More and more, festivals are becoming the driving force for touring rock and metal bands. While obviously there were none in 2020, festivals are returning in force in 2021, mostly in late summer and early fall. Headliners and co-headliners include such heavy hitters as Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Slipknot, Rob Zombie, the original Misfits, Korn, Judas Priest, Five Finger Death Punch and Shinedown. Live Metal’s “2021 Festival Spotlight” series aims to bring attention to some of the names in smaller print on the festival admats—the bands you can get up close and personal with at the smaller stages—along with a few higher profile acts we find worth calling out here. See you at the shows.
Playing: Rock Fest, Upheaval, Inkcarceration, Blue Ridge Rock Festival, Rebel Rock
Website: www.stitchedupheart.org
Latest release: Stitched Up Heart released its second album, “Darkness,” in 2020 via Another Century.
What You Need to Know: This Los Angeles-based quartet, led by vocalist Alecia “Mixi” Demner, honed in on a distinct modern hard rock sound on its second album. “Everybody’s voice is different,” Mixi said in an interview with Live Metal, “and one thing that we found that will tie throughout the whole album is taking my voice and what the producer would do to it and cut it up into all these different melodies that would turn into almost its own synth in the background. You can’t recreate that unless you have my tracks from my vocals or somehow sample it out. So we tried to create something that was as unique as we can get to ourselves.”
The band also got an assist from a friend of Mixi’s, Sully Erna of Godsmack, who provides guest vocals on the album opener, “Lost,” and employed a unique release strategy for the record, releasing most of its songs one at a time starting about a year before dropping the full album. Mixi and her bandmates also have fully embraced Twitch throughout the pandemic, staying connected with their fans by streaming several times a week.
What You Need to Hear:
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