The Acacia Strain live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 28 July 2018

Ten years after Continent came out, The Acacia Strain was still touring it. That was the point of the summer 2018 run, which one announcement headed a mostly Canadian anniversary tour, and Thunder Bay was the first western stop once it left Ontario’s south and east. The date was Saturday 28 July, at Crocks on Cumberland Street South.

The band formed in 2001 in Chicopee, Massachusetts. Vincent Bennett has sung from the start and is the only original member left. Its records are filed under metalcore and deathcore, and it has been on Rise Records for most of its recent catalogue.

Why Continent

Continent was the band’s fourth album, released on 19 August 2008 by Prosthetic Records. It was recorded that spring at Planet Z Studios in Hadley, Massachusetts, with the producer Zeuss. The album debuted at number 107 on the Billboard 200 on first-week sales of about 5,600 copies, and reached number 2 on the Heatseekers chart for new acts.

The band on the record was Vincent Bennett with Daniel Laskiewicz, Jack Strong and Kevin Boutot. Bennett is the only founding member left today. A decade later the group built a tour around the album, not around the record it had put out the year before.

That record was Gravebloom, the eighth, released on 30 June 2017 by Rise Records, the third album the band made for that label, and produced by Will Putney. It charted at number 146. Lower than Continent. So the band’s newest album sold no better on the chart than one that was ten years old, and the anniversary tour put the older one on the poster.

There is a small irony in the choice. The band’s highest chart position came in between, with Coma Witch in 2014 at number 31. A fall tour with After the Burial, which began on 27 September, treated Continent the same way, with the album played through.

The route west

The tour was announced at the end of April 2018. One report counted 23 dates between mid-July and mid-August, with the Biltmore Cabaret in Vancouver among the named rooms. Thunder Bay was one of the smaller cities on the map.

The first dates were in the northeast, from 18 July, and the run crossed Ontario and Quebec before it reached Thunder Bay on 28 July at the start of the western stretch. Winnipeg followed on the 30th, at the Garrick Centre. The western dates continued through Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia into early August, and the tour finished in the American Midwest on 13 August.

Left Behind and I AM were announced as support. The Thunder Bay entry names only the headliner and gives no set times, so the exact bill for the night is left open. The tour was billed as an anniversary, which would normally put the album at the centre of the set, but what was actually played at Crocks is not recorded.

Three weeks after Rivers of Nihil

The only other night in the record within three weeks of this one is Rivers of Nihil on 7 July, which cost $15. Tickets here cost $20, the same as The Faceless charged in June. Across twelve 2018 prices in this record, admission ran from $13 to $40.

The summer’s three metal nights therefore sat in a narrow band, and the price made no distinction between a new record and an old one. That is a reading of the numbers, since nothing was said about how the prices were chosen.

Crocks by late July

By the end of July the Cumberland Street building had about two months left as the Crocks address. The last night there was on 29 September, and the Crocks name moved to the NV Nightclub building on Red River Road on 5 October. The nights between are on the shows page.

Thunder Bay is a city of roughly 108,000 people on Lake Superior. A band due in Winnipeg on the Monday leaves it heading west on Highway 17, and the dates as announced put nothing between the two shows, so the Sunday was there for the drive.