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Sumerlands

Mar 04, 2024 By Matthew Berlyant Photography by Matthew Berlyant Web Exclusive

While it’s not especially unusual to have co-headlining sets at Music Hall of Williamsburg, it is when each of the co-headlining bands share membership. Co-headliners Eternal Champion and Sumerlands share guitarists Arthur Rizk and John Powers along with bassist Brad Raub, but they also have vastly different, if connected and familiar, sounds as well.

The Philly-based Sumerlands, now led by vocalist Brendan Radigan (who joined for their excellent 2022 album Dreamkiller), play a more “traditional” style of heavy metal with huge hooks and bigger riffs on songs like “Edge of a Knife” and the title track. One punter on bandcamp described them as (paraphrasing here) “the best metal band from your hometown in 1987 that wasn’t signed yet” and that’s a pretty great description. Their style of melodic power metal, produced by Rizk, owes more than a little to genre pioneers like Queensrÿche, Metal Church, Accept, Warlock, Helloween, and the like, but there’s a 21st century feel here, too, that makes the overall effect feel like Sumerlands is more than just the sum of its parts or a nostalgia trip. That said, with a good chunk of the audience singing along, it’s easy to see that if they were around in the late eighties, this stuff would be all over Headbanger’s Ball or Hard 30 and would even cross over into regular MTV rotation. And that kind of pure joy and great songwriting can make it in any era.

Eternal Champion, on the other hand, are led by singer Jason Tarpey (formerly of Iron Age, Far from Breaking, etc.), so like Sumerlands, they also have roots in the hardcore punk scene (Austin in their case). And again, though they share ⅗ of their lineup with Sumerlands, they play a self-described style of “epic” metal that is heavier, more groove-oriented, and perhaps less overtly catchy than Sumerlands, but still pummeling, riff-oriented, and inviting massive audience sing-a-longs and fist pumping up front on songs like “I Am the Hammer.”

Openers Legendry are a trio from Pittsburgh and also describe them as an “epic” metal band. They were really good, playing a diverse array of styles and warming up the crowd nicely for the co-headliners. They opened with a great Motörhead style track, but ran the gamut from epic/fantasy inspired stuff to doom/stoner back to several eighties style thrashers. For about half of their set, they were joined by violinist Dee C, giving an even more “epic” feel to the proceedings.