Local Metal Band “Path to Midian” Releases First EP

Photo taken during the shooting of their upcoming music video.

By Zachary Daum
mascherald@heraldpubs.com

Local metal band, “Path to Midian” released their first album, available for streaming now, on April 27. Members Bruce Morrison, Erik Spiller, Paul Dontigney Jr. and Mark Nicol released their first song, “The Morning After” on Halloween in 2022, and planned to release a second song shortly after. What was to be a second song turned into a full album made up of 7 more songs.
Titled, “Martyr,” this EP or “Extended Play” is comprised of old and new music written by members Paul Dontigney Jr. and Erik Spiller. Dontigney discussed this and the very long road they took to finally releasing it. “These are recordings of old and new material that we actually have been preparing for some time now. Most of the music was written by Erik Spiller and myself and inspired by the metal bands from the 80s and 90s that we grew up listening to. Mark Nicol came in and added a more modern edge to everything and Bruce took everything to a higher level with his powerful vocals that can be described as soulful with an edge. A lot of these songs were written in our previous incarnation, when we were called Hung Like A Martyr. Some of it was with vocalist Jimmy Funk and some with Gary Johnston as well as our previous drummer Gary Hotchkiss. We re-wrote them with the current lineup and recorded them a few years back and we weren’t happy with the way the mixes sounded, so we took them to a friend and studio engineer Matt Amelung, who we had worked with before.
“Unfortunately during the process, he lost a battle with cancer and died which left us in a saddened state for a while. We really liked working with him, but we had to pick ourselves back up and move on. We had to go through Matt’s estate and get everything back on hard drives to finish these recordings. We then took them to another friend and touring engineer, Nate Norway. Nate was off the road at the time due to the Covid pandemic, so he had the time to put into these songs and finish them up nicely. Final mastering was done by Alice Media Group in 2022, and we released them for the world to finally hear and enjoy in April of 2023. The plan now is to promote the album with lots of content to come, including videos, interviews, and live shows. And, we have more material from the late Matt Amelung to be released later this year. All thanks to Alice Media Group for being our artist development company and making this all happen and making us look good.”
As for their future plans, they will next be releasing a music video for the song, “The Reaper.”