Amon Amarth live at Crocks in Thunder Bay, 7 October 2014

Three metal bands and a $25 ticket: that was the offer announced on 2 June 2014 for Crocks on Tuesday 7 October. Advance tickets had gone on sale the previous Friday, 30 May, more than four months ahead, at Rainbow on Bay, Extreme Pita, Bean Fiend and the club itself, and online through the promoter with a service fee added.

Amon Amarth headlined, with Sabaton and Skeletonwitch billed as special guests. Loffredo & Associates presented the night with H.I.T Management. Doors were at 8 p.m., the event was 19+, and photo ID was required. Three bands make a full evening, and the doors opened early enough to fit them all in on a weeknight.

Sweden and Ohio

Amon Amarth formed in Tumba, a town just south of Stockholm, in 1992 and took its name from a Tolkien term for Mount Doom. The singer is Johan Hegg. The band is usually filed under melodic death metal, though its songs about Norse myth and Viking history earn it the label Viking metal too.

Its ninth studio album, Deceiver of the Gods, came out on Metal Blade Records on 25 June 2013, and this fall 2014 tour followed it by fifteen months. The band described the cover as Ragnarök, the last battle between the Æsir gods and Loki, who is accompanied by the army of the dead.

Sabaton, also Swedish, formed in 1999 in Falun, in central Sweden, and played power metal built around songs about military history. Its album Heroes had come out that May.

Skeletonwitch formed in 2003 in Athens, in south-eastern Ohio, and worked in blackened thrash, and was the youngest of the three bands. The bill held two Swedish acts and one American one, three different takes on the same loud genre, and both support bands travelled with the headliner across the Canadian dates.

The night in Thunder Bay

A review published in November gives the running order: Skeletonwitch first, Sabaton second, Amon Amarth last. It says the crowd wore more black, denim and leather than at earlier metal shows in the city, with some plastic Viking helmets. Skeletonwitch’s singer told the room it was the biggest crowd the band had drawn in Thunder Bay, and gave the headliner the credit.

The same reviewer wrote that the small stage struggled to hold the tall members of the bands and that the mix favoured drums over low end. Those are one person’s impressions, not measurements. The writer found Sabaton the livelier act, with plenty of talk and choreography between songs, and Amon Amarth’s long set delivered with little chat.

Where it sat on the tour

The Canadian leg ran from Vancouver on 1 October to Quebec City on 12 October, nine dates in twelve days. Thunder Bay was the sixth stop, one night after The Garrick in Winnipeg, and the next Canadian date was Toronto on the tenth, followed by Montreal and Quebec City.

Two nights in between had no date, and the road from Thunder Bay to Toronto is one of the long stretches of the trip.

Among the promoter’s ten priced shows that year the range ran from $5 to $50, so $25 for three bands sat in the middle. Four days before, on Friday 3 October, DJ BL3ND played the same room, so the club swung from electronic dance to metal inside one week.

A Tuesday in October

Tuesday suited a touring package that had to be in Winnipeg the night before and had two open nights after. That is a reading of the calendar, not something the announcement states. Thunder Bay is a city of about 108,000 on Lake Superior, and a Tuesday metal show there is a small-market date in the middle of a large-market tour.

The singer’s remark is a modest kind of record, a claim about one act’s history in one city. Five months later the same club had Benighted, billed on their first Canadian visit, a smaller extreme-metal night at $10 at the door. The rest of the club’s autumn is on the shows page.