New Videos From Late 2023 Of Fuller & Silent 9!!

Before we begin this post, I wanted to offer our deepest condolences to the family & friends of veteran Toronto punk bassist Phil Page, who passed away earlier this week, as per numerous personal Facebook postings. While not a local musician, Phil was known to many in the local punk scene via his friend and long-time bandmate Mikey Hawdon, with the two collaborating musically for the past 15 or so years during Mikey's time living in Southern Ontario. SMS readers will best recognize Phil as the bassist in Mikey's first Ramones tribute band The Merves, who played five concerts in the Soo from 2010-2015 before reuniting at Soo Blaster in November during Mikey's pre-wedding concert. Original music-wise, Phil played with Mikey in The Fairmounts, who came here for a single show at The Algonquin Pub in 2012. Mikey also drummed in Phil's band Teenage X, who I don't believe ever played up here.

Phil was also known from GTA bands like The Outbred Inlaws and The Downbelows, and was also an avid skateboarder. My interactions with Phil during his local concerts were limited, but he was a good man and a proud father, and my thoughts are absolutely with his wife Hollie and their kids at this difficult time. If you're a fan of modern skate punk and/or The Ramones, do check out Phil's back catalog to hear some very solid performances both on stage and in studio. R.I.P. Phil!

Today's post otherwise focuses on new videos, and we'll actually start with another ex-bandmate of Mikey Hawdon's, namely his old Lion Ride/Detroit cohort Mark Rand & his emo/punk band Fuller, who reunited after an 18-ish year hiatus for a one-off concert at LopLops Lounge in December! As I noted in our post last week about Jimmy Polnick's live-streams from that night, the Facebook event page saw an abnormal usage as a bulletin board for videos from the event (remember, the bands that night either don't have a Facebook page or barely post on theirs), with two more attendees posting videos there from the show! Ashley Lace also filmed Fuller's entire set for the event page, posting her footage on January 2nd. Now, her videos were split in two chunks (the second video begins with their Moneen cover with guest vocalists), but thankfully, hers were shot horizontally!

It's always more ideal to shoot a band in landscape orientation, so kudos to Ashley for going widescreen for her footage! Even beyond that, I'd say that her videos are better quality for visuals and audio than Jimmy's, but of course, thanks to both for filming everything that they did! I won't do another blow by blow of the set, as I covered that ground last week, but definitely give Ashley's Fuller videos a watch above & below!

The other video was posted by Mark on New Year's Eve, but was shot by his wife & Cross Dog bandmate Tracy Ashenden. It features their last song (whose name was obscured in the setlist picture from his personal Facebook page), which was more of an extended jam compared to what came before it. Tracy got more of a central angle than what Ashley filmed concurrently, and while the audio is a little muffled by comparison, you can't go wrong with the crystal clear visuals and horizontal orientation! It does feel like there was a stabilization setting added to it, based on how some of the motion looks, but it's another solid video, so throw back to Fuller's long awaited return concert again below!

We'll close with a new video from local classic/hard rock cover quartet Silent 9's Facebook page! Filmed at one of their Rockstar Bar fundraiser gigs from late last year (they did not specify which one), the video features guitarist Ryan Robb playing 19 seconds of the guitar solo from their cover of Metallica's cover of Thin Lizzy's "Whiskey In The Jar". Note the fan laying on his back giving "moral support", which hopefully was sent accurately! The drums are a little loud given the camera setup and focus on the guitarist, but what we see is well performed, so give it a look for yourselves below!

That's all for today, but stay tuned for weekend concert previews on the site next! Thanks everyone!

Saultites In Out Of Town Bands Profile: Lead The Dead

In our last monthly feature post of May 2013, it's now time for this month's Saultites In Out Of Town Bands Profile on this Memorial Day! As you likely know, this ongoing series looks at a band from outside of the Twin Saults that has featured at least one Saultite in any of their past or present lineups, along with bio information, media, and more on each! Though defunct, this band hit some solid heights during their run, and their local member has been quite prominent recently (in fact, he's playing at The Oddfellows Hall on Wednesday), so read on below for this month's out-of-town profile! (Updated on November 27th)
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Lead The Dead (London, Ontario)

Lineup: (Saultites in RED; ex-members in italics)

Martin Ryersee (vocals/ex-bass)
Chad McLaughlin (guitar)
Andre Fetchison (guitar)
Goran Mamika (bass)
Chris Johnson (drums)

Nathan Stokes (vocals)
Chris Page (guitar)
Ted Feica (drums)

Official MySpace page: http://www.myspace.com/leadthedead

Official Facebook page: http://facebook.com/pages/lead-the-dead/149155226341
Official PureVolume page: http://www.purevolume.com/leadthedead

Local Info: As best as I can tell, the only Saultite to have played in Lead The Dead was original rhythm guitarist Chris Page, who local fans may better recognize for his work in the local stoner/death metal quartet Giwakwa! You may also recognize Chris from local (and arguably obscure) 1990s bands like Oblige and Mimik, but he hit his biggest heights in music to date after graduating from Fanshawe College in the early 2000s and during his Lead The Dead tenure, before returning home by 2011, but keep watch for Giwakwa's next shows!

Band Bio: Lead The Dead were a death/thrash metal band from London, Ontario that launched in 2006. After securing a full lineup, they debuted circa January 2007, and they played numerous opening sets and headlining gigs in the London area over the next 4 years, including sharing the stage with notable bands like Fuck The Facts, Threat Signal, Abriosis, and Endast during their run. Though their lineup were generally stable from 2007 onward, Chris Page left the band circa January 2009, and was replaced by current Mulletcorpse guitarist Andre Fetchison, completing the lineup that would record their debut (and only) EP "Everything Burns", which came out in May 2010. Last seen opening for Soilwork in London on August 17th of that year, Lead The Dead had begun working on djent-influenced original material that fall, but no public updates followed, and it's presumed that the band quietly broke up by early 2011.

Surviving material of the band's tenure with Chris Page is honestly very hard to find, so I admittedly can't comment on his work with Lead The Dead, but if his Giwakwa material is any indication, he was a key member of their arsenal! For the media that is available, I'm detecting a hard hitting and brutal mix of death and thrash metal with a lot of melodic flourishes, and they'd fit nicely at a varied mix of metal shows! Martin Ryersee's vocals are harsher and more extreme than his predecessor Nathan Stokes' work in other bands, but they better fit the genre, and they add a good compliment from the often very technical guitar work, and I'm also really impressed by Chris Johnson's often blistering drum work! I also like how they don't pigeonhole themselves into one genre, they throw a lot into their music, even incorporating softer material on songs like "Withdrawal", along with some experimental and progressive elements on others. I wish there was more to judge some of L.T.D.'s earlier work, but if their EP's any indication, they were not a band to be missed, and maybe they'll resurface down the road!

Adding to their relative elusiveness for surviving media, the only videos I can find of Lead The Dead are studio instrumental samples, filmed on very grainy cameras, both of which are on their MySpace page linked above. The only full videos of the band that I've found are through Rock Band playings of their material, and this upload of their original song "Rip'er" from their "Everything Burns" EP, so click here for most of those, and check out their very cool track "Rip'er" below!


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I hope you guys liked this month's Saultites In Out Of Town Bands Profile! Next month in this series, I've chosen Lethbridge, Alberta metal band Caste of Shadows (now featuring veteran local musician Paul Melanson) to look at in our June profile, so watch out for that on or around June 26th, and stay tuned for more big news tomorrow! Thanks everyone!

Happy (Belated) 4th Anniversary To The Sault Metal Scene!!

Well guys, we're keeping with a fast paced schedule on the SMS now that my computer's back from Staples, and now, finally, we can talk about our 4th anniversary surprises in detail! I was hoping to (obviously) do all of this on Monday, July 4th, which is the day we started the SMS in 2007, but hey, things happen and believe me, I was pissed at the inconvenience of it all. Now that we're back in working order though, I can properly unveil and detail the surprises and announcements in a way that Facebook statuses cannot! So let's kick this off with the biggest news of all for the anniversary! The first news is that we are now selling official Sault Metal Scene t-shirts! This was an idea that I've been deliberating on for some time now (you may have seen the occasional hint or reference to it on our Facebook page), but for the fourth anniversary, I finally decided to pull the trigger! Hopefully I can answer any lingering questions you guys have on the shirts, so hopefully this post will cover them. The shirts are black with our logo in red on the chest, with nothing on the back (Keep it simple unless demand grows.) They are nice quality Gildan's 100% cotton t-shirts, and they come in sizes S-XL. The shirts will be printed on a order-by-order basis by AudioLife through Reverbnation, where we already have a "band page" set up, and as such, we now have a "Sault Metal Store" activated there for you guys to buy the shirts from! A link is also now on the SMS page itself on the bottom left, and our Facebook page has a "Store" tab to allow you to buy shirts through there too. I opted for Reverbnation due to it's ease and integration with our existing pages, and because it doesn't cost me a dime to make merchandise to sell! I handle the designing, and AudioLife/Reverbnation make the shirts from recieved orders and send them out. I had a great offer from RedD Monkey's Steve Mozarowski to make up shirts with him, but I thought that this would be simplest in terms of cost, space, and online access. Still, "some metalhead" recommends you bands give him a shout, his work is great! The shirts cost $12.97 (tax included), which is the absolute lowest I can make them for this style without sacrificing quality. The shipping cost to Sault Ontario is $8.49, but shipping to Sault Michigan is only $6.39, so if you live over there or use Weir's Furniture Store, make note of the $2.10 savings! I could have raised the base price & earned the difference, but I don't want to take your money. I'm not making a penny through this, I just want you guys to spread the word and support the SMS if you wanna by rocking a shirt! At present, you can only buy shirts with major credit cards, though if you give me the total shirt/shipping cost in person, I could order you one and have it sent to your address. When I ordered my SMS shirt, it took 4 weeks to ship, though keep in mind that the postal strike happened in the interim, so it will likely come earlier than that with your orders, especially if you're shipping to Michigan. At present, Reverbnation does not offer PayPal as a payment method, nor do they offer shirts in kids sizes or in sizes above XL, but if those become available, I will absolutely let you guys know! And for the record, I have NO shirts stocked at home, this is by online demand only. At least at present, if you want an SMS t-shirt, you'll have to order it, but trust me, it's worth the order! My shirt is nice quality, it's well screenprinted and it's durable, so as long as you take care of it and follow the washing instructions, it will last! Of course, I don't control the quality of how AudioLife makes the shirts, so click here for details on exchange or refund info if it came to that, though hopefully it won't. If these shirts sell well (time will decide that), I'll consider expanding the store to include other shirt colours, designs, and types, and maybe even hats, mugs, and bags. That all depends on if SMS shirts sell well, and if you'll honestly buy them, so click here if you're interested, and check the above information for more! You follow us, why not wear us and show your support? Second for the fourth anniversary surprises is, obviously, the new design of the SMS page itself. With Blogger's new updated template designing tools and the general aging and busy look of our old layout, I thought it was time to freshen up the look, while keeping it looking similar to before. I won't burden you guys with every change, but here's the major ones. The sidebars with the links, listings, polls, and so forth are now transparent black, which is a cool effect, and gives a seamless flow to the screen area. The banner is now taller to increase the customization possibilities (and make our logo more prominent), while many of the "border lines" are gone from surrounding text and photos, giving everything a cleaner look. Visited links are now blue & links now only highlight in purple, as I felt blue fit better given our Sault Michigan coverage. Link colours also now apply to sidebars too. I freshened up our band links by splitting the Twin Saults' respective band lists in half: One each for active bands, one each for inactive bands (i.e. defunct bands or ones that have not been visibly active in the previous year.) This way, you guys can get a better gauge of who's currently active in the local music scenes on both sides of the border without clutter from defunct & inactive bands, who are grouped separetely below the active ones (though if I made a mistake in my categorizing, let me know!) Also, each post now features buttons at the bottom to share individual posts on external websites like Facebook & Twitter. I've removed the out of town concert listings too because, in all fairness, our local fanbase isn't within easy driving distance for most of the shows, though we'll still mention them! And finally for notable changes, we now have an official mobile version of the SMS page formatted for smartphones, iPod Touches, and so forth! It's not really custom to our layout yet, but I like the formatting for it's ease of reading, though you can switch to a desktop view if you want as well. I hope the changes don't throw you guys off, cause I tried to maintain our old look while bringing it forward in design and style. There's more tweaking to be done though, so I will let you guys know when I change or add anything new! Third for the anniversary surprises is a new monthly feature series! I debated between Twitter and the site we chose for this one, but in the end, we picked the more active and varied of the two on a local metal basis, so our new monthly series is the YouTube Channel Profile Series! There's tons of people, bands, and groups on YouTube that have videos of a local metal interest, from live concert videos to original songs to jam session clips, there's plenty there! On the SMS, we tend to mostly feature new videos, videos from bands playing from concert previews, and so forth. There's a lot of older & unexplored channels & videos that deserve your attention, so starting on July 22nd, we will profile three YouTube channels with either a 50% level (or higher) of local metal-based videos, or a high number of videos in general of a local metal interest. We'l tell you who runs the channel, what to see there, what the overall quality is like, what videos are worth watching, and so on, cause there's a lot of hidden gems! I haven't decided a method to pick the channels yet though, though there will definitely be a form of random selection, and for the record, the SMS channel will NOT be featured. I talk about it enough as it is! So watch out for this new series on July 22nd, and from the 19th-25th of each succeeding month! And finally for surprises, The Sault Metal Scene is now on yet another music site! We have accounts on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, and Reverbnation, but now, we've made the jump to PureVolume! I've been using PureVolume for occasional band sourcing and material for years, and though it's nowhere near as popular locally as other music sites, I thought we should continue our reach by joining PureVolume, which has a nice interface to promote band material and information! Active bands like Frightlight, Tym Morrison, and Sykotyk Rampage all have a presence on PureVolume, while notable defunct bands like Infrastrate and D.O.T.H. all have utilized PureVolume in the past, and in some cases, the only page I have access to for a given band is through here, like with Bad Habbit. It's a nice little site and has a ton of solid bands from all over the world, so definitely consider using it if your band wants to extend themselves further! Our official PureVolume page is kinda bare at present, but definitely visit and make note of it to check our over a dozen local hard rock acts (including a new discovery we're profiling this week), and become a fan or friend today! Stay tuned for more updates from the SMS & PureVolume! That's all for now, but I do want to thank you guys sincerely from the bottom of my heart for all of the incredible support & readership that I and The Sault Metal Scene have been offered over the last four years (and two days.) Whether you read every day or see me as just "some metalhead", I appreciate everything you guys have done and said to help this site prosper beyond my wildest expectations that I had in July 2007. I hope you guys will follow along over the next year as we hopefully make our biggest strides yet in the local scene, as I really hope we can get even bigger going into 2012. Seeing 1,000 Facebook fans would be awesome, but you never know what will be up next! Thank you all for everything, we wouldn't be where we are now without you guys! Stay tuned later today as we continue to get back on track from the weekend delays, as we review Monday night's Titan's Eve concert! Thanks everyone!