Raise the Cannon aims as high as band can go

By John Benson

For working musicians, the cover band is often a double-edged sword.

Sure, you can seemingly play to packed houses overnight, but the price one pays is with credibility. However, there’s no denying cover bands can provide an element of experience that could be valuable for confidence building. This is exactly the scenario guitarist Josh Menning employed as a member of ’90s rock cover act Hindsight.

“I was in that band roughly about a year and a half ago,” said Menning, a 2004 East Palestine High School graduate. “That allowed me to play with other people and kind of develop my guitar playing a bit. So that kind of let me branch into the music scene a little bit and gain valuable experience by playing four-hour sets a night.

“But then I wanted to play my own music. It’s kind of cool to play your own music and have people up there getting into your songs or even people that you don’t even know feeling your music.”

Just as Menning’s stint in Hindsight was ending, the New Waterford native joined Derrick Braden (guitar and vocals), Kyle Barnhouse (bass and vocals) and Matt Biser (drums) to form Raise the Cannon.

“We actually started out a little bit lighter,” Menning said. “A lot of our stuff was basic alternative, and as we progressed, we got better playing our instruments and started listening to more metal. That’s when we started to transform our style of music, which is mostly metal but still kind of an alternative feel. We like to balance things out.”

Comparisonwise, Raise the Cannon falls somewhere between Killswitch Engage, Bullet For My Valentine and Breaking Benjamin, for what amounts to a heavier rock- radio sound.

With the band having its own basement studio at its disposal, Menning said the quartet plans on releasing a full-length effort later this year. For now the act has a self-titled five-song EP, which includes the powerful “Breeding a Monster” and the heavy “Driver.”

While the band has so far concentrated on playing around the Youngstown area, including a Saturday show at The Firehouse, Menning said more dates are being added in Cleveland and Kent.

There’s even a Columbus appearance booked for next month at the “Woodshock” festival, which also includes national acts (hed) p.e. and OTEP.

When asked where the members of Raise the Cannon are, well, aiming their cannon, Menning laughed, “I don’t know. We’re aiming it as high as we can go.”