I'm a firm believer that there are certain criteria you have to fulfill to be in an actual band - and one of the most important is that you have to play shows. That's what bands do: they write songs, they rehearse, they record, and they play shows. If you don't play shows, you're a "project", not a band. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. Our current logistical situation, with myself and affable sticksman Mike Hamilton in the San Luis Obispo area, six-stringer and beer repository Wes Caley in Arizona, and bassist / vocalist / perpetual brunt of height-related jokes Rob Babcock in Orange County California, you can probably guess that we don't fulfill the "rehearsing" criteria I mentioned above too often. That said, we do play a lot of shows. Last year, we played 88 shows in sixteen countries, and we didn't get started until April.In case you live in Europe or North America and somehow missed us, don't worry, because 2012 looks to be just as intense.
We started off February 11th, with a corporate-rock cash-grab extravaganza: a free Relapse Records showcase with our labelmates Tombs, Revocation, Black Tusk, and Royal Thunder sponsored by everyone's favorite car company / bizarre benefactor of free shows, Scion Motors. You can read a review of all the craziness here.
Here's
"I Rot Within" live at the Roxy. You can also get a good sense of what
complete dicks the venue was being to the kids diving.
As you may have heard, we had to cancel our scheduled dates in Brazil due to issues with our visas - it became a total clusterfuck of a nightmare, let's leave it at that. I am totally bummed about the whole debacle, but trying not to dwell on it too much. At least we have a bunch of other tours coming up. Next week, we head to the olde country for our "Grind Over Europe" tour with Rotten Sound and Magrudergrind for three weeks. For those of you who aren't European grindcore nerds, "Grind Over Europe" was a tour that the late, lamented Morbid Records put together in the mid-90s with Haemorrhage, Dead Infection and CSSO. They did a part II in 1997 with Hemdale, Nyctophobic, and... drum roll, please... Exhumed. I thought it would be fun to resurrect the franchise and get on the road with some awesome bands that love blast beats as much as we do (or probably more!).
Exhumed live on the Grind Over Europe II tour in (the appropriately named) Rotterdam, Holland back in 1997. Don't worry, I have no idea what we were playing here either.
At any rate, once we wrap up that run, we head to the UK, land of tea, crumpets, bad teeth and all of my favorite bands (I'm looking at you Napalm, Carcass, Bolt Thrower, Ripcord, Extreme Noise Terror, My Bloody Valentine, The Cure, Moose, Chameleons, Angel Witch, Diamond Head, UFO, Judas Priest, Deep Purple, Amebix, Discharge, Crass, etc. etc.) for a week with Black / Grind maniacs Anaal Nathrakh.
We'll also hit Ireland for the first time, which means Wes and I can go visit the Phil Lynott statue, drink whiskey, and copiously weep at the loss of the greatest songwriter the world has ever known.
The Ireland dates are basically just an excuse to see this.
At any rate once we leave Ireland and England, or as I call the UK "basically America, but with castles and shittier food", we'll have a few days off before we hit the road with Abysmal Dawn and Arkaik on our way to meet up for a month of shows as direct support for this band some of you may have heard of. What band, you ask? Fucking Cannibal Corpse.
That's a month-long run, all over the good ol' US of A. Once that's finished, we'll head north from the Sunshine state to meet up with yet another North American tour which hasn't quite been announced yet. Suffice it to say we'll be doing a few dates in the northern midwest and leftward and several shows in the land of the McKenzie Brothers - yup, Canada. After that all wraps up, we'll finally get a bit of time off - and it also will be fucking June.
The average Canadian citizen. There is also another guy yelling "Leafs Suck!" behind them.
Oh, I almost forgot, this July we're doing the Obscene Extreme Festival in the Czech Repubilc - pretty much the biggest Grindcore party in the fucking world, with Nasum, Asphyx, and Discharge. Lineups don't really get better than that, dude.
And after that, it's back to North America for Summer Slaughter with Cannibal Corpse (again! stoked!) and a ton of other bands that may or may not have been announced yet, so I'll keep quiet about them here. I'm getting way too old for this shit! 2012 may not bring the end of the world, but it just might succeed in killing little ol' me. After all of that madness is concluded, we're going to try to hole up in a recording studio and crap out yet another record of unlistenable garbage in a continuing effort to fulfill our record contract and see just how much of Relapse's money we can waste over a fourteen-year span.
In keeping with the theme of discussing our live exploits, I've posted a couple of live shows for your listening... I was going to say pleasure, but that might be a stretch. How about just "for your listening". That's pretty good broken English - kind of like how people used to always send letters asking to "trade for your stuffs" back in the early '90s. Good times, bad grammar. At any rate, these two shows are almost a decade apart, have 100% different set lists, vastly different line-ups and should be good for a laugh or two. Up first is a live recording from a show we did in 2004 in Vancouver. We were touring for "Anatomy is Destiny" with Uphill Battle supporting, which was convenient since Danny Walker was playing drums for both bands on that tour. The lineup for Exhumed at that show was yours truly on guitar and vocals, Danny on drums, Leon del Muerte on bass, and Mike Beams on guitar and vocals.
The second show goes waaaaaaaaaay back to 1995, back when there was no internet, people thought that Pitch Shifter were "the future of metal", and I could still fit into my Sodom "Obsessed By Cruelty" sleeveless shirt but could not yet legally drink. One of the best things about this recording is how obvious the complete disinterest of the audience is. I remember this show distinctly because I had asked for the day off of work at my job at Tower Records (remember them? They were a record store chain. Remember those? They were neat.) and they shut me down, so I had to call in sick like a complete dick. A couple of my supervisors tried to trick me into admitting it, but back then I was too good at lying to fall for it. Oh, to be 19 again, when I just didn't give a fuck about anything and worked even crappier jobs that I have in my 30s. Anyway, the lineup for this show is myself on guitar and vocals, Ross Sewage on vocals, Col Jones on drums, Derrel Houdashelt on guitar, and Matt Widener on bass. We had just recorded the "Horrific Expulsion of Gore" demo the preceding summer, which was getting great reviews in tons of fanzines and getting traded all over the world - but no one in the bay area was into it at all, as evidenced by the crowd at this show. You can also observe that the stage banter Ross and I were employing had a really, really long way to go in those days.
If you want to really dig into the vaults, you can check out a show from 1992 in its entirety here - if you can make it through the whole thing in one sitting, you're a braver soul than I. In my defense, I wasn't even 17 yet when this show happened - the other guys were 17, Ben was 19 or so at the oldest. And no, I have no real explanation for the shorts. The really cool thing about that link, is that you can check out Phobia, Mindrot and Immortal Fate sets from the same show there as well! Plutocracy also played that day, and almost started a riot when they lit an American flag on fire onstage. Good times!
Well, one of my new year's resolutions was to post more downloadable stuff here on this blog, so I decided after the Exodus post last week, I should keep it coming. This week we have some tabs for a few Exhumed songs. First up is "The Matter Of Splatter" - the best-known song from the "Anatomy Is Destiny" record, written by departed axe-slinger Mike Beams. This has some signature Beams stuff, tons of rapid-fire non-stop alternate-picking riffs, and jumbled, chromatic note patterns that are a bit difficult to discern and make the fingers on my left hand stumble over each other on the verse riffs. Col and I really insisted that every song have a typical rock song structure - verse, chorus, verse chorus, bridge, verse chorus, and when Mike brought this tune to us, we immediately caught on to its structural simplicity. It was exactly what we wanted to hear, and exactly what the "Anatomy..." record needed. On an album weighed down by some of our longest, often needlessly intricate song-structures (see prime offender "Under The Knife"), "The Matter Of Splatter" sticks out by being nice and straightforward. It was the no-brainer choice for the video single from the album. If you want to work on your alternate-picking technique, look no further, but good luck jamming to the record, as the meter is very, um... "organic". Oh, and the other thing about this song is that the discerning listener will notice an uncanny similarity in arrangement to "Damage Inc."
The official music video for "The Matter Of Splatter" - I don't think anyone in the band actually liked how this came out, but what the heck.
Next up is one from the first record - "Open The Abscess" - again, jamming to the record for this song is virtually impossible - not only is the timing completely by feel, but the guitar tone is virtually indecipherable. Even immediately after we recorded the record, none of us were happy with the production. But, what can you do? It's one of those "couldn't replicate it if we were trying to" kind of things. Anyway, this song is actually pretty similar to "Matter of Splatter" structurally, but the riffs are totally different. I was kind of trying to capture something like a Death / Grind version of Destruction's "Bestial Invasion" when I wrote this. The whole song is really built around the vocal hook, which is sort of unusual in this genre. Until "Anatomy...", this was pretty much our most well-known song, and we still usually use "Open..." as our set closer. Enjoy grinding this one out, kids.
I've posted this version of this song before, but in case you missed it - here's a little "Gore Metal" era nostalgia from the Western US leg of the "All Guts, No Glory" tour, as we're joined onstage by Monsewer Ross Sewage and Mike Beams...
Rounding out this post is a couple moldy oldies... I happened to have these already transcribed, so I figured what the heck. Nowadays instead of sitting around and showing the other guys older songs riff by riff, I just give them the tab, which they then ignore and I end up sitting around showing them the songs riff by riff. But - after that - they have something to refer to and I don't have to keep doing that. We used to do Septicemia in the set when we were touring with Danny, and we actually tried to re-record it as a bonus track when we re-recorded "Necromaniac" and "Forged In Fire" for "All Guts, No Glory", but after bashing out 17 songs in 2 days, Danny was physically and mentally burnt, which was totally understandable. We did however, dust off "Excreting Innards" for the first round of shows we did last year, which was pretty fun. "Excreting..." I actually wrote while I was still in high school, so it's pretty simplistic, which is probably it's second best quality, right behind its merciful brevity.
"Excreting Innards / Slaughtercult / Limb From Limb / Eruction (Wes' guitar solo) / Forged In Fire" live in Norway - my voice is shot to shit from watching Voivod the previous night, but you should get the idea...
Exhumed live at Baroeg in Rotterdam, Holland in 1997, leading off with an intro that should be familiar to anyone who has the new album, followed by the first two songs from the "In The Name Of Gore" split - "Horrendous Member Dismemberment" and "Septicemia" - back when we were the sloppiest band in the entire universe, and when that Possessed shirt still more or less fit me... Ah, the good ol' days!
If, for some very odd reason, you're looking for more Exhumed tab, check out this earlier blog here...
I've been meaning to post more downloadable stuff on here, so here you go. Don't say I never gave ya nuthin! Happy New Year, folks! Cheers! - Harvey
You
know, like most folks out there, I get down on my life and myself and
get frustrated and shit, but really I'm a pretty lucky guy. I've been
fortunate enough to get to travel all over the place playing
atrocious, aggravating music for like-minded nutsos and become
friends with some of my favorite musicians from the underground. On a
few occasions, I've even got to play with them. Most folks know that
I got to play guitar for my favorite Death Metal / Grindcore band
Repulsion for a number of years. That was really a great time.
Scott (Carlson) and Matt (Olivo) are both great dudes and taught me a
lot about music and provided me with a zillion anecdotes and insights
from the origins of the Death Metal scene. And, they also turned me
onto Riot, for which I am eternally grateful. I dug their
“Fire Down Under” record so much that when I started my
Metalli-deth “Arena Thrash” band, Scarecrow we
ended up covering that tune. Playing in Repulsion
was a total Death Metal nerd wet-dream come true, and one of the
easiest jobs in metal. Basically, I just showed up, played my
favorite songs, and then got a couple beers and a few bucks. It
really doesn't get better than that.
Scarecrow "Swords And Tequila" - and yes, I know this song is way out of (extremely limited) vocal range.
I
want to take the opportunity here to set the record straight on how
that all came to be. I first met Matt and Scott at Maryland Deathfest
in '03 when both Exhumed
and Repulsion played.
As far as I remember, that was the last Repulsion
show with the original lineup. A couple of years prior, I had,
through my job selling records direct to stores for Necropolis
Records back in the '90s (when that was still a thing), happened to
stumble upon the phone number of the legendary (at least in Flint,
MI) Doug Earp (RIP) – the man who paid for the recording of
“Slaughter Of The Innocent” - or as it's better known today,
“Horrified”. Being a massive Repulsion
fan, I kept Doug on the phone for the better part of an hour, soaking
in every detail he could recall of the recording process, (mostly the
engineer's disbelief at the band's sound) and any other bit of
Repulsion minutae I could wring out of this incredibly nice and
patient man. Doug was obviously bemused and stoked that someone was
so interested in the record and was nothing but a gentleman as we
spoke. I mention that conversation because, by the time I actually
met Matt and Scott I probably knew as much about the recording of
“Horrified” as anyone who wasn't actually present possibly could.
I think their reaction was a mixture of flattery, amusement and
bewilderment when I proceeded to nerd out on their (very gracious and
patient) asses.
Repulsion with the original lineup at MDF '03
Fast-forward
a few months later and Repulsion
was offered a show in Spain, and for whatever reason, original
drummer Dave “Grave” Hollingshead decided that he didn't want to
travel overseas and opted out of the show. The first person Relapse
recommended for the job was, of course, my best friend and long-time
partner in grime, Col Jones. Anyone who has heard the Cretin
“Freakery” record can attest that Col has perfected and improved
Dave's legendary drumming style, so he was the perfect fit for the
job. Since Matt and Scott both live in LA, Col needed someone local
to practice with, so I set about learning the Repulsion
set to rehearse with him so that he'd be primed and ready to jam with
the elder statesmen when the time came. It was sort of like helping
your best friend get ready for a date with a girl you'd been in love
with for years. You're happy for the guy, but you're also jealous as
hell. Anyway, as the date of show drew nearer, guitarist Aaron
Freeman decided that he didn't want to do anymore shows with the band
either. Well, luckily for me, I was already jamming with Col, knew
all the songs, and was one of the biggest Repulsion
fans on the planet... So Col graciously recommended me to the guys,
and things went from there. Thanks are due to Col for helping me get
my foot in the door with the band, and congrats to my successors (I
quit the band after our shows with AtTheGates,
right before I moved to Hawaii), two of my favorite guitarists and
people, my former partner in the Exhumed
twin-axe attack, Mike Beams, and one of my oldest friends, Marissa
Martinez of Cretin,
who has nailed the Repulsion
writing style better than anyone not named Scott, Matt, Dave, or
Aaron.
Repulsion with Col and I in LA at the Murderfest in '07. I think we all have much cooler hair now, except Col, who has always had cool hair - at least since 11th grade anyway.
What
a lot of people don't know is that I actually spent a night fronting
one of my other favorite bands of all time, Exodus.
When I was rehearsing for the first Repulsion
show, I had just started working at Alternative Tentacles Records,
via the recommendation of their General Manager at the time, Dave
Adelson (who now runs his own awesome label, 20 Buck Spin, full
time). I was living in the South Bay and the AT office was in
Emeryville (right between Oakland and Berkeley) so the commute was
horrible, especially with the Bay Area's notoriously atrocious
traffic. I had some car trouble on the way home Thursday night and I
opted to take Friday off work to get my car fixed, since taking the
bus or train would literally take several hours round-trip. I was
awoken by my phone that morning- a call from an unknown 510 area-code
number. Since I am kind of a hermit and I hate
talking on the phone, I let it go to voice-mail and checked the
message an hour or so later once my car was at the shop. To say I was
surprised to hear Gary Holt on my voice-mail would be the
understatement of the century. I called him back immediately and he
told me that Zetro had just quit the band, and,
if I wasn't doing anything the next night, Exodus
had a show in Mexico City and needed a singer. I had to think about
it for a second, because to be honest I was intimidated as hell, but
I knew I would be kicking myself for years if I didn't jump on this
opportunity.
At the airport with the Exo-dudes, I'm the idiot in the middle with the shit-eating "I can't believe I'm doing this!" grin.
A
bit of quick background, I had met the Exodus
guys in Europe in '03, when we had a day off in Austria and went to
their show with NuclearAssault, Grave,
and Mortician. I got
super hammered, accidentally made out with a fat chick, threw up, and
ended up backstage partying with the Exo-dudes. They had a day off as
well and ended up seeing one of our shows or something, and they
somehow put it together that this kid that was at the front row 13 or
more times during the 2nd
Baloff era of the band, screaming every lyric to every song, was also
the singer for this Death Metal band, Exhumed.
In fact, a week before Baloff's death, Dekapitator
had played a show with Exodus
at the Covered Wagon in San Francisco. At any rate, they knew I was a
Bay Area local, sang for a Death Metal band and at least knew all the
words to the “Bonded By Blood” album. So as a last resort, they
rang me and asked me to fill-in for this show. All those years back
in middle school screaming along to my favorite records were finally
coming in handy! Now, when is Voivod gonna call me when Snake has a
sore throat?!?!
I
had a truly amazing time in Mexico City, and the whole show is really
a bit of a blur looking back, but it was an amazing night. One thing
that's really worth mentioning is the kids at the show. They didn't
care that I wasn't Zetro or Baloff, they just really cared that a
band that lost their singer 2 days earlier didn't cancel on them and
did whatever it took to come down and play for them. They were
nothing but wonderful to me, and I can't thank them enough. I didn't
know what to expect, I thought people were going to be really pissed
off or something, but mid-way through the first song, I looked down
and saw a kid with a “Gore Metal” shirt on, and started to feel
like everything was gonna be okay. The Exodus
guys asked me about going to South America with them the following
week, but I needed to be available for Repulsion
and I didn't want to have just started a new job working for an old
friend just to turn around and quit within the first month. If I had
just gone for it, who knows what would have happened... My liver and
brain would probably have been destroyed several times over by now!
When I heard “Shovel-Headed Kill Machine” a couple years later, I
knew that Exodus was
back to full-strength and then some, sounding better than they had in
years. In the meantime, I got to play in Repulsion
for four years or so, and years later, my own goofy band has a new
album out that people seem to like, so I think
everything worked out pretty well all the way around.
I've
had the audio recording of this show for years, but out of respect to
Exodus, I've been
hesitant to share it beyond a few close friends, but when I recently
saw them on the Slayer
tour in Calgary last year (thank Satan they don't have to play at
shitholes like the Covered Wagon these days) Gary and Tom (and Rob
for that matter) gave me their blessing to post the audio from the
show. It's very raw, just a guy in the audience with a hand-held tape
recorder, and my vocals are pretty shredded as the show goes on, but
it's at least good for a laugh – or in case you need to remember
really obscure, random Metal trivia facts, haha! If you want to
nit-pick and critique my performance, go ahead, but keep in mind I
had literally no
rehearsal with the band, and one day to learn the lyrics to (at the
time) new songs like “War is my Shepherd”, “Shroud Of Urine”
and “Scar Spangled Banner”. We ran through those tunes and
“Blacklist” at soundcheck, “Blacklist” was a little rough so
we dropped it. Everything else was just done on the fly. It was a
pleasure and an honor to share the stage with one of my absolute
favorite bands of all time and I want to thank those guys again for
letting me do it, and for giving the go-ahead and share this
recording with the fine folks of the interweb. That said, I would love to see any video of this show, if such a thing exists. This was before literally everything was on youtube, so I've never come across any footage of it. If you have it, get in touch!
My exciting new shelf. I needed somewhere to put my Shogun Warrior - it really ties the room together.
And
so we continue with our seemingly endless saga of road warrior-ism...
As those of you who have been following our story so far may
remember... We had spent the summer criss-crossing the western two-thirds of
the US and Canada with Macabre , CephalicCarnage
and Withered
- topping things off with a trip to Europe for a four-day,
four-festival marathon. We got back from Belgium late Monday night,
August 15th, more than ready for a bit of rest. I have to
admit, I was pretty psyched about having a month and a half off the
road. While I was still in Orange County (after Rob kindly picked
Mike and I up from LAX) I went out and bought a new amp, a Peavey
6505+, a new phone that doesn't totally suck, as well as a
much-needed new bookshelf that actually fits all my records (for now,
haha!). When you live on the central California coast, you're hours
away from the nearest Guitar Center and Ikea, so I decided to make
the most of my proximity to mega-shopping during my Tuesday in SoCal.
Amp mod in progress. Wes and Rob: Working hard. Me: hardly working. Good times.
Since
I'm talking about the gear I bought, I want to give you a brief idea
of how out of control my gear situation was when we did the “All
Guts...” record: for starters, I didn't even own an amplifier. I
had three guitars in various states of disrepair (now at least one is
functioning at 100%, another at about 75%, while there's still one in
pretty bad shape), some pedals (noise suppressor, tuner, and tube
screamer) and a busted Marshall cabinet. While on the Macabre
tour, I picked up a Line 6 relay wireless system, a delay and EQ
pedal for a lead boost, a pedal board to organize my crap and a new
stand case for the side of the stage. In early June, Wes set up my
old Ibanez RGT-350 so I wouldn't have to keep using my shitty blue RG
270 (that I used at MDF and our first few shows in Europe). The
RG-270 used to be my back-up guitar before the wiring in my RGT got
shot to hell and the bridge rusted beyond usefulness. I got a new,
Gotoh bridge for the RGT-350, which totally rules and stays in tune
perfectly after Wes' expert set-up work. After the North American
tour ended, Wes also fixed my cabinet by removing the circuit board
and replacing all the wiring (I think he removed the circuit board –
I really know next to nothing about all the technical stuff) as well
as doing a really cool mod on it. He and Rob lined the whole front of
the cabinet with caulk that gave it a lot more bottom end and really
darkened up the sound of the cabinet. I think it sounds better than
the rectifier cabinets, to be honest, because it still has a bit of
that Marshall warmth. If you're wondering how we recorded the
record... We recorded everything with Wes' and Ryan's (Butler at
Arcane Digital Recording) gear.
The bar whose name I have forgotten. But I remember the pic of Billy Dee Williams distinctly!
I
had enough time in those six weeks to play a really fun free Gravehill
show in Los Angeles at a cool bar where I tried Johnnie Walker Green
for the first time. It's expensive, but I highly recommend it! Matt
Olivo from Repulsion came out and hooked me up with an awesome
Genocide LP which totally made my night! The stage was about 6 inches high, and I totally got knocked flat on my ass by someone in the pit - always the sign of a good evening.
I also went up to my old
hometown of San Jose for Labor Day weekend to hang out with my old
Exhumed and Scarecrow band-mates and managed to get a
DUI, which was a bit of a drag to say the least. Luckily, my license
wouldn't become suspended until after we were supposed to leave for
tour so I was free to roam around and get whatever needed to get done
in the interim. One thing that was a bit of a sticky wicket about the
DUI was that my court date was set for October 18th –
the day we were scheduled to play in Ljubljana, Slovenia, so I ended
up having to spring for a lawyer to go to court for me... Which meant
that on top of the thousands of dollars for the DUI + classes, I had
to fork over another $1500 for a lawyer. Awesome. Needless to say, I
didn't buy anymore gear during / after the Goatwhore / Havok
tour we finished in November... But more on that later.
Now that is a cool record! My Death Metal nerd status: Assured!!!
Our
plan when we did the record was that we would just concentrate on
doing a couple of festivals and then maybe add a few dates depending
on what the vibe was with the band and the reaction to the album,
etc. etc. Needless to say, things grew beyond our expectations pretty
quickly with “All Guts...” and we ended up kind of piecing tours
together around the festivals we already had booked – so our North
American tour ended up being two separate three-week tours, rather
than one five-week tour. Europe was sporadic in a similar fashion.
Having already played a bunch of places with Atheist in April,
and a few more in June, we had some pretty wide swaths of uncovered
ground there. So we made plans to trek back to Europe in September
and October with CephalicCarnage. As things were a bit
slow coming together logistically, the tour ended up kicking off in
October. In the meantime we decided to hit the California Discord
Fest, since we had been talking about doing a “punk rock” style
show in Los Angeles anyway. Several scenarios were discussed, mostly
revolving around Exhumed + DespiseYou at the
Boulevard, but this festival featuring Dropdead, Rattus,
Ghoul, Magrudergrind, LackOfInterest,
DespiseYou and many others seemed to cover the same
ground more effectively, so we opted to do this instead. Then my old
friend Joe Axler (drummer extraordinaire for Splatterhouse,
BookOfBlackEarth, etc.) hit me up
about the Discord weekend. It turned out that his new band, the
killer Theories(click the link to download their record for free, dude!) was playing
some shows on their way down from Seattle with the also excellent
Transient and was
wondering if we'd like to do a bay area show in addition to the
festival. A few emails to our intrepid agent, Dan Rozenblum at the
Pantheon Agency (who not coincidentally is Theories'
agent as well) and we had managed to squeeze into a last minute spot
at the Uptown in Oakland. I made sure we got my former band-mates'
new band Mortuous(featuring
Col Jones on drums and Mike Beams on guitar) on the bill as well and
things were set for a pretty fun weekend. Wes flew to Orange County
from Arizona and he and Rob arrived in time for a couple days of
rehearsal. We worked in a few different songs to the set, adding new
tracks “Distorted And Twisted To Form”, “Death Knell” and
“Necrotized” as well as “Torso” from the Hemdale
split. After a couple of rehearsals (and the aforementioned cabinet
repair / mod) we were ready for a weekend of grind.
Rehearsing in SLO. With any luck, we may have actually been in tune and playing the same song in this photo!
Hammy blasting away at rehearsal.
Since
all this stuff was more or less local (San Luis Obispo is about four
hours south of Oakland and four hours north of Los Angeles), we were
doing the drive in our own cars, my SUV and Mike's pickup with a
minimal amount of gear. Foolishly, the night before we left, Rob,
Wes and I drank some hash-infused rum. I failed to take into account
that the longer hash (or weed for that matter) sits in alcohol, the
more potent it becomes. The last time I imbibed this felonious
concoction, I had a pretty tall glass mixed with Grapefruit juice –
the vitamin C from the juice supposedly makes it hit you a bit
harder. It was pretty intense. With this in mind, I fixed us each a
pretty small glass with ice – about the size of a generous “on
the rocks” drink. Well, it had been a couple of months at least
since the last time I had indulged in this particular libation, so it
had plenty of time to steep in the rum and it hit even harder this
time. This is worth mentioning because when the three of us woke up
the next morning, we were all still very much under the influence.
When we met up with Mike that morning at our jam space, he could tell
we were a bit sideways. Okay, let's be honest: we were still
high as fuck. Rob, Wes and I aren't particularly habitual stoners, so
we were pretty spaced out as we drifted through the trip to Oakland
in a heavy haze of stupefaction. I was still not quite right when I
ate a burrito around 5:00 that evening or so, but the food really
helped a lot. I was slowly coming back to a state resembling
normalcy, which was a relief since I did not want to have to play the
show stoned. I've never done that before, but it doesn't seem like a
good idea and I am stoked that I didn't have to start in 2011.
A
little bit about this Oakland show: The Uptown is not a rock / metal
club – it's more of a “club” club. Cover bands and dance nights
and shit. So most metal people don't really like going there. Strike
One. Also, HammersOfMisfortune was
playing the same night in San Francisco. Strike Two. The club already
had a cover band booked for that night, so our show was schedule to
start at 5:30 PM and run until 9:30. If you know anything about the
Bay Area, the traffic there is terrible, so if you're off work in San
Jose / San Francisco / Concord at five, there's no way you can be in
Oakland by 5:30. Strike Three. Oh yeah, and we had just played a
packed show in San Francisco a month ago, which usually hurts your
draw in a city 8 miles across the bay. So, there goes my baseball
metaphor. The point of all this is... this wasn't looking like it was
going to be a good show.
And
it wasn't. Things were already off to a rocky start when two of the
Mortuous guys were
caught in traffic (I'm not gonna name names, but Mike Beams is one
that comes to mind, haha!) and didn't make it to the venue in time to
even play their set. They ended up setting up half their gear, and
then tearing it down 30 minutes later without playing a note, which
was a bummer. Transient
was up next, and played an awesome set of powerviolence to a pretty
empty house. Theories
followed and also sounded killer, despite the lack of much of an
audience. By the time we got onstage, some folks actually started
filtering in and the place had gone from sparse to not that bad
(although by no means great). I got to meet Mike's family which was
cool, and we tested out our new set, which went pretty smoothly.
There was another show in Oakland at a warehouse that Mortuous
had jumped on (which probably didn't help the draw either), so we
headed over after we loaded out to actually catch their set this
time. They played their killer take on early 90s Swedish / Finnish
death metal, and sounded heavy as hell. Since we had to be in LA the
next day, we headed back to San Luis for some proper sleep and got
back about three or four am.
Exhumed drummers past (R) and present (L) - Mike and Danny at CA Discord Fest (the 1st venue) Truly a meeting of the grinds...
The
next day it was nice to wake up sober. We headed down to Los Angeles
stoked that the set had gone well, and feeling ready to rock. We got
to the site of the festival, a huge warehouse space, and despite the
show being sold-out, the crowd was a bit sparse. Of course, it was
still early. Since there was no alcohol at the festival, as soon as
we finished loading our shit in, we decided to head to a bar. The
show was in a really industrial area, so it was about a 2 mile walk
to the nearest place that served beer: a bikini strip bar (in
California, it's illegal to sell alcohol anyplace with full nudity,
so there are a bunch of topless / bikini bars that try to split the
difference). It was not a cool MotleyCrue type of strip
bar where chicks that dress like Kelly Bundy dance, but a fancy 21st
century hip-hop style one. They had just opened and the place was
pretty much empty – which was cool because we didn't feel quite so
out of place, but not that cool because we were the only people there
for the dancers to harass with their lap-dance sales pitches. After a
couple of drinks we started getting texts from various LA friends
that were arriving, so we headed back to the venue with a plan to hit
a liquor store and drink in someone's van / car / etc.
We
got back and ran into a bunch of friends, procured beer and headed to
the rear parking lot where we were joined by our friend Deedee, who
had done our merch on the Macabre
/ Cephalic tour. As
we were proceeding to get inebriated, Aimee from Progeria
/ BastardNoise
happened to walk by and told us that the show was being broken up by
the cops and that everyone was getting all their shit and leaving.
Needless to say, that got our attention. We got back to the venue,
explained to the police that we were one of the bands and we had to
get our stuff out of there. They seemed cool with that, and I didn't
see them beating anyone up or anything, but there was a lot of
confusion. In the hubbub, we managed to lose a toolbox, Wes' backpack
and something of Mike's I can't recall at the moment. I managed to
find the promoter, who didn't have much information for me, but
assured me that steps were being taken to get something going the
next day (Sunday) where us and a few other bands would still play. Of
course we agreed and exchanged numbers so we could (hopefully) play
the next day.
You know it's a party house when this is the clock on the wall.
There
was quite a bit of confusion as to what to do next, as there was a
house show that Magrudergrind was playing, a party nearby, and some
other stuff going on. We opted for the party house, because we didn't
want to try to see Magrudergrind and end up being at yet another show police were going to shut down that night. Luckily for us, we're touring Europe with them in February so we'll have ample opportunity to see them soon. More on that later... Apparently that show went off without a hitch, which is cool,
but we ended up going to the Poor Kids' Radio house in LA. Every Saturday they have a party there while they do their online radio show,
spinning killer punk, metal and crossover. We grabbed some burgers
and more beer and headed over. It ended up being a pretty
happening scene there with a lot of folks cruising by and a lot of
beers drained. We had a bottle of Jack Daniels whose appearance
dictated that we would remain there all night getting stupid. We then
proceeded to get totally blitzed. Wes crashed out in my car around
one, and later, Rob got a bit riled up (as he sometimes does when
things get really alcohol-soaked - hence his nickname "Wild Card") and almost fell over into a bunch
of guitars, which was unilaterally frowned upon. After trying to keep Rob from
fighting people for about 30 minutes, I finally decided I was too
tired to care and passed out on a picnic table outside at about 5:30
in the morning. I woke up cold at some point in the early morning
light and wandered into the house and passed out on the floor, which
demonstrated some comparably sound judgment. I discovered later when I
woke up that someone had punched my windshield and cracked it pretty
badly. I suppose that's a lot better than our gear getting stolen out
of the back of my car, but still... C'mon man. Anyway, it was Sunday morning (okay, morning-ish), so we headed to Rob's house
in Anaheim for football and see if there would actually be a
show to play.
Hijinks at the Poor Kids' Radio House. There was no lampshade, so Wes made do with a frisbee. Rob in pre "Wild Card" mode...
I
have to admit that I was very skeptical about our prospects for
playing that day, but my cynicism was unfounded. The Discord folks
had found a place in Fullerton called the Riffhaus (which was conveniently very
nearby Rob's place) and were having two mini-shows. I missed their
first call somehow or other, so ended up on the second show of the
day with Dropdead, Ghoul (who played both sets) and
Mange. We found the place pretty easily and had a few hours to
kill once we got there, so we headed to a nearby bar called Bananas (the name alone
totally sold me on the place) with Leon, Danny, and Ross. It was like
an Exhumed reunion party in there, and we all had a laugh,
several drinks and caught up. We totally missed Mange, and headed
back in time to catch about half of Ghoul's set, which was
really, really fucking good. I was grinning ear to ear the whole
time. The place was tiny and was totally packed – you would've
needed a shoe-horn to get another person in there, and we had a great
time grinding it out for the kids. Dropdead followed and were
fucking great, I hadn't seen them in years, and they are still one of
the deadliest pure Grind bands out there. I think everyone was glad that there actually was a show to
play and the vibe was good all around. Wes stayed down in Orange
County with Rob for a family wedding the following weekend, and
Mike and I headed back to SLO to rest up for the European run with
Cephalic Carnage we had looming in our very near future – a mere thirteen
days later.
To be continued at this blog in the same sense-shattering, pulse-pounding manner in which you have become (hopefully) accustomed...
Tour
recaps are always tough... It's hard to remember everything that
happens, for many reasons. First off, we're usually drunk
most of the time anything interesting is going on. Secondly, the
longer you're on tour, the more things blend together into one
continuous stream of sitting in the van, loading in, sitting in the
van, sleeping, sitting in the van, getting on a plane, hanging out in
an airport, sitting in the van, loading out, sitting in the van,
trying to fix things that get broken (strings, shoes, drum hardware,
boxes, etc.), sitting in the van, eating, waiting to eat, sitting in
the van, well, you get the idea. Oh yeah, we occasionally play music
too. Basically the average day consists of the following: 9 hours of
sleeping, 1 hour total of loading gear and merchandise in / out of
the venue, 1 hour of eating, 1 hour of playing, 1 hour of
soundchecking, and 11 hours of either driving in the van or waiting
around to do any of those other things. Of course, that's still
plenty of time to get into trouble when you're hanging out at a club
/ bar with access to a large supply of alcohol, so we manage to make
the best of things. Sometimes the other guys ask me how I remember
all of the crap I write about in these blogs, and really it's the act
of writing it all down that jogs my memory more than anything, so
while some of the stuff in here is doubtless boring or tremendously
unfunny, it at least helps me to make sense of what the fuck I've
been doing. So thanks for reading these little travelogues and
helping me clear all this shit out of my fairly damaged brain.
Four
Countries, Four Festivals, Four Days, and Four Idiots
Brutal
Assault, Jalo Metalli, Party San Open Air, and Ieper Festival
...In
which our heroes endure international travel at a withering pace,
reunite with Leon del Muerte, become somewhat of a (bigger) laughing stock,
and endure other pratfalls, trials and tribulations...
File under: miscellaneous shit to throw away next time I move.
The
last tour recap I finished chronicled our Summer tour with Macabre,
CephalicCarnage and Withered. The weird thing
is that we did that tour with the lineup of myself, the inimitable
Wes “Sunshine” Caley, Mike “Hammy” Hamilton, and Rob “Wild
Card” Babcock on bass and vocals. We played together for three and
a half weeks and became a well-oiled, highly-trained musical killing
machine (well, as musical as Exhumed gets). Right after the
tour, we headed to Europe for a marathon of four festival shows in
four countries in four days, but with our old pal Leon del Muerte on
bass and vocals. Even though our bass guitar is (lamentably) rarely
audible, it was a bit of a weird dynamic shift playing with two
different bassist / vocalists, especially with minimal (and by that, I mean none) rehearsal time. Of course, I've known Leon since
around '94, so personality-wise, there was no issue whatsoever, and we've all done this many, many times, so it's pretty smooth. Wes,
Mike and myself flew out the Wednesday after the last show (3 days later) to Prague to get ready for
our show at the Brutal Assault Festival in the Czech Republic. Leon
was at a convention for his job in San Diego and would join us in hte land of Pilsner Urquell and extremely hot women on Friday.
We
were picked up by our driver at the airport, and again we used the
great Czech company Fluffwheels, who provided us with a nice Sprinter
van to kick around in as well as yet another friendly, highly
competent driver whose name unfortunately escapes me at the time of this writing. We
headed out to the town Brutal Assault was in and on to our hotel,
which, oddly enough was on a golf course and was called "Nova America". Nothing like heading to eastern Europe for a taste of home. We were
one of the first overseas bands to arrive and looked / felt pretty
out of place amongst the golfers, but the grounds were verdant, rustic and quite pleasant. Wes and I were assigned the “Arizona” room, while
Mike and our driver had the “Indiana” room. There was nothing
particularly indicative of the states themselves in the rooms, but
seeing places from our home country (and not particularly interesting
places at that) re-tooled as something exotic was a bit weird. We ate
a late lunch, had a couple of beers, and then were asleep by 6 or 7pm. We were all exhausted
from being on the road for three weeks in the US and Canada and
extremely jet-lagged, so we crashed out pretty hard. The next day we
all woke up incredibly early and very, very hungry. I was up at about
4:45 am and simply could not sleep anymore. Fucking jet lag. I went out in the hallway
and read a little bit until the sky started to lighten up about 5:30
or so. I figured I might as well put on my headphones and go for a walk out on the
course. In the pre-morning light, I saw a family of deer grazing
pastorally in the meadow near the golf course, which was nice. I got
back by about 6:15 to find Mike wide awake as well. We were soon joined
by Wes, and the three of us proceeded to stalk the restaurant where
breakfast would be served at 8. After an excruciatingly long two
hours of waiting, we hit the continental breakfast with a vengeance.
From what I could infer, the staff was not too stoked that we ate about four plates of food each and drank at least 5 or 6 glasses
of water and juice. Full and relatively contented, we passed the next
few hours changing guitar strings (Wes), reading and napping (me) and
exploring the grounds and napping (Mike).
That
afternoon we headed over to the festival to make sure our merchandise
had been shipped correctly. Not only had it been received, but it was
already being sold, which was my main concern. We met up with an
American chick from New York who was our contact person for the
festival, and she gave us food / drink tickets, lanyards, and all of
that good stuff that one needs at a festival. We dropped off our guitars and cymbals in the
assigned area, and our driver headed back to Prague to pick up Leon
from the airport. Our set wasn't until after 1:00 am that night/the
next morning, so we had plenty of time for him to arrive. The
festival was organized by Thomas who used to do Bizarre Leprous
Productions back in the 90s, and who I hadn't seen in quite a while,
so it was nice to catch up with him. The festival grounds were an old
military base – and I mean old. There were a number of weird back
passageways and a barracks-type area where there was a gypsy squat.
Not your typical venue for a metal show. The whole place had a weird,
in a cool way, vibe- even though there were some parts where you felt
like if you wandered off you would quickly stumble into something out
of the movie “Hostel”.
Leon
arrived on time and intact and we went for a meet and greet which was fun, and then headed to (surprise!) the artist bar. The artist bar
was equipped with a tv that showed multi-camera footage of the action
unfolding onstage, so we hung out and had a few beers with the Hail
Of Bullets guys while watching Kreator and SuicidalTendencies on TV. Suicidal was surprisingly awesome. Motorhead
was on next, and being extremely lazy and tired from all the
traveling, I just stayed in the bar and watched their admittedly
awesome set. Then MorbidAngel hit the stage, and we
would be following them on the left-hand stage (the festival had two large side-by-side stages so that the audience could theoretically see every band, if they had the endurance) so we headed to our
temporary dressing room and got prepared. Going into the show I felt
like it wouldn't really be much to write home about, considering the
headliners of the day had already played and we weren't even going
onstage until just after 1 in the morning. So I was a bit surprised
to look out at around 4,000 kids in the audience when we got
underway. That was a great boost of energy that we needed,
considering how tired we were that day. The sound on stage was a bit
muddy, but by the third song or so we were settled in and hitting on
all cylinders. The festival set wasn't too different from what he had
been playing, but we cut out a few songs from the new record, since “As Hammer To Anvil” was the only new song that Leon had really played with the band extensively.
We sent out “Decrepit Crescendo” to our old friend Curby from
Obscene Productions to close things out and returned to the dressing
room exhausted, but psyched that so many people in the audience were
still up and functioning (let alone cheering) at such a late hour. We
went to grab a Doner Kebab in the food area and ran into our old
friend Jim Mack (who is from San Francisco, so his presence there was an extremely unexpected surprise) on the festival grounds which rounded
out the night nicely. Finally we gathered all our shit and hit the
road back to the hotel so that we could wake up early the next
morning to drive to Frankfurt so we could make our flight to Finland
the following day. Sound convoluted? Probably because it was.
"Necromaniac" live at Brutal Assault.
At
any rate, we made it to the airport in time to fly to Finland, but after our driver dropped us off, we
were informed by the Finnair guy (who was a real dick about it) that
we could only take one carry-on per person, or we would have to pay
over 300 Euro total to check our “extra” bags. Who the fuck ever
heard of one carry-on?!?! Anyway, we called our driver, had him turn
around and come back to the airport and consolidated our baggage,
since we'd only be in Finland one night. We got back and boarded the
plane without further incident aside from some dirty looks when the
same asshole took our tickets when we boarded. Once we were in
Finland, everything seemed a lot nicer. The JaloMetalli festival is
in Oulu, in the north of the country (yeah, in the north of the
north) so we had to catch a connecting flight from Helsinki to Oulu.
The Helsinki airport was ultra-modern, ultra-clean, and
ultra-expensive. It was everything that an American thinks of when
they think of Scandinavia- modern, forest-y, sterile, polite, and very, very blonde. I have never seen so many people with all
natural platinum-blonde hair in my life. On the flight from Helsinki
to Oulu, we were basically the only people on the flight who weren't
blonde. I have never felt so not-white in my life! Oulu is a
beautiful tourist town in the north of Finland where people go to ski
and relax – kind of like Aspen or Lake Tahoe from what I could gather. We were picked up
from the tiny airport by van and drove into town to a very nice hotel
where we immediately went upstairs and went back to sleep. By early
evening we were up and showered and headed to the festival. Jalo
Metalli is a bit of a smaller festival, maybe 1500 people total in
attendance, and we would end up missing basically every band we
wanted to see there (but I did pick up a sweet Oz
longsleeve – “Turn The Cross Upside Down” still totally rules!)
but we got there while Sepultura
was onstage.
Just
like at Brutal Assault, we were playing afterthe headliners, which wasn't really all that cool, but what can you
do. This night our time slot proved to be more of an impediment than in the
Czech Republic, as the crowd was beginning to visibly thin out by the
time we actually played. The crowd that stuck around was a bit
lifeless, until we ended the set, when they suddenly got really loud
and enthusiastic and demanded an encore. Of course, since we hadn't
rehearsed with Leon at all, we basically had prepared our festival set
(40 minutes) and that was it. We all said the same thing when we left
the stage - “where was all that energy for the first 39 minutes?”
If you want to check out pictures and a recap of the whole day we played, you can check it out here
After our set, we met up with the Evildead
and NapalmDeath
guys backstage and made plans to hit the bar in town. We were
scheduled to leave the hotel for the airport at 5am the next day, and
since it doesn't really get too dark in Finland during the summer,
the bars are open until 4am. It seemed pointless to try to sleep for
4 hours when we could be drinking, so we went back to the hotel where
I took a really quick shower and we hit the "Nuclear Bar". Yes, that is the actual name. How badass is that? Several "Nuclear Girl" jokes were made by Wes and I to the amusement of nobody (unless you have the "Drawing Down The Moon" record by Beherit you won't know what the hell we were talking about, and even then you probably won't think that's particularly funny) . The "Nuclear
Bar" is basically the city's rock bar, and it was pretty full of folks
from the festival. We met Antti Boman of my personal favorite Finnish
band, Demilich, and
hung out with him for a while, as well as our aforementioned friends
from America (I say America, since Mitch and Danny were the only Napalm
dudes that made it out to the bar).
Eventually
4am came around, and we headed to all night food truck to grab some
food. By this point, we were all pretty wasted and feeling good. We
ended up standing in line for well over a half hour with all the
other folks that had let out from the various bars. A really nice local Finnish
dude whose girlfriend oddly lived in Hayward of all places was our
guide around the city. Somehow we ended up talking to some locals who
were also really drunk and found us hilarious. I remember asking
“What is Finnish food anyway? Is it just the shit that Sweden
doesn't want that washes up over here?” Or something incredibly
witty and culturally sensitive like that. A woman behind us was not
amused (her boyfriend seemed to think it was funny, but couldn't show
it) and let us know in no uncertain terms. I apologized and told her
that I knew I was being rude and I didn't mean it, and that of course
everyone knows that the national dish of Finland was “penguin
shit”. This didn't go over too well either. I forget exactly what
happened next, but I think one of us was riding some random Finn's
bicycle around the small park where the food truck was located, and
the woman was eventually dragged away yelling and screaming by her
boyfriend. Of course we all thought we were exceedingly funny and
clever (in our defense, some of the people around us were laughing as
well). We finally got some sandwiches that I have to think tasted considerably better
than penguin shit and we headed back to the
hotel to gather our belongings and get back to the airport. By 7:30am we
were dead tired, sleeping on the floor of the terminal. We wearily
boarded the flight back to Helsinki and sleep-walked our way onto the
connection to Frankfurt. The Sepultura
guys were on the flight as well, but we were so out of it we didn't
even make their acquaintance.
Nothing makes you feel like a proper band douche than copious amounts of lanyards - the fancier the better.
We
finally got back to Germany and piled in the van to head out to the
Party San Open Air festival. I don't think any of us remember the
drive there at all, we just slept the whole way. We woke up in a
small town called Bad Berka where our driver was having a bit of a
hard time finding the festival. Usually these European festivals are
in relatively small towns, where there's enough room to set up big stages, tents, etc., so you end up in weird little out-of-the-way
places more often than not. One thing that is a good indicator that
the festival is actually happening is that you'll see a lot of
long-hairs wandering around a small town with patch jackets, and there was a
distinct lack of long-hairs and patch jackets on the streets of Bad
Berka that day. Our driver frantically consulted his notes to double
check the address... And lo and behold, we had two sets of
information, one indicating that the fest was in Bad Berka, and
another indicating that it was in Schlotheim... But the most recent
info we had indicated Bad Berka. A few phone calls and texts later,
we discovered that the fest was indeed in Schlotheim – about 45
minutes away. Of course, the road we were supposed to take was closed
due to construction. This was a night when we were scheduled to play
at around six in the evening – so time was running very, very
short. We had already cancelled the meet-and-greet we had planned for
3:30 that afternoon and it was already after 4:00 when we had arrived
in Bad Berka. The folks at the festival were kind enough to swap our
spot with Taake (who were total gentlemen about it) so we
were still able to get onstage and perform, but they had also
announced to the entire audience that we had driven to the wrong
town. Which, needless to say, did not reflect well on our competence.
As soon as we rolled up, people started ribbing us, asking how Bad
Berka was, etc. Whoever thinks Germans have no sense of humor, think
again. It's not that funny, and it's moderately humiliating, but it
is a sense of humor. We got there as Taake
was taking the stage and we had about an hour to get our passes, sort out merchandising,
our backstage, beer, catering, change clothes, tune our instruments etc. etc. So... it was not the most relaxing day. But by the time we got onstage,
everything was fine and we came out and had a pretty kickass set. I
want to again thank the Taake
guys for switching with us at the last minute so that we were able to
get out and play this killer fest. I got to see HailOfBullets
again, and they had sprung for pyro (which was way out of our budget)
so their set was complete with flames and explosions, making it extra
epic. Luckily, despite the fact that it looked like it was about to
rain the entire day, precipitation was not forthcoming and we were
able to enjoy our day there in the mud without getting drizzled on
the whole time. We headed to the bar for a while and hung out for a
while, then hit the merchandise tents where I got a sweet Witchfynde
hoodie and grabbed a Scorpions
“In Trance” shirt for Wes. By the time At The Gates
was playing, we were all incredibly tired and split a little early to
head to the hotel, which was a bit disappointing, but very necessary.
We finally got to shower and get a bit of sleep before grabbing
breakfast and heading out to Belgium early the next day.
Here's an interesting video that kind of gives a sense of the whole vibe of Party San that some dude put to one of our songs. Pretty cool overview of a German Death Metal festival for those of us on this side of the Atlantic.
Again,
the entire trip to Belgium was spent fast asleep. The Ieper Fest was
a bit different, as it was primarily a Hardcore festival with a few
Metal bands sprinkled in for variety. Apparently the fest had been
straight-edge until a few years prior, which would have been a major
problem for us. I think beer was the only thing keeping us going for
these four grueling days. There was no meat served at the fest,
though, which was kind of interesting. The fest itself was outdoors
in a muddy farm area, as it had rained the last few days. Again, we
were lucky weather-wise in that skies were blue and clear. We met up
with Anthony from Tombs
and had a couple of beers with them and their tour-mates TheSecret, both great
bands and great dudes. I caught their set and they were fucking
massive. We played second to last in the tent stage, right before
Decapitated, and the
show went over surprisingly well with the hardcore crowd. It was a
totally different scene from the previous day in Germany, where it
was an exclusively Death / Black Metal crowd, but it was a lot of fun
regardless. Our final night in Europe was spent in a bare-bones
hostel, with all five of us (band + driver) bunking in the same room,
which wasn't as cool as having three hotel rooms like we'd had the last three days but it was by no means terrible either. The only bummer was that there was no delicious European breakfast buffet awaiting us in the
morning. I always love the Muesli, yogurt, fresh fruit, meat,
bread and cheese that most European hotels provide. We left early
that morning for the Brussels airport and eventually California.
"Forged In Fire" live at Ieper Fest
We
were shocked when we went to check in at the Delta counter and they
told us that Wes' guitar was considered “oversize” and they'd
have to charge us $250 to check it. I argued with the really hot
chick at the counter first, who then called her
manager over and then I got into with him and started swearing and
getting pretty hot under the collar, but it was all to no avail. We
were stewing over this bullshit while we were getting ready to go
through security and I was already planning on calling the airline to
get the money back as soon as we got to America. I realized (having been fucked over by airlines
several times in the past) that I should probably get the names of
the people I had talked to. They were dicks about that too, but I
was pissed off and not to be dissuaded.
We went through security and were waiting at the gate when Wes' name
was called to come up to the ticket counter. My only thought was
“what now?!?” Having flown Delta (who I DO NOT recommend to
anyone) several times this year, Wes had already had one guitar case
totally smashed by their baggage handlers, and had another bag of his
sent to the wrong airport, and they had lost my guitar and a box of
merchandise on two separate occasions (I eventually got both of them
back, but it was still a major fucking hassle). I decided to go up
there with him, half in an effort to help him sort out whatever
bullshit they were about to conjure, and half just to see what it
could possibly be. Instead, they gave us back the money we had paid
for the oversize charge, stating that they didn't realize his bag was
a musical instrument, which was exempt from the charge. Now, Wes'
guitar case is literally shaped like a fucking flying V. And, three out of four
of us have long hair, and WE'RE ALL CARRYING MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS, but
somehow, they "didn't realize" it was a musical instrument. What a
bunch of assholes. Anyway, feeling moderately vindicated (they had
somehow managed to charge us an extra 40 Euro for some other bullshit
anyway) we finally boarded the plane and headed back to the states
for some serious rest. I for one was looking forward to having a couple of months off, buying some new gear and of course, catching up on some proper sleep.
To give you an idea of how much traveling we did, we left Wednesday from Los Angeles to Prague (with one connection) - about 5,900 miles, then we rode from Prage to Frankfurt Saturday, about 315 miles, then flew about 1600 miles from Frankfurt to Oulu (with a stopover in Helsinki), then flew out the next morning - another 1600 miles back to Frankfurt, then drove another 175 miles to Party San, played, got up the next day, drove 450 miles to Ieper, played, then drove 90 miles to brussels, and then flew another 5600 or so miles back to Los Angeles. All told, we traveled about 15,730 miles in six days. Gnarly. When we told our friends in America what we were doing everyone said - "That's awesome! You guys are so lucky!" When we told our friends in Europe what we were doing everyone said "That's insane! You guys are fucking retarded!" In the end I think they were both right.
