as good as I've ever seen him from Caveman Morrison shows, and it was cool seeing his ventures into the crowd returning! Terry Eaton's guitar work was also really nice, and he and Tym seemed to mesh really well! Both also were very good doing lead vocals (on "Master of Puppets" and "Cowboys From Hell" respectively.) Travis Sharpe showed off a nice range on vocals, and it didn't seem like he'd been away from singing for so long, but you could tell he couldn't do some higher notes. Dan Beaupre was awesome on bass as well, as you've hopefully seen with his more recent local bands, and Vinnie Milosevich's drumming was solid and suited each track as well! Makes me wish I was 10 years older so I could have been around to see Hollow's heyday! I sort of had a different view than some fans might because I don't remember their first run, so on that basis, I'll say that Hollow were a very entertaining metal band with tons of talent and good chemistry, and hopefully this won't be the last time we see the members playing together in some form! If you missed them this weekend, you missed out!

Of course, I got lots of photos, so click here to check them out, or visit our Facebook page! Excuse the quality on the closer shots, I didn't wanna move around and block people's views given the size of the venue. As I've said before, I hate being "that guy with the camera" that gets in people's way. And of course, I got some video, so here's Hollow covering the great song "Dogman" by King's X!



We close today with a concert preview for a show taking place TOMORROW NIGHT, so here's what you need to know! On Thursday, Dismembertainment alerted fans to a very intriguing lineup of touring metal bands playing at The Roosevelt Hotel in four days time, so with such short notice, we've gotta get the word out hard and fast to get lots of people to The Rosie tomorrow night! The headlining band tomorrow will be Mares of Thrace, a two-woman experimental metal band from Calgary with a delightfully sludgy and assaulting brand of metal that will sure open some eyes tomorrow night! You don't get metal like this every day, you should really like Mares of Thrace! Milwaukee-based hardcore punk crossover quartet Enabler will co-headline tomorrow's concert, and their fast and furous brand of metal will be one hell of an instigator for some wild moshpits! The first out of town band playing tomorrow will be classic metallers Stinger, who'll kick things off well with a proficient and old school set of straight up heavy metal! These guys will rule, trust me, as will the other bands, adding up to a diverse but talented lineup of out of town bands tomorrow night! Finally, local grimecore trio Shit Liver will return to the stage after a 6½ week hiatus as the local openers tomorrow night! This was just confirmed on Dismembertainment's Facebook page minutes ago. Awesome to see them back so soon, hopefully Shit Liver deliver a great opening set tomorrow night in their return!

Admission is $5 for this concert, doors open at 9:00 PM with a likely start time of 9:30 or 10:00 PM, and you must be 19 to attend. For more details, visit the official Facebook event page! Also note that this will be the first metal concert at The Rosie since they held the grand opening of their new patio this past weekend (which explains why the old entrance and area to the right of the building was boarded off for so long.) Should be a fun concert overall, though hopefully the late notice and Monday night setting doesn't scare off too many people! I hope to be there, and if you guys should definitely come too, as when else are you gonna see such a diverse lineup of metal bands locally? For a preview, here's Mares of Thrace's video for their song "General Sherman", and hopefully I'll see you guys there! Remember, the show's TOMORROW NIGHT!



That's all for now, but stay tuned for a new news post of some type tomorrow! Thanks everyone!

New Updates From Three Local Bands & A Local Metal Bassist!!

Good afternoon, everyone! Hope the weekend's going well for you guys so far! Today is basically a catch-up day, to get some bigger stories off of my newsdesk and into your consciousness! I have Browbeat updates, a new Woods of Ypres video, and a local hard rock musician discovery, but first, here's more glimpses at a new local band!

Silver Dream frontman Matthew Silver has uploaded five new videos to his YouTube channel, all of which are solo acoustic performances of Silver Dream original songs! Nice to finally hear some more of their stuff, even if it's just solo at the moment. These may not sound all that heavy, but keep in mind that Matt likely altered the arrangements to fit better for a solo acoustic performance. If you've heard their first released studio song, "My Heart Stops", you'll get a taste of what the band will sound like compared to Matt alone. That being said, the new songs are all very well sung, played, and composed at this state! They all have a clear emotion and feeling to them, and Matthew's voice comes through nicely on each! The uploads are for the songs "Evangeline", "Sunshine", "Every Minute", "Baby I Love", and the one I'm embedding here, for the song "Talk To Me"! All have a similar sound given the nature of the performance clips, but "Talk To Me" is the longest, so it makes sense to show this one off! Check it out below, and if I hear more from Silver Dream, especially the full band, you'll hear it here!

(Also, in the absence of a band website, I've linked Matt's YouTube channel as the band's site on the SMS band links on your left until an actual page pops up. Check it out!)



Next up, a new video from Woods of Ypres' current North American tour has been posted online on frontman David Gold's YouTube channel! I word it like that because it's a 9:45 long tour vlog! It's an assemblage of various happenings over the past week on their tour, including the destroyed windshield mishap (and their protective mid-drive measures because of it), lots of concert clips from the shows they've played so far, and many other assorted clips from the tour! Among them: How they had supper in Winnipeg, encounters with a prairie dog and a snake, and much more footage from the sights and sounds of a Western Canada road trip, with lots of doom/black metal footage to go around! Hopefully the band releases some full song performances too, cause I know we'd love to hear more from the new album, concerts, and lineup! Check out the vlog for yourself below, pretty interesting stuff!



Thirdly today are some more updates from Sault Ontario hard rockers Browbeat! First off, it appears that the band are looking for a new bassist! It looks like frontman Dutch Vanderploeg will be remaining on guitar after all, so the band now needs a bassist again! I actually found out about this through Matthew Silver from Silver Dream, who uploaded this photo/classified ad to hype the search! If you're interested in joining a local hard rock band and are willing to learn original material, contact Dutch at dutch68@live.ca A.S.A.P.! Also to note: Browbeat have uploaded a new song onto their Reverbnation page, entitled "Moving On"! Sounds good to me, it's heavy and has nice pacing, but keeps their trandemark melody too! Click the above links to check it out, I'll keep you posted on more Browbeat news!

Now here's an interesting discovery I made the other day. Sometimes, when I search for local band updates and pages on MySpace, I'll come across a musician's solo page that has metal/hard rock solo material, or even rarer, stuff from their old bands. This happened to me the other day, when I found the MySpace page for Sault Ontario rock bassist Dan Beaupre. I immediately recognized him from his work in 100 Gran, who weren't a bad rock band, though I wouldn't say they were SMS material. It was reading his bio and listening to his songs that made me go "OK, this belongs on the SMS." It says that one of the bands he played for backed up Dio (how cool is that?), and on the bands he was listed as being a member of, I spotted a few familiar names, like Carbon Black, Metal Militia, and Hollow. Now who else was in those bands....oh, that's right, Tym Morrison! Sure enough, after some extra fact checking, I can verify that Dan and Tym were bandmates! That being said, the Carbon Black and Hollow songs that he uploaded don't feature Tym, they have guitarists Terry Eaton and Adam King, so they must have been recorded before Tym joined or after he left.

Did you catch that? There's Carbon Black and Hollow original material on Dan's MySpace page! I find the two Carbon Black songs uploaded ("Misconception" and "Angry") are catchier and heavier than the Hollow songs ("Flesh & Bones" and "Abducted"), especially "Angry", I'm really digging it's groove! These songs sound really good, I wonder if they were released on a CD or cassette at any point? Because if there's anything floating around on a released album, I'd love to review it here! Dan's got some real bass skill, it shows on these songs, and he's kept it up since in other bands like Tom Foolery, 100 Gran, and The AUC Jazz Ensemble! Dan's apparently working on a new band project as of May 30th, we'll have to see how that sounds! Check out more of Dan's work and back catalog at his MySpace page, see what you think!

Also to note: When checking around for other bands related to Carbon Black/Hollow members, I found a band called Buster Cherry from St. Thomas, Ontario, featuring former Carbon Black/Hollow guitarist Terry Eaton and drummer Vince Milosevich. They are metal, and they would absolutely fit in our out of town bands with local members profile series! Not sure when I can fit them in, but keep Buster Cherry in mind!

That's all for today, stay tuned for more news in the next few days! I should have at least one news post before Wednesday, when I plan to profile The Disciples Of Rock and Violet Fuse in our next profiles of out of town bands with local members! Stay tuned for that, and more!