LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS (Peril) & More Weekend Concert Previews!!

As promised, here's the rest of this weekend's hard rock concert previews (barring any more short notice confirmations), and we're mostly sticking to Sault Michigan and the E.U.P. today, including SHORT NOTICE LOCAL CONCERT ALERTS and a related apology for a missed date. Here's what you should know on this Friday evening!

Traverse City classic metal trio Peril will return to The Rapids Lounge at the Sault Ste. Marie Kewadin Casino TONIGHT & TOMORROW NIGHT! Apologies for the short notice, we just learned about these shows this past weekend via concert calendar posts on their Facebook page, but they have been listed prior on Kewadin's website's entertainment page. While we're on the subject, I profusely apologize for missing one more show from them, as they performed during the annual Music By The Bay summer concert series at American Legion Park in St. Ignace yesterday. How that bypassed me is anyone's guess, especially as the show was listed last month when we covered Tarnished's outdoor gig there, but the idea of Peril playing E.U.P. dates outside of the Kewadin Casino umbrella is still quite uncommon, despite also playing there on July 17th. Hopefully yesterday's show was a blast for Jeff, Howard, and Brooks, and an indoor encore is incoming for fans in the Soo TONIGHT & TOMORROW!

You can enjoy Peril's old school hard rock and metal covers at The Rapids Lounge TONIGHT & TOMORROW at 9:00 PM with 21+ age limits and no cover charges, and these will be their last local dates of the summer. Visit the above links for more details, apologies again for missing Peril's St. Ignace show yesterday, and here they are live!

Next up, let's head north to Sault Ontario briefly, where local classic/hard rock cover quartet Generations will return to Reggie's Place TONIGHT & TOMORROW NIGHT! Last seen at The Water Tower Pub two weeks ago, these will be Generations' first concerts at Reggie's in three weeks, so if you've missed this veteran foursome at the venerable Queen Street East nightclub, this is your last chance for the summer! In the recent posting on their Facebook group, drummer Tony Santoro revealed that they will have Muckrakers frontman Mike McDonald sitting in with them this weekend, as he did multiple times during their guitarist vacancy in 2023. The implication is that Mike is filling in for an absent Tony Kajnar on guitar, but if we hear that Tony K. will still be there, we'll let you know. Generations take the stage tonight & tomorrow at 9:30 PM with 19+ age limits and no cover charges. See above for more details, and for a preview, here they are live!

Back to Michigan now, and remember how Peril played at the Music By The Bay concert series in St. Ignace yesterday? Well, we won't miss the next SMS-amenable show there, as local classic/hard rock (and now covers-only) quartet Tarnished will set up shop at American Legion Park's outdoor stage TOMORROW! While not freshly plugged on the band's Facebook page, this will be Tarnished's second and final stop in this annual series for 2025, and well timed for a Saturday, so if you're up for an evening of hard rocking covers from Alex, Josh, Chris, and Ron, you know where to go tomorrow! Music By The Bay concerts run from 7:00-8:30 PM at 200 North State Street, and they are obviously all ages with no cover charge. Be advised that 9&10 News is calling for a 70% chance of rain for much of showtime in St. Ignace tomorrow, so while the stage is covered, I don't know if the weather would complicate things.

Keep tabs with the band & park if you're at all concerned about the forecast. Temperatures will be hovering around 75° (23° Celsius) during showtime as per the current forecast, so keep everything in mind for this show as well as The Nameless in Goetzville and Silent 9 in Laird, Ontario tomorrow given that we have a lot of scheduled hard rock shows outdoors during the upcoming rain event. Visit the above links for more details on Tarnished's outdoor park show in St. Ignace tomorrow evening, and here they are live!

Finally for this weekend's known previews, we'll stay in St. Ignace, where local deathcore quintet Heavy Lies The Crown will make their annual August appearance in their hometown with a headlining concert TOMORROW NIGHT! After hosting the 2nd Street Music Festival the last two years on that very street, H.L.T.C. have moved the show both a week later than planned but also to a formal indoor venue, namely the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5114 at 1110 North State Street. Regardless, the concert still ties in with frontman Brandon West's birthday earlier this week. Heavy Lies The Crown teased on the Facebook event page that they'll have "a wild surprise" regarding their return to Alpena next week that will be revealed tomorrow, and while I'm unsure of the context, note that temporary guitarist Paul Nolan is still featured in their most recent band photos, so his involvement "for the time being" may continue through tomorrow.

Heavy will be joined tomorrow in St. Ignace by Hannahville "rez metal" band Ghidora (returning from last year's 2nd Street Fest as replacements for Macomb Country metalcore quartet At Water), as well as Detroit-area metalcore band Nothing After This and alt/nu-metal quintet Influence, both in their E.U.P. concert debuts. Brandon's Birthday Bash is a FREE event at 6:00 PM with no age limit, and with the move to VFW Post 5114, it is no longer an outdoor event (just as well given the forecast). This should be a blast for extreme metal fans in the E.U.P. and tip of the mitt, so don't miss out on the action tomorrow night, as Brandon's birthday only comes once a year! Visit the above links for more details, and here's H.L.T.C. live!

That's all for now, but stay tuned for more news and notes on the site this weekend! Thanks everyone!

Heavy Lies The Crown Updates From The Last Few Months!!

How did I go all of July without a post catching us up on St. Ignace deathcore band Heavy Lies The Crown? Given that they're returning to the local stage this month for the returning 2nd Street Music Festival, it's high time we check out what the guys have been up to since late May! When we last left off with H.L.T.C., they were hitting the road for another concert downstate, this time 5 hours away in Chesterfield Township (outside of Detroit) on May 30th, where they opened for Buffalo post-hardcore band The Bunny The Bear at The Diesel Concert Lounge. Drummer Blaze Beairl was unable to make the trip that weekend, so they did a bit of lineup juggling. Guitarist Kaycee Mason sat in behind the drumkit (he already drums for Alpena metal band Katharsys Theory anyway), and they called in Kaycee's old bandmate Paul Nolan to sit in on guitar "for the time being", including at a private birthday concert the following day.

In their first Facebook video upload of the summer, Heavy Lies The Crown posted a very high quality performance video from the Chesterfield Township show, and while it only runs for 40 seconds, I do sincerely hope that this filmer got more content! The video in question shows Heavy and Paul in action, and this was reportedly the first time that bassist Christian Cook deployed backing vocals on stage with them, catching frontman Brandon West slightly off guard (in a good way). Christian has a very capable death growl there, so I'd be game to hear him more vocally! You can see more from that night in this highlight video featuring brief clips of all bands on May 30th, but it's another one of those videos that dubs over all live audio with an H.L.T.C. original ("Friend" here). With how good this video quality is, I'd be showing it off on full songs, but what do I know. Check everything out above & below!

Much of June was spent with Heavy Lies The Crown entering a contest to try and get voted in as a performer at the Global Citizen Festival in New York next month, which would also net them a $50,000 prize and a feature in Rolling Stone magazine. The Global Citizen Festival isn't exactly a metal haven in any year, but H.L.T.C. made a solid run at it, going as far as the quarterfinals, so congratulations to them on getting as far as they did! In their next Facebook video from early July, Brandon was seen driving his vehicle while talking to the camera in more of an off the cuff manner (not even saying "Hey guys, Heavy here" at the start). The focus here was on his vocal styles in their songs and what he prefers to do re: harsh vocals and "scare screaming", noting that their song "Jell-O" and his vocals there will very much be what their next album will largely sound like. Fun little update clip, so give it a watch below!

Regarding their annual 2nd Street Music Festival in their hometown (one of the very few times that Heavy Lies The Crown ever play public concerts in the E.U.P.), Brandon confirmed on their Facebook page on June 2nd that the show has moved up a week from this Saturday to next Saturday (August 16th), while also moving it from its prior 2nd Street location to the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 5114 at 1110 North State Street, right along the shore of the Straits of Mackinac. Now simply called Brandon's Birthday Bash, the show will feature H.L.T.C. alongside two touring metal bands from Metro Detroit, namely metalcore quintet Nothing After This and alternative/nu-metal band Influence. as well as Hannahville "rez metal" band Ghidora, who made the trip east for the St. Ignace show last year. Ghidora are replacing Macomb Country metalcore quartet At Water, as per this video on July 25th.

Brandon only said that "things happen. Understandable" when citing the reason for At Water dropping out, but hopefully nothing too serious happened, as it'd be neat to see more Detroit-area bands play north of the Mackinac Bridge! Because H.L.T.C. have been fairly quiet this summer beyond teasers and hype (including a mention last month of more potential lineup changes), we are now caught up on their recent updates, but with the big St. Ignace show ahead next Saturday, there'll be more to discuss from their camp soon, so stay tuned for more from Heavy Lies The Crown this month, and for more news & notes this week! Thanks everyone!

LOCAL CONCERT ALERT (Heavy Lies The Crown) & More News & Updates From Them!!

Today's post is 100% devoted to Sault Michigan and the Eastern Upper Peninsula (more the latter), including a LOCAL CONCERT ALERT, so here's what you should know across the river!

St. Ignace metalcore quartet Heavy Lies The Crown will play a rare local concert on Saturday, August 10th when they return to at 376 North 2nd Street for another "birthday bash"! Early advertising is not calling this the "2nd Street Music Festival" like when they debuted here last August, but this is a publically advertised and attendable outdoor concert despite not being at a formal public concert venue. Last seen in the E.U.P. for a truly public event at last fall's LSSU Battle of the Bands, it is nice to see H.LT.C. rock out for local fans (it's a shame it can't happen way more often), while this will be their first public local gig since Nathan Switzer returned to replace Ted Olson on guitar. Unlike last year's outdoor St. Ignace show, the lineup here is metal-centric, and will also include Ghidora, a "rez metal" quartet from Hannahville outside of Escanaba. Solid group with a melodic and aggressive sound, and it'll be very cool to see them out east for the first time!

Sault Ste. Marie classic metal/hard rock quartet Tarnished (who shared the stage with Heavy Lies The Crown at the LSSU Battle) will play a rare St. Ignace gig outside of the Kewadin Casino umbrella on this night as well, and we'll have more on them this week. The second annual 2nd Street Music Festival(?) is a FREE & ALL AGES event taking place at 7:00 PM. This should be a fun time for fans of original metal in the U.P., weather permitting, so visit the above links for more details on the action next month!

Staying with Heavy Lies The Crown, what have they been up to in the last few weeks? One day after I noted on the SMS on June 14th that they'd been oddly quiet re: how their set opening for Born Of Osiris in Pontiac on May 26th went, they finally started posting content from that night on their Facebook page, including this 10 seconds-long clip of the headliners, a handful of setup photos at The Crofoot, and a "Reel" of them performing. Curiously, it does not appear to be the same stage that Born Of Osiris performed on, and after doing some digging, I learned that The Crofoot has multiple stages/venues in the complex, with H.L.T.C. seemingly playing at The Vernors Room, a smaller bar/lounge. Given the lineup on May 26th, it would seem like bands were playing at multiple stages in The Crofoot with Born Of Osiris and select openers playing in the ballroom proper. It'd be an interesting experience, if nothing else!

The "Reel" (cross-posted from TikTok and unembeddable as always) features singer Brandon West starting a moshpit while very openly not giving a damn, and while we don't hear a ton of the song, the energy levels are good to see! Note that it does appear like there's someone standing at what could be a mixing board or turntable to Jaxon's right, but as the video is (sadly) vertical, we don't get a good look at the person. Brandon had teased earlier this year that H.L.T.C. might be adding a DJ to their lineup, and thanks to photos taken by Aaron Schmidt that the band shared to Facebook on June 19th, we can confirm that recent Exit 808 guest bassist Blaze Beairl was scratching on the turntable in Pontiac! The band hasn't said if Blaze has joined full time in this role (let alone mentioned him by name), but it must have been a thrill for him to learn a very new instrument and join them on the 5 hour drive south! 

Heavy Lies The Crown's next show will take them to Wolverine (90 minutes south of the Soo), where they and the aforementioned Ghidora will join a dozen more Northern Michigan metal bands for this year's Sturgeon River Shred Fest on the July 27th weekend, while they and Ghidora will also rock Escanaba on October 19th for the Fight Breast Cancer With Music charity metal concert. If you're in the Northern Lower or the central U.P., keep these shows in mind for some intense original metal action! Finally, on April 18th (but oddly not plugged publically on social media for another two months), Heavy Lies The Crown released a brand new studio single named "Marble Skin" to major streaming services like Spotify! Running for just 1:40, it's their first song since Nathan came back and Ted left, and while suitably heavy for fans, it seems overly processed in terms of vocal clarity, like they recorded it in a wind tunnel.

It's good to hear some new (if brief) music from H.L.T.C., so check out its YouTube Music copy below, and we'll have much more from them and other Sault Michigan/E.U.P. bands on the site soon! Thanks everyone!!