"Back From The Dead And Ready To Party North American Tour Part I" Recap, Part III. I mean, part three of the recap of part one of the tour. Or does that sound even more confusing? Ah, fuck it.

North American tour recap, part the third, in which our heroes return to their native soil, none the wiser from their extensive trials and travails...

Well, after much procrastination, I realized that I need to finish the tale of our last tour, because we're about to start our next one. This has been a really busy year for Exhumed, which is great, but touring really cuts into my time to catch up on my pet projects, like updating the blog, posting old live bootlegs from my VHS tapes on Youtube, organizing my urine and hair into jars labeled with the time and date of collection, reading comic books, hanging out with friends and family, and learning macrame. But alas and alack, that is, as we say, a rockupational hazard. At any rate, where we? That's right, our intrepid sextet of loveable misfits was traversing the wild and unforgiving northern wasteland that is Canada... So, without further introductory fluff, let's dive headfirst into the third and final chapter of this crepitous chronicle- and I promise that, as far as third chapters go, it will be at least as much of a let-down as Return Of The Jedi.

We were headed west from Calgary to Kelowna, British Columbia, through some of the most beautiful forests and mountains in the world. So of course, I slept through it all, hung over and totally exhausted after our two days in Alberta. By the time I was coherent, we were practically there. Since we drove straight through, we arrived in Kelowna about noon or so. If you haven't heard of Kelowna, BC, don't feel bad. I've been all over Canada, and I'd never heard of it either. That said, it is a beautiful spot, nestled in the gorgeous Canadian Rockies with an abundance of lakes. We grabbed breakfast / lunch at McDonald's (sorry, punk rockers!) and then hit the grocery store for picnicking supplies. We rolled up at a nearby lake whose name totally escapes me, laid out some blankets, waded in the chilly mountain-water, ate some snacks, and dozed off under a shady tree. After killing a few hours that way, we headed over to the venue, which was literally a Knights Of Columbus Hall in town. Now, you may ask yourself, what the hell are we doing playing a Knights Of Columbus hall in a small town in eastern British Columbia that no one has ever heard of? Aren't we a “proper heavy metal band with a record label and all that stuff”? Well, the answer is simple. When criss-crossing the globe, you're inevitably going to run into areas where there is a lot of ground between major cities (aka “primary markets” in the parlance of our booking agent and record label) and you end up playing some pretty random spots in between. The alternative is a day off, and for us, a day we don't play is a day without pay – see how I did that rhyming bit? Pretty neat, huh? And a day without pay is to be avoided whenever possible. About one day off per 2/3 weeks is what we try to shoot for to avoid killing ourselves on the one hand and going broke on the other. At any rate, we arrived at the venue about five or six in the evening, and were greeted by the hospitality of the very nice Kristina, who had promoted a show of ours a decade earlier in Penticton, another, even smaller town in eastern British Columbia that you've never heard of. Like a lot of small-market promoters, she is really enthusiastic to get bands to come through and puts a lot of personal work into the shows. She and her family had whipped up a big ol' buffet of burgers, dogs, potato salad, veggies, soft drinks, water, and of course, beer. After eating and napping a bit more, the other bands began to arrive, and after load-in, Rob, Deedee and I headed over to Kristina's house to grab showers before showtime.

The turnout was definitely better than I expected, considering the remoteness of the show. Brandon, an old friend of Wes' actually lives in Penticton (about 70 miles away from Kelowna if I remember correctly) and came out, which was cool. The last time we were in Canada (in '05), we ended crashing at his place and I stayed up really late drinking beer and recording a terrible Sunset-Strip style cock-rock song called “Hollywood Ninja”. We never recorded any vocals for it, but we all thought it was hilarious at the time. At any rate, back to the more-recent-past... That night in Kelowna, we played on the floor, with no monitors, triggers, or anything remotely fancy. It's fun to do shows like this every once in a while, really raw and primitive, right there with the kids. We all had a good time, and headed back to Kristina's to crash out before heading to Vancouver the following day. The next day was the Monday of a three-day weekend, which made playing in Vancouver (one of those “primary markets” I mentioned earlier) on a Monday slightly more logical, but what we non-Canadian types failed to take into consideration was that everyone vacations near Kelowna and would all be heading back to Vancouver that day. Needless to say, progress was excruciatingly slow. We planned to be at the venue around 5 or so (somehow we always end up leaving at least an hour later than we plan to), but with traffic we didn't make it there until 8. This of course is the height of unprofessionalism, but at least we had been in communication with the club and the other bands (who were also late, but not as late as us) while en route, so everything was basically cool. We totally missed soundcheck and of course loading in our gear and merch was a bit of a clusterfuck, but as Dismember once said, “and so is life”... or something like that.

The dressing room at the club was about the size of a walk-in closet, so Rob, Dylan and I headed into the Vancouver-y night for a walk to check out the town. Of course, the club we played, the Rickshaw Stop, is in the absolute worst part of Vancouver – right next to the needle exchange for heroin users. In fact, that may be the grossest, most ghetto part of the whole country of Canada. But it does have character. Luckily, the club had security near our van the whole night, so we felt pretty good about taking off. Within a half a mile, we were out of junkie-town and into Chinatown, which was much nicer. I remembered eating at a really good noodle house in the area where Leon sharted his pants back in '05. Another mile and we were near the harbor, in a pretty nice part of town. After taking in the maritime sights and making fun of the D&D nerds fencing at the nearby sword fighting academy (as a D&D nerd myself, I feel totally justified mocking those dudes – and I took fencing in high school, so there ya go), we cruised back to the club. We saw a bar with a sign that said “Vancouver's Favourite Country and Western Bar” and Rob and I couldn't resist nipping in for a minute for a drink. We had a beer at one of the most depressing, down-and-out bars I have ever seen. I can confidently say that Rob and I were the best-looking people in the whole place- including the women (and the transvestive hookers) which should give you an idea of just what a bummer the vibe was that was happening there. But it was an appropriate, endearing, bummer vibe. The guys playing guitar and singing Hank and Cash songs with a drum machine were actually pretty good and the beer was relatively cheap, so all in all, it was 15 minutes well spent.

We made it back to the venue as the night was getting underway, and the turnout was pretty good, which always makes doing a good show easier. Another thing that made the night memorable was that someone had overflowed the toilet in the backstage area, so the whole floor was wet, and it didn't really smell that great while were getting dressed for the show. We were a bit over-tired that night, but after meeting up with some old friends like Justin from 3 Inches Of Blood, who we played with years ago when he was in Allfather, we were ready to rock- soggy, urine-smelling shoes notwithstanding. The show went over well, but we were anxious to get into Washington and a) get the border crossing over with (believe me, it can be a hassle getting back into America too) and, b) get the three-hour drive out of the way so we could get some serious rest- in a motel, in an actual bed. We hit the border at the Peace Bridge and had literally the quickest, easiest border crossing in North America I've ever experienced, and drove most of the way to Seattle before stopping at a Denny's and Motel 6.

Canadian money is adorable. And, bizarrely valuable in today's failing first-world economy. 

We piled into the hotel and proceeded to crash the fuck out, exhausted and happy to be back in the good ol' US of A. We woke up the next day, hit a Bank Of America to deposit the meager amount of adorable Canadian money we had accumulated (I love the Canadian $5 bill, it has a picture of kids playing ice hockey on it) and get going into Seattle. Mike wanted to check out Pike's fish market, so we headed out to the touristy part of town. It was a gorgeous, clear, warm day in Seattle- perfect weather to watch a couple of dicks throw oversized fish at each other while a throng of families from the Midwest watched and took pictures. Elsewhere at the fish market, we ended up randomly meeting up with a dude from Scorched Earth who worked at a non-throwing oriented fish stand there. He recommended a good restaurant nearby (I think it was called Athena?) that wasn't totally exorbitant, and we had an amazing lunch. Something about incredibly fresh seafood and Pacific Northwest Microbrews seemed to revitalize us. There was also an amazing comic book store nearby where I found a few back issues of Jack Kirby's run on “Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen” that I didn't have yet (I'm still missing 2 Kirby issues) and we all left happy campers. We already had confirmation from the other bands that their border crossing was similarly simple and we had all re-emerged in the US without incident. Macabre would also be reunited with their tour manager, Eric at last, which would help things move more smoothly and punctually, so it was shaping up to be a good day.

This is the kind of crap I spend my very limited disposable income on. And amazingly, I'm single. Who would've thought?!?

I was excited because we were back in the states, we had a huge shipment of merch to pick up at the venue, and our intrepid booking agent, Dan Rozenblum of the highly reputable Pantheon agency would be coming out to the show to celebrate his birthday that night. We were playing Studio 7, which is kind of near the Mariners' stadium, and a pretty big venue for us. I was a little nervous about being able to fill the room, to be honest. It's never good when the one show of your tour attended by your booking agent tanks. We got settled in and unloaded, and Wes and I headed off to the Pyramid Brewing company with the Cephalic Carnage guys, where we ran into Luke (World Under Blood, Sleep Terror) who had played guitar with Vile when we toured with them and Cannibal years ago. I totally didn't recognize him at first, not only because it had been a long time and I wasn't expecting to see him there, but also because the dude is fucking yoked these days! It was great catching up with him for a bit, watching some baseball and enjoying some of Pyramid's Hefeweizen. When it was getting close to show time, we headed back and I was pleasantly surprised to see the place filling up nicely. I got to hang out with Terry from Scorched Earth which is always a pleasure, and old friends Renae and Joe from Skarp (Joe is also in Theories, Book of Black Earth, Splatter House, and probably about 10 other bands I can't remember right now). I also did a double take when I saw Renae – last time I saw her she was a drunk crust-punk chick, but now she's a mom and really looked like a proper, adult, lady! Always good to see friends doing well. At any rate, the show was awesome, great vibe, loud kids (even the folks upstairs were making a lot of noise) and a lot of fun.

You know it's a good night when everyone is happy. Not just the audience, not just the bands because people showed up and we got a lot of beer, but even the promoter of the show and the bartenders at the club were stoked with how things went. When the guy paid me, he was totally psyched (that never happens). He was so happy, I should probably have hit him up for more money. The staff ended up letting us stay in the bar and party really, really hard. Wes was the first to crash out, at around 2am. I went out to the van to sleep at about 5am, and I think Mike and Rob finally made it out at 7:30am or so. Rob in particular was over-Jagermeistered. He passed out practically on top of Wes, and despite me trying feebly to pick him up, he wasn't budging. Wes wasn't exactly pleased with this development, and finally shoved him off, before leaving to get some food as people around the neighborhood (the club is near a lot of industrial type businesses) were arriving at work. As soon as Wes returned, we headed for Portland. Like I said last time, I am so incredibly thankful we had Dylan to drive on this tour, because we had all been reduced to oblithereens the night before. After we got on the freeway, out of nowhere, Rob stood up in the van, obviously still blackout drunk, and began to mutter incomprehensibly. It looked like he was about to blow chunks all over the interior of the van, so we pulled over on the side of I-5 to let him do his thing. He got out, stumbled onto the grassy shoulder and proceeded to conspicuously piss in the general direction of heavy traffic. Then he turned around, walked a few paces the other way, and promptly laid down in the grass to sleep. Needless to say, this turn of events was not to our liking. We started yelling and throwing empty cups at him, Mike went out and nudged him with his foot, but he remained laying there like a giant, impassive sack of shit (and I mean that in the most affectionate way possible) on the side of the freeway, totally wasted at about 9:30 in the morning. Finally, Mike suggested that I pour a bottle of water on his face. This finally roused him, and we got him back in the van where he passed out immediately, with his face on the seat and his body on the Dorito and hair coated floor. Classy, but hilarious. The rest of the brief drive passed without incident, thankfully.

Once in Portland, we headed to the Relapse Portland office, and had lunch with Orion Landau, Relapse's amazing graphic designer (who painted the Dekapitator cover for us that I totally love) at a nearby bar that served literally the best Pastrami sandwich I have ever tasted. Holy shit, I wish I had ordered the Pastrami sandwich! At any rate, we were all drained and in pretty bad shape at this point. Rob was still a bit drunk, but finally losing steam, and the rest of us were quite the worse for wear. Really we just needed to sleep. It was uncharacteristically hot in Portland that day, in the 80s for sure, so sleeping in the van was impossible. We headed to the club in the hopes that they had a backstage area or someplace we could crash out or at least lay down. When we arrived there, it was still too early to get in, so we dejectedly headed back in the van and headed to a surplus store for some shopping. I found a cool pair of Ferris Bueller-style shades, but not much else. We headed back to the club, which was still closed, and finally passed out for about an hour and a half across the street in the parking lot of some office building. In hindsight, we should have just broken down and got a hotel, even though we couldn't stay in town long due to the 11-hour drive from Portland to San Francisco the following day. We all needed some sleep, myself in particular. When we finally got into the club, I was crestfallen to find that there was no real backstage area (just enough room for gear), no couches, and no AC. The floor was concrete, and the whole interior looked like it had just been purchased from home depot – all unfinished 2x4s. Ugh. There was a second bar area upstairs with a couple of couches, but the dudes running the club wouldn't let us sleep there, which was total bullshit. Luckily, we have a lot of friends in town (who were all at work during the day) who cheered us up. Ryan, Cole, Jason, and a bunch of other old friends were there, as well as Matt, Orion, John and Erica from Relapse. By the time we played, I was beyond fatigued and running on fumes. We got up and started playing, and after Mike made a weird flub in one of the songs (keep in mind, he stayed up even later than I did, so I'm sure his brain/body/psyche were totally fried too), I got unreasonably, super pissed off about it, and started strumming way too hard in petulant anger. I broke a string, which of course pissed me off even more. I grabbed my backup guitar, glared at Mike and yelled something shitty at him while the music was playing (which I honestly haven't done since high school) and continued the set. There was another flub in the next song, and I got really pissed off, strummed too hard again, and broke a string on my backup guitar. Wes Caley also doubles as our guitar tech, and obviously he was right there with me onstage, so it wasn't like my guitar was getting fixed while we were playing. I flipped out, threw my backup guitar into the stand and screamed at Rob and Mike on my way offstage, acting totally unprofessionally and just straight-up rude. I fixed the string hastily and angrily, and came out and finished the set. Of course, in my sleep-deprived, hungover for the past week mind, I thought everything was fucked and the band sounded awful, but people were stage-diving pretty much the whole show and the whole front of the room was a mass of pitting madness, so it couldn't have been that bad. Everyone I talked to after the show seemed to think it was killer, so hopefully they're right, haha! As soon as we wrapped up the last song, I apologized to Mike and the guys for being such an asshole and letting things get to me. I really just needed some rest. We loaded out and headed to Sizzle Pie, an awesome pizza place that's actually owned by Matt Jacobson, the president of Relapse. He hooked us up with a slew of killer metal and rock-themed specialty slices and pies and a great beer selection. By the end of the night, I was buzzed, full of pizza and contrite for my tantrum. At that point, sleeping in the van would be simple. I was so tired I could have slept standing up in the middle of a tambourine factory that was on fire.

By the time I woke up, we were well into California, and we stopped and got breakfast and filled up the tank. I was texting pretty much nonstop all day with former bandmates and old friends, and our guest list was filling up rapidly. Exhumed has always been identified as a bay area band, since we started out in San Jose (aka the Silicon Valley for you non-NHL fans) way back in 1991, when I was but a wee lad of 15. San Francisco was pretty much as close to a true hometown show as we get. That said, we've had many different incarnations of the band with different members from different areas, and no one in Exhumed even lives in the bay area at this point. I haven't lived there for about three years, and I haven't lived in San Jose for about seven. However, Mike and I are both originally from there, and I will always consider it my hometown. I miss the food, the culture, the bars, the proliferation of hot Asian chicks in the south bay, and of course my friends and family. To me, this show felt like there was a lot at stake, as my good friend Mike Sage would say. We would be playing and everyone that recorded “Gore Metal” would be there, and we had already planned to have ex-members Ross Sewage and Mike Beams join us on vocals and guitar respectively for the show closer, “Open The Abscess”. I really wanted the show to be a good one, I felt like kicking ass in our hometown would be a big piece of the “comeback” thing that we'd been doing throughout this year.

Here's the last song of the evening in San Francisco, where we were joined by Ross and Mike  for Open The Abscess.  For those of you wondering, yes, Mike Beams was super hammered here. Ross' "Rasputin the mad monk" look / vibe is also pretty awesome.

We cruised into town, picked up a bunch of much-needed gear at guitar center on Van Ness street (right down the street from my old work), grabbed an AMAZING burrito at Taqueria Cancun (one of my three favorite places to get the rightfully much-ballyhooed “Mission-style Burrito” that you should have heard heralded as the THE BEST FUCKING FOOD IN THE WORLD) and headed to Slim's. I was stoked to not only pick up more “All Guts, No Glory” CDs, but also to do a really fun radio interview with Ami Lawless of Voetsek (who are a great fucking band you should all check out) before the show. To give even a partial list of the old friends that showed up would be ridiculous, but the first thing Col Jones (our drummer from '91-'03, now drumming with Repulsion, Mortuous, and Cretin) remarked when he saw me that night was that he was irritated about “the long line trying to get in to see my own dumb band”. We had 20 guest list spots, used them all, as well as most of the empty spots on Macabre, Cephalic Carnage, and Withered's lists as well. San Francisco might have been the biggest show of the tour, with over 400 folks piled in. We were all feeling much, much better after Portland- rested, happy to be in our hometown (well, at least two of us), and excited about the last weekend of the tour. The show was one of the absolute highlights of the whole three-week excursion and it seemed like the kids really dug it. I got to catch up briefly with Will from Death Angel and talk about finally recording the slew of Scarecrow songs we'd written together, and Adi from Uphill Battle was in town on business and hung out with us for a little bit after the show. We decided to head to Reno that night as accommodations there would be waaaaaaay cheaper than in San Francisco, and it was a pretty long drive anyway. The night passed uneventfully and I woke up around 9:30 to find ourselves in beautiful Sparks, Nevada. *Editor's note- Since type can't convey tone of voice, I'll just chime in here and clarify that the word “beautiful” in the previous sentence was used facetiously. Thank you for your time* We checked into a Motel 6 that was indeed very affordable and headed into Reno itself to hit a buffet. The buffet was actually pretty decent and we were able to get some rest and clean up at the hotel. Of course, it was incredibly hot in Reno. The highlight of our morning was seeing a dude riding in a minivan with his family drinking a Steel Reserve 40 at about 11am. What can I say, Reno is a classy town.

I'm going to digress here for a minute. Planning a tour is a tough endeavor. Our original plan was to play Portland on Wednesday, take Thursday off, and hit San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Orange County on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday respectively. For whatever reason, the show in OC never materialized, and we lost both the Friday and Saturday slots at the clubs in LA and San Francisco. Now, anyone that has ever been to a concert knows that Friday and Saturday are the absolutely most desirable nights for concerts (probably why the venues in SF and LA passed on our shows those nights in favor of something more lucrative / glamourous / sexy / quality / etc.) so having both of those nights as off nights would be ridiculous (see above on why we avoid having days off on tour). Hence adding Friday and Saturday shows in Sparks (which is basically Reno) and Las Vegas. We'd played Vegas a couple of times before, and it had always been at least decent, so I wasn't too worried about that show. Sparks, however, I didn't anticipate being that great of a gig. The only time we had played Reno (back in '97 I think?) a fight had broken out during our set and all 20 or so of the attendees had followed the fight outside, leaving us to finish the show in a literally empty room. Even the bartender was outside watching the fight. Ah, good times.

We relaxed next door to the venue at the Irish pub, watched some baseball, and halfheartedly flirted back at the waitress there. There were definitely a lot more than 30 people at the show, but it still felt underwhelming, especially after the energy of the previous night. The promoter ended up being a cool guy, but the folks at the club were kind of dicks. One of the bands on the tour, maybe Withered, I can't remember, ended up being really late to the show and he was flipping out about it. He also was complaining about our stage volume and wouldn't give us any bar privileges, which was totally weak. The promoter bought us some beer and we resigned ourselves to drinking outside in the van. Yeesh. Anyway, the show itself was pretty fun, low-key and more like a party than anything. The kids that showed up were appreciative, and we headed back to the motel feeling good.

The next day, it began to sink in that the drive from Sparks to Vegas was a bit more intense than we'd bargained for, especially with the heat. It was long, dry and boring. We got to the venue on the edge of town around 5pm, incredibly early for Vegas standards. The sound guy here was a bit uptight as well. He complained that we had our own sound guys for the tour, complained that we had too much gear for the stage, etc. etc. The bar owner wasn't much cooler, doling out an incredibly meager beer allotment for the night. Drinking would have been cheaper if we had just played nickel slots next to a blue-haired septuagenarian from Florida and waited for a tired, leather-skinned, was-probably-hot-in-1991 waitress named Jodi who was originally from Montana to eventually come around and bring us beers in some off-the-strip casino. On a more positive note, I was stoked to see Spun In Darkness, and Rhett (aka Thorgrimm of Gravehill fame) and his lovely lady, my “big sister” Lili were going to be in town as well, so we were gearing up for a fun night. There was a Savers in the same strip mall, and I bought a sweet blue denim jacket, which I figured I'd save for fall / winter, as Vegas in August was fucking roasting. The turnout was pretty decent, and kids were telling me how much better-attended our show was than other Death Metal tours that have rolled through have been, so we felt good about shit by the time we hit the stage. The show went over well, and as I am known to do, I went on a drunken tirade on stage about how disgustingly fake Vegas is (it's honestly one of my least favorite places in America) and how the underground should be diametrically opposed to all that Vegas represents. When I'm drunk and tired and in incredibly hot weather, I sometimes get a bit diatribe-y, which is undoubtedly annoying. So, sorry about that. After the show we went out for Mexican food and birthday cake with Rhett and Lili, but somehow I got a really gnarly stomachache (the food was actually delicious before I doubled over in pain) and went and passed out in the van flatulent and uncomfortable, without saying good night or anything to anyone.

The next day we were back in Los Angeles, which is pretty much our second hometown at this point. Wes, Danny, Leon, and Rob all call Southern California home (even though Wes doesn't live there anymore, he's still from there), and Mike and I are sort of in the middle of SF and LA, living in the San Luis Obispo area. At this point, I spend way more time in LA than I do in the bay area (in fact, the last time I went up to San Jose to visit friends and family, I got a DUI – thanks a lot, jerks!) so I've slowly, begrudingly come to feel quite at home there. I still enjoy detesting the Dodgers and Angels and continually finding things about the bay area that are better than LA (food, public transportation, air quality, weather, sports that aren't basketball, I could go on, but do I really need to?), but I honestly do love it there and feel truly at home in LA and Orange County. I was excited to finally headline the Key Club, where we had played a few different times as a support act. Again, this show felt like a lot was riding on it, not only because it was the last show of the tour, but because we had gotten a few different offers to play down there, and after playing numerous shows in the area with Gravehill, a lot of kids had approached me about wanting to see us play. If the show tanked, then my perception of the band was way off. Honestly, we had traditionally had better shows in LA than in the Bay Area for years before we broke up, so I was anticipating a good night. I know I should try and just keep an open mind and not expect anything in particular, but hey, I'm only human.

Ramblings from a sleep-deprived man in desperate need of a shower outside the Key Club in Los Angeles.

We picked up Dylan's friend from Delaware, Deanna, at LAX, dropped Wes off at his visiting girlfriend's hotel, and headed to Hollywood. I think we were the only band on the tour familiar enough with traffic from Vegas to LA, especially on a Sunday, to understand how fucked it can get. Why do I think that? Because we were the only band (aside from the locals, Enthraller) who were at the venue even close to on-time. In fact, not only did everyone else miss load-in and sound-check, we were the only band that was there when dinner was served later that afternoon. Everyone has a day when they run behind, but to my thinking, LA was going to be one of the bigger shows of the whole thing and having played at the Key Club before, I was well aware of what a tight, professional ship they run there, so I knew we needed to be on top of shit for the last show. To be fair, we totally blew it getting to Vancouver on time, so like Mike Abominator always says, shit happens when you party naked. I didn't even really watch the bands that night, I was busy socializing with everybody, knocking out a couple of interviews before the show, and just hanging out. The last night of tour is always bittersweet, kind of like the end of your junior year in high school. You're glad to get a break, but you're bummed to not see a lot of people for a while that you've worked together and bonded with. Over the three weeks, we had a blast getting to know all of our tour mates (except for Steve and Lenzig from Cephalic, we knew those dicks already) and playing, partying and puking together. We all agreed to meet up at the Rainbow to grab a drink to celebrate / say goodbye after the show and ran into even more old friends there. The show went over really well, we all had a blast, but of course, by the time we finished loading out and getting everything squared away, we got to the rainbow at last call. So the after-party, such as it was, ended up being a little anti-climactic. Luckily, we had already grabbed some beer from the store for later that night. Deedee's boyfriend Jerry came and picked her up, Rob took off, Wes headed off with his lady, leaving myself, Mike, Dylan and Deanna to head off to Rob's pad in Anaheim for a couple of beers and some well-earned rest.

"Through Cadaver Eyes" from the new album, like at the Key Club. 

In case you thought the last video was too melodic, here's some old shit for ya- Slaughtercult and Torso. 

Of course... the next day, Monday, all of us except Rob and Wes headed back up to San Luis Obispo, stopping in Ventura for Del Taco and to pay for the van rental. I was dropped off at my pad in Arroyo Grande at about 6pm to do some laundry, clean myself up, catch up with family, and get packed for our four-festivals-in-four-countries-in-four-days trip to Europe that weekend. And did I mention that we were leaving for this insane European trip the next day at 7am from Los Angeles? Mike dropped off the gear in San Luis at our rehearsal room, and took Dylan and Deanna to Dylan's pad. By midnight Tuesday morning (a mere six hours after we got home), Mike and I were back on the road in the van and Mike's truck, headed for LA. We dropped the van off at last in Ventura and continued south for our excruciatingly early flight to Prague where w would rendezvous with the always entertaining Leon del Muerte, who would be reassuming bass duties for these four shows, But that, my friends, is a blog for another day.

Thanks for reading, true believers!

Excelsior!
Harvey and the usual gang of idiots

The Continuing Saga of the "Back From The Dead And Ready To Party" North American tour

So here's part two of what's shaping up to be a tour log trilogy, chronicling the misadventures and gastrointestinal problems of a lovable group of wacky misfits. This is a chapter that I like to call:


Episode II: Return of the Fabulous Metal Bozo Clones
- or - 
The Making of "Great White North II" - the untold story

Okay, so... To pick up where we left off...

After CIM, we were headed to Milwaukee, which would be our first night with all four bands on the tour. We had been freshly re-loaded with merch and had even had a day off, so we were presumably bathed and groomed (for us anyway) when we arrived. The drive from Urbana to Milwaukee really wasn't too bad at all, which makes things a little easier.

Milwaukee has never been a particularly great market for us, and even the show we did there with Cannibal Corpse in '04 wasn't that awesome, I mean it would have been AMAZING for us, but for Cannibal it was a bit of an underwhelming turnout. The fact that all of the bands had just played 100 miles away the night before wasn't great either, and it was a Monday night. However, it was cool to be back at the Eagles' Ballroom, where I had seen Venom at Milwaukee Metalfest '97 and Sodom the following year. We were playing the Rave bar, which I remembered from Metalfests past as “The Relapse Stage”, haha! The backstage was a bit weird, really dark and lit by lava lamps with wall hangings everywhere. Wes was having a hell of a time changing our guitar strings, just with the lack of light and usable space back there, despite it being really big and sort of maze-like.

One thing about the way we do things, we tend to be pretty laid back and give everyone we're on tour with a lot of free rein, we never really keep people out of our dressing room, hoard our food and drinks or make people set up their drums in front of our kit or anything like that. Just because we've been there, and it's kind of a bummer. There are rarely any issues with this philosophy, but this was one of those nights when it kind of backfired on us. The local bands and their friends were backstage, eating all our food, and more importantly, drinking our beer and whiskey. I actually had to take our bottle of Seagram's out of a dude's hand. Also there were like three chicks who were cooks (the food was delicious, I have to say) and some of the people backstage were with them, or something... I really have no idea. Especially since it was our first night with Macabre and Withered on the tour, we weren't sure who was supposed to be there and who wasn't, as Macabre and Cephalic also had a lot of their friends who were local backstage, so I couldn't tell what the fuck was going on. So it was a bit of a bummer vibe backstage. Overall, the promoter was a really nice guy, and he actually hooked us up with a place to stay later that night, but that aspect of the show wasn't particularly organized, and it turned into a bit of a clusterfuck.

Embarrassingly enough, I have to be honest and say that before this tour I wasn't familiar with Withered, except by reputation. I was definitely looking forward to catching them live for the first time so at the very least, I wouldn't feel like such a dumb-ass any time someone asked me about them. All I really knew at that point was that they were supposed to be a doom / black metal hybrid. Anyone that knows my musical tastes knows that, although I enjoy some doom and black metal, those styles aren't my bread and butter. Within the band's first song, Withered really floored me with their smothering, pissed-off brand of blackened doom. The thing that doesn't interest me about most “troo black metal” is that it just isn't particularly heavy – it's all treble. If there's on thing you can say about Withered, it's that they are incredibly heavy. After speaking to the guys I immediately knew that we were going to get along great and I was super psyched to have them on the tour. The Mikes, Dylan, and Beau were all super down-to-earth, hardworking, hard-partying dudes that were a great addition to the bill. I loved the fact that all four bands sounded nothing like one another, but were all super intense and heavy in their own way. I think that helps make it a win for the kids that pay their hard-earned shekels to come out and support, as well as more interesting for me, because I don't want to hear four hours of brutal death metal a night for three weeks straight.

Having Macabre on the tour was great, and really kind of a mind-fuck for me. I remember listening to the “Sinister Slaughter” tape so many times hanging out with Matt Widener and Dan (now Marissa) Martinez of Cretin way back when Matt W. was playing bass in Exhumed in '94. Having a band that influenced you supporting you on tour is really a trip and, I know this word gets tossed around pretty casually, but it really was an honor. They were great, and although they didn't do too many songs from my personal favorite album, “Gloom” (I still want to hear “Dr. Holmes”, damn it!), the set was a killer mix of old and new stuff, including a bunch of my faves from “Sinister Slaughter” and “Dahmer”. The guys were really cool, and made me feel a little bit younger, which is always flattering, haha! Their tour manager Eric was cool as well and gave us a hand changing over which was appreciated, and their effervescent merchandiser, Doug was a total sweetheart from the word go.

The Milwaukee show itself was a bit sparse, but the people that were there were fully into it, so that made it a lot easier to give a good performance. It's really less about the number of people attending and more about the intensity of the vibe. The room was small and sounded good, so all in all, it ended up being a pretty fun show. Our crew and Withered stayed with some really nice friends of the promoter on the outskirts of town, grabbed some grub at a place that was sort of vaguely Waffle House-esque, and had fun playing with our hosts' dangerously affectionate pit bull puppy. The next day, we got up pretty early to head out to the land of 10,000 lakes- Minnesota.

I always enjoy doing shows in the Twin Cities. We've traditionally had good turnouts there, and this night would prove to be no exception. It was still a bit of a mess getting used to setting up our drum kit before Cephalic (we shared backline on this tour) and then taking it down during Macabre's set, having Mike tweak it, and then setting it back up on stage when we went on, but luckily for your humble narrator, that was a problem that didn't really affect me too much. After load-in at Station 4 in St. Paul, I hopped in the van and high-tailed it to FedEx office to print out all of our paperwork for our crossing at the Canadian border the next day, and catch up on some emails and other office-type work my archaic phone didn't allow me to do. When I got back, Mike, Rob, our driver Dylan and I took a walk from the venue to find something to eat. We managed to find a pretty nice bar / grill that had a great beer selection, so I had to grab a Duvel with lunch / dinner. Full and content we headed back to the venue, which was already filling up nicely.

At any rate, the show was pretty damn full, way more so than the last time we had played the same venue, many, many years ago. We got some PBR going at the bar, and shit was basically pretty damn good. Even though we had just gotten more merch, we were already starting to run low on a couple of sizes, which was awesome, but a little scary because we wouldn't be able to get anything else from any of our vendors until we got done with the Canadian dates the following week. Canadian shipping rates are ridiculous. At any rate, I digress... Macabre are great because they're so cynical and sarcastic, they make Wes Caley, our resident pessimist, look like a ray of sunshine. But give 'em a few beers and a good crowd, like they had that night, and you'll see a great band having a great time. I really got to watch a bit more of their set, which put a huge smile on my face.

"In The Name Of Gore" live from the land where people still remember Kirby Puckett.

Another highlight of the night for me was getting to catch up with old friends Steve and Allison from Bodies Lay Broken, my all-time favorite Midwestern Grind band (although Wasteoid and Black Market Fetus are close behind!). I remember my first time in Minneapolis- staying at Micha Garber of Bodies... apartment and eating at Perkins for the first time – good times! Micah has since relocated to Japan, and it was a bit weird without him being there to regale us with tales of his prodigious push-up marathons. On a bittersweet note about being back in the Twin Cities after so many years, I had always enjoyed meeting up with Don Decker of Anal Blast (who our old drummer Col had lovingly nicknamed “The Flesh Avalanche”, a name Decker thought was hilarious) and Earl Root of Root of All Evil Records, both of whom had sadly passed away since the last time Exhumed had played in town. At any rate, I tried to honor them with a quick shout-out on stage. The show went over killer and was one of the high points of the whole tour, to be honest. Even though our performance wasn't totally perfect, we had reached the point of being on the road where everything had become second nature to us, and we didn't have to think about what we were playing, we could just lock in and go on instinct. That's when I honestly enjoy playing live the most, when you've “found your legs” and you go onstage every night feeling totally confident and ready to kill. At any rate, after the show, we met some of the kids and loaded out to head for North Dakota, and on to Winnipeg the next night.

We needed to stop in Grand Forks, North Dakota to pick up a very specific and important piece of freight from the UPS store there – a new severed head prop, aka Son Of Ted. After getting the original Ted stolen in Denver, we had notified our de facto prop-master, the very awesome Caleb Schneider of Murder Construct and Bad Acid Trip and he had set to work getting a new one up and running at maximum speed. That Wednesday, it was to arrive in Grand Forks so we could grab it before heading into the Great White North. While waiting for our putrid parcel to make its appearance, we availed ourselves of a truckstop on the edge of town and showered and did laundry. I hit the shower last while the rest of the crew headed to a nearby Wal-Mart (as much as I try to avoid shopping there, when you're on tour, it's just too damn convenient and cheap to have principles – especially in North Dakota where there aren't a lot of other options) to get new merch tubs to get things more organized. We met up and grabbed some lunch and then organized all of our merch, and cleaned the van inside and out, which was long overdue. By this time, the package had finally arrived and we were ready to hit Canada.

Anyone who keeps up with what goes on with underground bands will probably have heard myriad horror stories of Canadian border crossings gone awry, with band / crew members getting turned away at the border, bands getting taxed exorbitant fees, etc. etc. If you want to hear some gnarly shit, just ask Mike Hamilton about what happened to Deeds Of Flesh years ago. That said... I always approach the border with a bit of trepidation. We had all of our paperwork in order, and due to a change in the laws, we wouldn't actually need work permits on this trip as we had in the past, which may have helped get us through more smoothly. Every tour, at least one person in our touring party has a DUI on their records. That means that you have to pay $200 or so for each person with a DUI, just to get them into Canada. You also occasionally get a lecture from the border folks if they're dicks. This time wasn't too bad, we paid our money, didn't get inspected or taxed, and were more or less on our way after about 45 minutes of waiting. When we got to the customs office, the Withered guys were just leaving after getting waved through very quickly, and Cephalic also were admitted fairly smoothly. Our delay ended up being pretty minor, all things considered. Macabre weren't so lucky. Their tour manager, Eric was denied entry because of a misdemeanor charge that was over 15 years old on his record, and the whole band was hassled for quite some time. On top of that, they had to go through US customs to take Eric back to Grand Forks, where he would have to ride a Greyhound to Seattle and meet us there, and then they had to go through Canadian customs again to get to Winnipeg and do the show that night. Oh yeah, and Slayer was playing in Winnipeg that night, too. Like I said last time, I love a challenge.

The promoter, Corey, was also the drummer of our old friends in the awesome Grind band Putrescence that was playing with us that night, and as soon as we got to the venue, he gave us a ride to the beer store to grab some of that sweet, sweet nectar. Wes' predictions came true immediately as we were warned by our Canadian friends to be careful drinking their beer, as it is a whole 1% higher alcohol by volume than American beer. Don't worry, my northern friends, we do this all the time, I think we can handle ourselves. Anyway, Putrescence sounded great, and it was awesome to hang out with my old friend Mike Alexander again. The show was actually pretty well attended, especially considering the other band playing in town that night, and there was definitely a contingent of late arrivals that took the opportunity to create their own metal double-feature. We were looking for a place to stay and were referred to a local kid who was having a party at his place after the show. He assured us he had tons of beer and that all was good. We got to the house pretty late, and there was no beer. I was at that stage of drunkenness where I was ready to seriously party, and having the wind knocked out of my sails like that, I have to admit, made me get a bit pissy. I was being kind of rude, changing the stereo and talking shit about the music playing, etc. so I apologize for being kind of a dick. The guy did buy us all McDonalds and had a huge pad that we crashed at, so I really can't complain. We did have a bit of cheap whiskey that we managed to dig up from somewhere that eased the pain of the night a bit. The next morning, we were up pretty early and headed west to Saskatoon after grabbing some fresh guitar strings.

The only town in the hilarious-sounding province of Saskatchewan with a more ridiculous name  than Saskatoon is Regina - pronounced "Rah-jine-ah". So yes, when you say "Regina, Saskatchewan" it sounds exactly like you're saying "Vagina, Sasnatchewan". And no, that joke totally never gets old to the people that live there. They LOVE it. 

We had played in Saskatoon years ago, at the same venue even, with Behemoth, which was actually on our last tour before splitting up, so it was cool to come back on our own with a great bill supporting us. In fact, the promoter, a very sweet gal named Zandra, told me that our gig in '05 was her first show booking international acts! I remembered her being really nice and letting us stay at her sister's place, which was killer because they had a hot tub- nothing like drinking a beer in a hot tub while it's gently snowing! Anyway, enough reminiscence. Zandra was just as nice as I remembered her, and we were greeted with a huge catering spread and a cooler full of ice cold beer, soda and energy drinks. And that was before dinner! Rob and I actually went out for a jog around the neighborhood, Wes got all the guitars re-strung, and life was good. The show was killer, and everyone was happy. I love it when there's a night like that. Of course, I suppose that's not the most interesting read, but the show was a lot of fun. We ended up drinking outside the club and hanging out with some of the staff while watching some of the guys from the other bands unsuccessfully hit on chicks, which is always good for a laugh.

The next day, we arrived early in Edmonton, and we were stoked to see that the venue was smack dab in the middle of downtown – always a good sign. We kicked around town for a while as it rained on and off, and found an amazing vintage guitar shop that was totally mind-blowing and way out of my price range, as sweet as it would have been to come home with a new Les Paul. I was kind of burnt that day, just not really feeling it, so after doors opened at the club and everything was situated, I left and promptly ran into Rob, Dylan and some random Canadians. We hit the bar next door, had some food and drink, and I began to feel better. I also met Mike Brown, arguably the biggest Exhumed fan out there – at least the biggest Exhumed collector. He has more of our shirts, EPs and other shit than I do! Despite the fact that he is obviously a huge nerd with terrible taste in music, he was actually a pretty cool, normal well-adjusted dude to have a beer with. I was feeling even better when we got back and the place was packed front to back. The show went over awesome, and we stayed after the bar closed and got really unnecessarily drunk, doing shots and all manner of other foolish things. We headed to the other side of town to crash out at someone's pad, had a couple of beers, and passed out drunk and sloppy to end what turned out to be a really fun night. The next morning we had to run around town for a while, which took way longer than we thought it would have – the other side of town felt a lot further hung over in daylight than it had the previous night, drunk and rowdy in the dark. We also saw a lot of signs that read "Fatality" marking the spot where a fatal car crash had taken place. Apparently, that's a "thing" there. Thankfully, we don't have those signs in California, because there would be so many, it would just be too depressing / frightening to drive anywhere.

 At the bar across the street from the venue in Edmonton, whatever the hell it was called- Rob and I with Mike Brown and the crazy Canadian guy who was hilarious. Their humus gave me atrocious farts. Atrocious. No, seriously. Atrocious.

At any rate, after some Burger King to start the day, we were feeling good about everything and we hit the road out to Calgary. By the way, everyone in Edmonton had talked shit on Calgary the way that Bay Area residents trash L.A. This was to be another night where Slayer, Rob Zombie, and Exodus were also playing in town. Deedee and I were both friends with the Exodus guys, and she managed to sweet-talk Gary into getting us passes, which was awesome. A bunch of guys from the tour knew the Exodus tour manager, so all the bands were well-represented at the show. Exodus was great, as always. After getting lost for a bit (it was a hockey arena, in our defense), we made our way backstage to drink some of Exodus' beer. I met the super nice Lee and Rob for the first time and got to catch up with Tom, Jack, and Gary. Before grabbing a taxi back to the venue, we caught a couple of Slayer songs, and Gary sounded great playing with them, and visa versa.

Cool shit I got in Calgary. The herpes I got there: not that cool.  

Meanwhile back at the venue... The promoter of the show was actually Eric Grief, who metal nerds will know was the former manager of Death. I had a great talk with him about Death, one of a select handful bands that I know way too much about, and he was a really nice, articulate guy. He even hooked me up with “Scream Bloody Gore” and “Spiritual Healing” patches, which was cool. Our show was billed as a sort of “un-official Slayer after party” event, which meant that it was designed to start and run late, but... It ran really late. Wes and I took advantage of the delay to nip out for a bit of dinner and a drink or two downtown. The most remarkable thing about the place we went wasn't the beer selection, or the food: It was the ridiculous amount of beautiful women that were literally everywhere on the streets of downtown Calgary. Better than LA. Better than New York. Better than Prague. Holy shit, I had never seen such a copious amount of super hot chicks all over the place. It was fucking nuts. After picking my jaw up off the floor about a hundred times, we headed back to the venue where I met up with Dr. Gore from Extreme Metal TV for a quick video interview you can watch below.

If you think reading what I have to say is boring, wait until you try watching it!

If, after reading all the things that we did that night, it seems like we had waaaaaaaay too much time before we actually played that night, we did. We weren't even onstage until after 1am, which is a bit ridiculous. The owner of the bar also got smashed in the face with a bottle and it was very messy. I didn't see what happened, but I did see him bleeding profusely in the kitchen. Anyway, even considering the time we finally played, the show was pretty decent, it being a Saturday night. Not awesome, but far from shitty. We all had a good time, and after load out and dinner at Denny's it was literally after 5am as we headed into beautiful British Colombia to the small, quaint resort town of Kelowna.

But that pulse-pounding suspense-saturated story will have to wait for another day – a day when the world is finally ready for the truth about six morons in a foul-smelling van playing loud, obnoxious music for any audiences foolhardy enough to pay to see and hear it and tasteless enough to endure it.

Until next time, true believers -

Excelsior!

- Harvey and the usual gang of idiots

Part one of the story of:

The "Back From The Dead And Ready To Party" North American Tour

Ahh... Nothing like the invigorating scent of a freshly minted blog. Once again, as the self-appointed chronicler of the ongoing trials, tribulations, testicles and triumphs of Exhumed, I shall attempt to encapsulate our mildly retarded escapades into a vaguely digestible format for your reading pleasure. Now, to pick up where we left off:

After returning home from the week of Hellfest and Death Feast, we were excited that skin-pounder extraordinaire Mike Hamilton had passed through his trial by fire and kicked some ass in Europe. We were also stoked by the fact that we all didn't want to kill each other even though we smelled terrible by the time we got home. After a flight delay which left us all scrambling to make our connection, we were headed home. Leon set off for his swanky bungalow in Echo Park, and Mike and I hopped in my 1995 Isuzu Rodeo (yeah, we live high on the hog!) and settled in for the four-hour drive back to San Luis Obispo, dropping Wes off in Oxnard along the way.

Our tour with Macabre, Cephalic Carnage, and Withered was only a few weeks away, but there were a number of question marks: Our go-to T-shirt guys at Warlord Merchandise (shameless plug) would be in Europe touring with D.I.S. When we would need a ton of shirts made. Leon, who unlike the rest of us schmucks is encumbered with a “real” job (you know, one where you don't describe your pay scale in terms of “__ dollars an hour”), wouldn't be able to do the tour, due to said "real job." Then, within two weeks of the first show, our plan to share transportation with Cephalic Carnage (which was ill-advised from the beginning in hindsight) was scrapped. On top of that, we had a much longer, more extensive set of songs to learn. What can I say? I love a challenge.

The most important thing was getting a bass player / low vocalist on board. One of the great things about playing in multiple bands (aside from the awesome schedule conflicts that always come up) is that you play with a lot of different great musicians and develop a lot of killer friendships. You also learn that if you can stand being in a Dodge Durango with four other people for three weeks, that you get along with those people pretty damn well. One of those fellow Durango-dwellers of whom I speak is none other than Gravehill guitarist Bodybag Bob. I've stayed at his rustic (read: shabby and squalid) apartment in Orange County countless times getting plastered and blaring old Judas Priest albums until five am, and he had told me that he had recently joined the ranks of the unemployed. That combination made a small, very dim light in my head turn on. Rob (sorry, I call him Rob a lot more often than Bob) is a great player and a good friend, and I had heard him say that he enjoyed playing bass once or twice before. Total Exhumed bass-player criteria right there. He very obligingly agreed to do the tour and things were moving along. I sent him all the tablature for the songs to get started. Of course, I'd never heard his low voice, which was arguably more important than his four-string skills. Rob came up to San Luis for a week before the tour started, his arrival coinciding with Wes' moving out of Oxnard to relocate to the warm, arid climes of Tempe, Arizona. The four of us convened at Wes' place, helped him finish packing up his stuff, and headed north to my town, Arroyo Grande.

The following day, storage space was procured for Mr. Caley's nonessential possessions, and we started to rehearse. I forget how nice it is to actually practice with everyone in the band present at once – that's become a long-forgotten luxury from the days where everyone in the band lived in the same general area. Things were coming together nicely over Thursday and Friday, and then we headed down to Orange County to sneak in a Gravehill practice before our show at the Central Illinois Metalfest, which would be double-duty for Rob and I. Rob, Wes and I trekked back up to San Luis (mind you, it's a four-and-a-half hour drive one way) the following morning to resume Exhumed rehearsals. Rob and Wes crashed at my place most of the time, while Mike worked construction during the day and met up with us to jam in the late afternoons / evenings. An old friend, Kristoff from Shadow Graphics had stepped up with some killer merch that had arrived just in time, so we combined that with what we had left over from Europe and the LPs we had gotten from Relapse, and our merch woes were more or less squashed. Meanwhile,I spent my days frantically trying to locate a suitable tour van, which proved to be an exercise in futility. It seemed that every 12-15 passenger van from San Luis Obispo to San Diego was spoken for. Bogus. A couple of different options that looked very promising came into the picture and quickly faded. I was resigned to doing the tour in a minivan, which would have been insane, and in retrospect, impossible. Due to a weird set of circumstances and things going wrong that are way too idiosyncratic and convoluted to go into here, we weren't able to even rent a minivan Saturday morning, the day before the first show. Like the song says, we had no car and it was breaking our hearts, but we did however, have a driver for the tour, my good friend Dylan Wordeman, host of the Slaytanic Carnage Radio show in San Luis (broadcast every Wednesday, 11pm to 1am on KCPR here in San Luis and streaming on the web at http://kcpr.calpoly.edu/), and that's a start. So that Saturday, the five of us- Mike, Rob, Wes, Dylan and I - convened at my house to try to figure something out.

Mike remembered that Inherit Disease from Ventura had bought a van a few years back and weren't playing too many shows, so he put in a call to their bassist Josh about renting their vehicle. After checking with the other guys, Josh got back to us and said it would be cool. To say I was relieved when we got that call would be the understatement of the century. I was beside myself with happiness. We headed to Ventura that night in my car and Mike's truck with Mike's drum kit, our guitar stuff, a bunch of merch, our bad selves, and Wes' necessities that would be dropped off at when we hit Phoenix for transplant to his new home. The van was a beefy Dodge with six captains' chairs, and not too much room for gear and merch – which wasn't the biggest deal, since we were sharing a backline and trailer with Cephalic Carnage – but we wouldn't meet up with them until Sunday evening in San Diego. And we wouldn't get Wes' personal belongings out of the van until the following day in Phoenix. And there was still one more person to pick up. Wes and I took my car to Echo Park to retrieve the sixth member of our touring party, Deedee, our merch girl. This would be the first tour where we would actually have not one, but TWO crew folks to help us, which was a massive improvement over all the tours we'd done in the past. We'd usually traveled without any crew whatsoever, except for a couple of short runs with a friend doing merch. It was also the first time we'd ever toured with a woman present. So it was exciting to have the help but there being a woman present was a bit of an x-factor to be honest. Luckily, I've known Deedee for about ten years now, so I felt pretty confident that she would be able to roll with the punches of touring and more importantly, tolerate a fart-filled van full of idiots making terrible and offensive jokes for three weeks. Turned out I was right.

We crashed out at Rob's pad in Orange County for the night, woke up and dropped my car off at Mike Abominator's pad in Garden Grove, where he and his very kind girlfriend Christa had offered to let me park for three weeks, then headed south to San Diego. The van was a bit cramped, but spirits were still high from the simple fact that we had pulled something together to ride around in in the first place! We would find out that day that our buddies in Cephalic Carnage had an even rougher time getting to the first show than we did. First they had engine trouble at the Arizona / California border, then they had a flat tire on their trailer, which they had to ditch at a repair place until the following day and pile all of their gear into their van in order to make it to the show. The drive to San Diego was a breeze, totally unaffected by the much-hyped closure of a section of the 405 freeway (remember “Carmaggedon”? It was just as fucking lame as you thought it would have been), and of course the weather along the coast was beautiful.

We arrived at the Ruby Room in San Diego, which is smack dab in the middle of the gay part of town. It was also the day after their pride parade, which seemed like it was a pretty big deal. Having lived in San Francisco, this didn't faze me in the slightest, and we loaded in on time and more or less relaxed. Sid, the promoter was truly a gentleman, and hooked us up with copious amounts of homemade and delicious food and a full keg of microbrewed beer. Things had come together and were officially looking up. Mike Abominator and Christa came down and hung out, some friends of Dylan's and Mike's cruised out, and the mood was good. We were getting travel updates from the Cephalic guys, who finally made it just in time to load in and get onstage. The room stayed pretty empty until late, but right when I went out to get ready to load Cephalic's gear in, I was pleasantly surprised that it had gotten really full as To Violently Vomit (which is basically all the guys from Disgorge except the singer) were kicking out their brutal death metal jams. Cephalic made the best out of their undoubtedly terrible day, and we had a killer set to close things out. It was great to see Leonard and Steve again, as Cephalic has been a band we've played with pretty much at every stage of our “career”. Our European tour with them and Inhume in '04 is still my favorite tour of all time. They had to stay in San Diego to pick up their trailer at the repair shop the following day, and we headed East to Arizona to Ryan Butler's pad in Chandler for a bit of rest before the next show in Phoenix.

For those of you who don't know Ryan, he is one of the genuinely nicest people you could ever meet and a killer engineer who runs Arcane Digital Recording in Phoenix (well, Chandler) where we tracked the guitars, bass, and vocals for “All Guts, No Glory” (for full details, read the older blogs here). Oh yeah, and he also writes some of the heaviest riffs known to man in Landmine Marathon, who we were really stoked to have playing the show with us that night in Phoenix. We divested the van of Wes' moving stuff early that morning and he left for Tempe while the rest of us went to shower and get some rest at Casa de Butler. Ryan kindly took Deedee and I out to run some errands and get some miscellaneous stuff we needed but couldn't afford until generating some cash from the first show. We grabbed lunch at Qdoba and eventually headed over the venue.

Monday Night is the night to rock in post-nuclear Phoenix.

The weather in Phoenix was weird to say the least. Of course it was mind-bogglingly hot, but apparently July is Monsoon season there – I didn't even know that Phoenix had a monsoon season. So a weird thick fog / smog / smoke hung in the air around the venue, and a hot wind blew mercilessly. It was very nuclear winter-ish – artificially dark in the late afternoon with torrid, violent winds whipping shit around in the parking lot. Very pleasant. At any rate, Cephalic again were pretty late in arriving, due to waiting for their trailer to be repaired. The show itself was a little less well-attended than I had hoped, but by no means empty. Undaunted, Landmine sounded awesome to get the party going after sets from a couple of other locals, as did Cephalic. The sound was a bit off for our set, which made it less than ideal, and apparently the sound wasn't too great on the floor either, but we had a good time and the line-up was gelling nicely as we bashed it out. After the show, we finally got all the excess stuff out of our van, since the trailer was back up and running and Wes' stuff was moved to AZ, and more legroom was thoroughly enjoyed by all.

The next day we were due in Albuquerque, New Mexico for show number three. I was excited that we were playing with Laughing Dog again, hell I was excited that Laughing Dog was playing again, period. We had played the Launch Pad a few times before and it has always been a good time, and this would prove to be no exception. The room filled up really well, especially for a Tuesday night, and all the local bands were pretty killer – Torture Victim was a great crossover band, and Suspended was a really good all-girl Death Metal three-piece. There's a band description you don't hear too often! Unfortunately, I was grabbing dinner when Laughing Dog actually played, much to my disappointment, but hey, you gotta eat. I am really looking forward to hearing some new stuff from these guys. Anyway, we got back and started getting ready as Cephalic Carnage was entertaining the folks, and our show went really well. Steve from Cephalic ran our sound (for the rest of the whole tour, luckily!) and did a great job, and the kids were going mental. It was a great night, and the best show of the tour up to that point. The drive to Denver was pretty gnarly, though, so we loaded out, had a few beers in the parking lot and settled in (read – passed the fuck out) for the long night's ride.

We headed to Steve's house to once again bathe and nap, and old buddy Sherwood Webber (formerly of Skinless) came over and brought some beers for lunch. We hung out for a few hours before heading to the Marquis Theater, where Steve and Brian of Cephalic both work doing sound. Being in our tour-mates' hometown definitely did not hurt the draw, as the place was pretty fucking packed by the time the tour package was taking the stage. It was also great to catch up with ex-Cephalic bassists Jawsh and Patrick Russell, two great dudes. The show was really kickass, with a LOUD audience that makes our jobs onstage so much easier. Of course Steve knowing the soundboard like the back of his hand helped us sound as heavy as possible. Everything was going great until... we went to load out and I realized that someone had totally swiped Ted, the severed head prop that I pour blood out of at the end of every show. We frantically searched around and asked security, but no one had seen anything. I'm still pissed about that. What kind of fan steals an irreplaceable stage prop from a band? What a dick. At any rate, after my ire subsided to a manageable level, we hit the bar across the street for a couple more beers with Patrick and his girlfriend before piling back in the van. I really, really, really love having a driver on the road so there's always someone sober that hasn't just played to drive after shows. It's pretty much the best thing ever.

Touring in the west means that most drives are fairly long (and some can reach excruciating lengths, but there were hardly any of those on this tour), and the trek from Denver to Merriam Kansas (basically Kansas City) was no exception. We had already mapquested all the drives and were pretty hip to how long it would take, so there weren't too many surprises in that department. What we weren't prepared for was just how insanely hot the midwest is. Phoenix has nothing on Kansas (and Iowa for that matter). This show was cool because Origin would be joining us, a reprise of the Relapse Contamination tour Exhumed, Cephalic, and Origin did together in the summer of 2001, which was actually Origin's first tour. In fact, their original bassist, my old friend Doug Williams, was co-owner of the bar we played! The original plan for the night was that Origin would play between Cephalic and us, but because they were shooting a video that day, they opted to play a bit earlier so that they could stay set up from soundcheck. Their video shoot was appropriately raucous, and the rest of the show was a bit more subdued after the hometwon heroes left the stage, but still a great time.

"I've got a golden ticket - wait a second... What the fuck?!?!?" - Charlie

The next day was Des Moines, Iowa, a city we had never played before, so we didn't really know what to expect. The venue, Vaudeville Mews, was right next door to a great English-style pub with an excellent beer and Scotch selection. I spent my per diem pay on a glass of Dahlwhinnie Scotch. Mmmm... delicious and peaty. After a light lunch and a couple of drinks, we headed back to the venue once the show was getting underway. I was stoked to play with Black Market Fetus, who put on a great show for a rabid hometown audience. My friend Krista Spikes, who I used to work with at Necropolis Records way back when, was there with her husband, and it was really nice to catch up for a bit before we hit the stage. The turnout was actually pretty decent, although the venue was indescribably hot. I'm gonna digress here for a minute. When we play, I invariably sweat a lot, and when I do some of my longer screams, it's not uncommon for me to see stars and get light-headed, especially when the stage is particularly hot. That usually happens only once a night, though. This show took things to a whole new level. I saw stars three times, and finally during the first scream in “Open The Abscess” the entire room went white and I heard a loud buzzing in my ears that blanked out all the music – it sounded like an alarm clock from the 1970s, and it engulfed all the sound in the room for about 10 seconds. I just kept playing and hoping it would go away and that I wouldn't pass out. Luckily, I didn't pass out, and things returned to normal within 10 or 15 seconds. After we got done, I wrung out my shirt three times. I probably could have filled a medium soda cup with the sweat from that shirt. Gross. Anyway, that should give you an idea of just how fucking hot that place was. You can read a review of the show here. After the show, the venue closed quickly to re-open for a weird cover band / white rap thing, so we went back to the bar next door, played Deep Purple, Thin Lizzy, and the Scorpions on the jukebox, and drank a lot of Duvel and other good beer with the BMF guys and Cephalic, capping off a really fun night.

The next day we were due in Urbana, Illinois, for the Central Illinois Metalfest. Small-market cities with fests are always a little weird, but Matt Bishop, the promoter is an old penpal and a great guy, so I was psyched. We hit town around 9 in the morning or so, but were luckily able to find a hotel that could check us in immediately. We get some rest and got cleaned up and headed for the venue which was located in the college in town. Matt met us at the door, and we got set up with wristbands, drink tickets and all the stuff one needs at a fest, as well as a prime merch spot right across from Jon and Jill of Ibex Moon. It was killer running into a bunch of old friends like Jim and Don from Nunslaughter, Tom, Dave, and Adam from Cardiac Arrest, Dave from Insanity, Mark from Impetigo, Greg and Carly from Relapse Records, and of course the creeps in Gravehill. Also, Kristoff met us there with a much needed merchandise refill before we would head to Canada in a few days. The Gravehill set went over really well and was a lot of fun. Cardiac Arrest guitarist Tom Knizner who filled in for me in San Diego while I was on tour with Exhumed came out for the last two songs, which was awesome.

Gravehill gets all Maiden on your ass with three guitars - sorry Tom, that makes you Janick Gers!

Thankfully Rob and I had about four hours in between sets, so I headed back to the hotel for a shower before the Exhumed set got underway. We took the stage a bit behind schedule, but not too late, and the set went down pretty well, considering that it was nearly 1am - a lot of these all day / two-day / three-day events turn into endurance tests after a while. Like I said, festivals in small-market cities aren't particularly glamorous or anything, but all the folks there, attending and playing, were 100% into the whole thing, which is what really counts in the end anyway. We scarfed some pretty good pizza from the place next door and retired to the hotel for a few beers and bad tv (the Mary J. Blige “Behind The Music”- yeesh!) before crashing out. 

The often imitated, never duplicated Wes Caley at CIM, doing what he does best: finger-tapping solos with his tongue out.

The next day was our only day off for the whole tour, and most of the band returned to the festival to catch Hod, Withered, and Macabre, but instead I went to the gym with Matt from Cephalic and then joined he and his bandmates to watch the Captain America movie, which was pretty damn good. Not as good as Iron Man or Thor, but still quite good. Steve and I ended up being the only ones that didn't go for the 3-D version of the film, so we had a popcorn tub intended to feed the 6 of us all to ourselves. I have never ate that much popcorn in one sitting in my life and I hope to never do so again. At any rate, before I bore you all with a tedious analysis of the film that calls upon my 30+ years of Marvel Comics readership, I'll stop here and resume this chronicle next time with a gripping account of our show in St. Paul, Minnesota. I'm sure that alone has you on the edge of your collective seats. I know I'm about to piss myself in anticipation. Must... hold... on... until... the next... chapter – if only it's not... already... too.. late...

How's that for a cliffhanger?

See you next time for more thrills, chills, and spills with the usual gang of idiots!

Cheers,
Harvey

Back In The Olde Country

Europe, Part the second

In my never-ending, but futile, attempt to catch this blog up with the present, I'm reaching back into my admittedly faulty memory banks to the distant past of June, 2011 to recap our ongoing escapades in the Old Country. Read on if you like stories about idiots with guitars:

After MDF, we had a couple weeks of down time to get ready to head back to Europe for yet another round of festivals. Of course, Exhumed being Exhumed means that the only constant is change, so as Danny got ready to head off on an Intronaut tour, we were rehearsing with Mike (Deeds of Flesh, ex-Vile) Hamilton, a great drummer and an old friend. Mike and I had been jamming sporadically before MDF, knowing full well that Danny would have commitments elsewhere, so we were fairly well prepared. One of the great things about jamming with Mike for me personally (beyond the musical and personal stuff) is that he lives 15 minutes away from my house, not two hours away like Wes and Danny, or four hours away like Leon, or four-and-a-half hours away like the guys in Gravehill, Dekapitator and Cretin. So playing with Mike was making my life easier in many, many ways. Things came into clear focus musically once Wes got to my pad in Arroyo Grande, as he and Mike think about music in a way that is largely alike: in terms of sets of specific details that interlock to form a coherent whole – from the inside out as it were. On the other hand, your humble narrator tends to look at things first on the whole and then break that whole down into smaller details. At any rate, any lingering stuff was tightened down in the rehearsal room and it was time to return to Los Angeles to rehearse with Leon and board an excruciatingly early flight the following day.

We were lucky enough to be able to rehearse in the Dreaming Dead jam room (thanks Liz!) and crash nearby LAX in Malibu in order to hit the airport at 5 for a 7AM flight. Of course, the flight was delayed. After checking our bags and getting our boarding passes for our new flight on a new airline, we trudged back to Malibu to grab a bit more sleep and I hit the shower, figuring that I would just sleep on the plane. Needless to say, we eventually arrived in Amsterdam and found our driver, who was of course waiting at the gate of the old airline. Wires were uncrossed and we piled into the Sprinter van to head for the first show.

Everyone tells me it's difficult to book shows in Europe in the summer due to the festival circuit kind of devouring all the metal audiences and their hard-earned money, so we had to scramble to fill in any dates between Hellfest in France and Death Feast in Germany, and they predictably were a bit underwhelming. As to why we needed to fill in those dates, it's very simple. Every day we're on the road, it costs money, especially since we have to rent a van and a backline in Europe, so every day we're not playing we're just losing money. With the realities of being in an underground band and the state of the record industry in 2011, the days of simply receiving a cash advance from your label and not ever worrying about it are over, so we need to at least break even to consider doing any shows, especially in Europe, where it costs us about 4,500 dollars just to get over there. At any rate, we arrived ear;y June 17^th and play a show the same night in Zaandam, Holland. We enjoyed a few jet-lagged beers in a quaint alley bar before the show, which started things off on a wacky note. The support band Kutschurf were hilarious, dressing in goofy masks and cooking a kebab onstage amongst other antics. Their girlfriends at the merch table were also really nice, trying to explain the band's dirty jokes which were delivered entirely in Dutch. Our set was less intentionally goofy, but a little rough, and we left directly from the venue to France for Hellfest.

The lineup for Hellfest was insane. We would only be there one day, but with Bolt Thrower, Hail Of Bullets, Severe Torture, UFO, Angel Witch, Sodom, Kreator, Municipal Waste, Thin Lizzy and the Scorpions all playing that day, we were determined to make it memorable. Angel Witch was already playing the main stage when were loading into the Rock Hard Tent (a tent that probably held 3,000 people) which bummed me out, but we had to take care of business first. Severe Torture was tearing it up when we got there and got situated with the help of our intrepid European label manager, Pip Soret. We managed to find our backstage area, a very fancy cubicle complete with 2 six packs of Hellfest beer, and a bottle of wine. A Jack Daniels representative stopped by and gave us JD shirts, harmonicas (!), and most importantly, a bottle of whiskey. Then Leon and I went to the press tent for a couple of interviews before the show.

I think I should stop with the blow-by-blow for a minute to describe the ridiculous scope of Hellfest. It's basically the size of a small city, that is to say, a small city inhabited exclusively by Rockers. There are two massive, side-by-side stages outside which alternate, as well as two huge tent stages, a walk-up reception area, a press tent, and a backstage area the size of a high school, complete with cold / hot catering areas, a guitar showroom, a cubicle for hairdressing and massage (yeah, what the fuck?!?!?!), a shower area (awkwardly located near the cold catering area) and most importantly: the artist bar. It's worth noting that there were bonfires and post-apocalyptic sculpture all over the festival grounds and that the artist bar was the only place that accepted Euros, rather than tickets which we did not have. Anyway, it was a bit of a mind-fuck being there. We felt very out-of-place and kind of like we were getting away with something just by being there.

We banged out a couple of interviews and then headed back to the stage to get ready to play. Hail of Bullets was just getting done as we were setting up, and it's always great to have a beer and a laugh with such excellent dudes. The show at Hellfest went really well, and things with Mike really clicked that afternoon, as we battered through our set exhausted but enthusiastically. We were done relatively early, in time for the 2^nd disappointment of the day – UFO were finishing up on the main stage as we were loading out! We headed for the backstage to change and have some food and drinks undaunted. After breaking into the bottle of Jack, Wes and I headed out to catch Thin Lizzy, which was pretty enjoyable, despite the irreplaceably absent Phil Lynott and Gary Moore (R.I.P.). I was hoping to see John Sykes or Derek Robertson, but Scott Gorham kicked major ass and the guy from The Almighty did a pretty decent job on vocals. I caught a bit of the Sodom set, but it started to rain, so I slunk back into the backstage area for a jet-lag induced nap. About an hour and a half later Leon and Tony from 1349 (who I knew from our tour with Zyklon way back when) woke me up, I grabbed a snack and resumed drinking. We hit the artist bar for a bit, then went out to the show. I was curious to catch the Scorpions, since I love the early stuff, but they were playing “Winds of Change” as I was walking by, a song I cannot stand, so I kept going to the Rock Hard Tent to catch Bolt Thrower. Long story short, they were amazing. Their set list was a nice mix of old and new stuff, with the “World Eater / Cenotaph” medley getting Leon and I to headbang like high school kids. Then it was back to the bar. We hung out with the Hail of Bullets guys for a while, then they split, then we partied with Tony and some other Norwegians for a while. Dave Witte stopped by for a second which is always a pleasure, then the Norwegians split and we went down and drunkenly harassed the Bolt Thrower crew for a while like the fanboys we are. Then they left, and finally we were asked to leave the Artist Bar as they were closing. None too pleased, we made our way to the dressing room only to find that there was no booze left there either. Someone (Wes, I think) kicked the table over by accident, and we just started demolishing it for some reason. Then we knocked over some other stuff, tore some posters down off the wall and looked for our van in the dark. Of course, drunk, stupid and spent, we passed out immediately at the hotel, only to wake up early the next morning to head to the land of chocolates, waffles, and Trappist Ales, Belgium.

Amazingly, none of us were particularly hung over the next day, despite a pretty epic bout of alcohol abuse in France. That would change however... We had the next day (Monday) off, so the club, a killer rock/metal bar / venue / record store / hostel (yeah I know, pretty much heaven, right?!?) called De Rots in Antwerp offered to let us all stay upstairs an extra day, which was a big help. We piled in the gear and hung out for a few hours until Serial Butcher got started. They were a pretty killer Death Metal band in the Cannibal / Severe Torture vein and really nice guys. The show was small, but the vibe was really great. Everyone there was awesome and into it. We hung out with the bar staff and a guy from the great Last Days of Humanity and his girlfriend until about 5am, and kept partying until about 9:30 AM (!). Wes got up just as we headed to breakfast before crashing and burning. I got up at about 6:00pm the following day to help load our equipment out, since we were having too good of a time partying to actually load out after the show, realized that I was brutally hung over and went back to sleep until about 9 that night, when I finally woke up and grabbed a much needed shower. Leon, Mike and I left Wes at the bar with some beer money and headed out to get some dinner. We ended up at a really delicious South American steak house and enjoyed a very meaty meal. I wasn't intending to party too much, but we got back to the bar around 11 or so, and started drinking again. We closed the bar at about 3AM or so, and headed upstairs to the hostel area, where Wes and I polished off a bottle of Jameson's. Belgium nearly killed us...

We had two shows with The Black Dahlia Murder and Atheist on Wednesday and Thursday in Switzerland and Germany, before finishing up the week at Death Feast Open Air on Friday. The Black Dahlia guys were all cool dudes, and it was great to hang out with our buddies in Atheist again. To be honest, I was really burnt from Monday and Tuesday in Belgium, and was a bit useless both nights, but I did manage to get some laundry done in Germany and enjoy a couple of killer shows. It was a bit rough as they were just three band bills, so we played first every night, but the shows went pretty well and by Friday, I was feeling pretty much human again and ready to party at Death Feast. I wish I could have had more hijinks to describe during those two days, but after three days of ridiculous-level partying in a row, I laid pretty low offstage and slept and read a lot.

I was psyched for Friday because Ross Sewage, who of course did bass and vocals and co-wrote the lyrics for “Gore Metal” , was going to come onstage and sing “Casketkrusher” with us at Death Feast, as we were playing directly after Impaled. It was good to see those guys again and hang out for a bit. Apparently the dry, self-deprecating, cynical thing is a Bay Area trait, so it was nice to hang out with folks with a similar sense of humor. Death Feast was much more akin to the type of festival we're accustomed to: one backstage tent with beer and catering, porto-potties, one simple stage and about 2,500 Death Metal maniacs. We did a brief meet-and-greet for the Rock Hard Magazine guys and had a few beers there before getting ready for the show. We were a bit late arriving to the festival so we didn't get to set up our merch until way late in the day or see too many of the bands, but Impaled sounded groovy and killer from behind the stage. We got up and powered through the set pretty much on auto-pilot (in a good way) after the past week of playing and raging. It was a great ending to the trip. Ross came out and nailed the song, sounding really killer and making me wish he was singing all the old stuff with us, and the vibe was killer. We proceeded to get wasted and accidentally miss Malevolent Creation's set but emerged in time watch Dismember from the side of the stage and once again headbang like it was 1991 all over again. Good times.

All in all, it was a good trip, with Mike really stepping up to the plate and powering the machine forward. No lost or broken luggage, just Wes' pedal board was loaded incorrectly at Death Feast, but was eventually found and shipped back to the good ol' US and A. Aside from the braincells we wantonly destroyed, we headed back home relatively intact to start rehearsing for the US tour with Macabre, Cephalic Carnage, and Withered. But that, as they say, is a blog for another day.

Stay tuned for more exciting adventures featuring the usual gang of idiots.

- Harvey

Okay, well, this is as rapid-fire as I get apparently. Anyway, where were we?!? Oh yeah, just getting home from Mexico City. It's always nice to come home, especially after a grueling weekend like the one I had in Mexico City. At any rate, we were home for a few days in between Mexico City and Maryland Death Fest. Ultimately, we were viewing MDF as probably the most important show we had lined up in the first half of the year, as everyone would be there – the kids, old friends who'd seen us at our best and our worst, press, label, agent, ex-band members, etc. We felt that if we had a good show and pulled it off at MDF, we would be legitimizing all the other shows and really letting the folks know that we were back and could still deliver the goods. Especially with the amount of studio trickery available these days, almost anyone can make a heavy sounding album, but to be able to really kick ass live when it counts, that's what separates the men from the boys. At home I was still shitting green water but otherwise feeling pretty good. We tried to put a rehearsal together for Wednesday night, but it was a bit of a logistical nightmare between me and Wes getting to LA, Danny's Intronaut rehearsals, my Gravehill rehearsal, and Leon's job so we finally capitulated around 11:45 pm and headed to Long Beach to catch a few Z's before our flight the next day.

Undaunted, we readied ourselves for the flight to Baltimore, Maryland – excuse me, I meant Bodymore Murderland. We boarded the plane with a minimum of hassle, aside from getting an additional oversized baggage charge for Leon's bass which was total bullshit – had never been charged extra for it before and haven't since. Air Tran are just dicks.

At any rate, after some last minute detail-sorting out by yours truly we had our shuttle from the airport and our hotel situation mostly sorted out. While waiting for our shuttle, the lady at the counter was cracking us up. She was an overweight black woman talking on the business line for t

he shuttle to her girlfriend, gossiping very loudly while sucking on the remains of a chicken wing. She would change her tone of voice periodically and say things like “Good afternoon, sir, I'll be with you in just a moment”, then turn around and return to her conversation. I was trying incredibly hard not to laugh. Leon just turned to me with a completely straight face and said in a very quiet, serious voice: “Stereotypes.” I had to walk off for a minute and laugh into my hands. In no time, we were on our way to the very nice Tremont hotel in downtown Baltimore.

We had two suites for the first night, then one suite for the entire weekend, since Danny was leaving Saturday morning for the Intronaut European tour. Leon and I sacked into our suite, showered up and then headed down the street to the venue to catch Tragedy and Cathedral, who were both awesome. I saw a ton of old friends on the way in, and ended up hanging out with the Cathedral folks courtesy of Scott Carlson for most of the night. I'm sure Lee Dorrian later berated Scott for allowing me in their company because of all the irritating Napalm Death questions I asked him. I can be such an annoying nerd when it comes to my favorite bands.

Friday was our day to play, so the challenge really was just staying sober long enough to pull off a good show. We went out to lunch to a nearby Irish pub, and then back to the hotel with ample time for me to hit the gym and change and relax before the show. Anyone who was at this festival will be able to attest to the fact that it was ridiculously, swelteringly hot and very, very humid, especially for a native Californian with a stomach infection like your humble narrator. I was incredibly dehydrated the whole weekend, which made it difficult to drink as much as I would've liked to, but regardless, we were feeling pretty good about things as we got ready to go on. We were literally surrounded by old friends, Col (Jones, our original drummer), Matt and Marissa from Cretin, the Gravehill guys, the Relapse crew, Albert and KSP from Decibel, Joe from Skarp, my sister of metal Lili, Tom Hailey, our intrepid agent Dan Rozenblum, and many other familiar faces were at both sides of the stage. The room filled up really nicely as well, so things were looking good.

The sound onstage was not so great, but apparently it sounded good in the audience. We started blasting through our set, not realizing that due to some rain outside and the subsequent set-shuffling it had caused that we were going to have to cut things a bit shorter than we'd planned. The fact that Kylesa, who played right before us (how they got stuck playing at the exact same time as Neurosis is beyond me, considering that they're probably pulling from the exact same crowd) used all their own gear instead of the festival backline like every other band did (including us) and had to do a complete tear-down after their admittedly killer sounding set didn't help matters any. By the time we got through “Forged In Fire” (not an Anvil cover, haha!) we were unceremoniously informed that the next song would be our last. We ended up cutting “So Let It Be Rotten, So Let It Be Done” from the new record, as well as “Torso” and “Vacant Grave”. Oh well, there's always next year. We managed to cram “The Matter Of Splatter” and “Open The Abscess” into the “last song” and left the stage sweaty and stoked. Col liked it, so I figured it must have been pretty good, as he's always been the first person to tell me when anything sucks.

The rest of the weekend was a bit of a blur, between the Cretin set I played on Saturday, Cianide ruling the universe, and a pretty intense night of partying, and the Gravehill set I played on Sunday. The heat was insane on the outside stage, and between the beers and stomach infection and a week of dehydration, I was pretty much spent. I stuck around and caught some of the Nokturnel set and then went back to the hotel and just laid in the air conditioning for a couple of hours dozing off here and there. I swear, I have the worst timing ever. Of all the weekends to not be 100% for partying, the weekend of MDF is NOT the one. Alas and alack, it was still a great weekend and thanks to all the friends and folks we partied with over the course of those four days. They are far too numerous to name individually here or probably even accurately remember. Wes and Leon headed home on Monday, and I hitched a ride with my old friend Tom Hailey, who was one of the main people responsible for us getting signed to Relapse back in 1997, to his home in Raleigh North Carolina where I spent a very nice night with he and his lovely wife Cathy eating really good vegetarian pizza and sharing music, beers, and laughs. The following day I headed to South Carolina to spend a week more or less relaxing with my mom, stepdad and grandmother. Good times. But back to matters at hand, the next episode here will feature our exciting return to the old world, and because it's Exhumed, another live line-up change. Ah, some things never change. Or always change. Whatever, you know what the fuck I mean!

Over and out true believers! Stay tuned for another book-length thriller from the usual gang of idiots!

- Harvey

Mexico City

Wow, looking at this blog, it's a little frightening how behind the times it is. It's still talking about shit that happened in April... So in an effort to get things closer to present time, I'm going to do some rapid-fire updates...

Tonight's episode:

Mexico City – Fiesta of filth

– or -

Viva la vomit!

After returning from the Atheist / Inferno fest / Neurotic Death Fest Europe trip, I was quite excited to give my two week notice at my (very crappy) job. Our schedule this year is way too busy to hold down any kind of regular work. I was kept busy finishing out my last couple of weeks at work and getting everything sorted for the trip, so we only had time for one rehearsal. We were still feeling pretty good after Europe, though, so it wasn't the biggest deal.

May 19^th, the night before we left for Mexico, I played with Gravehill opening for Destruction in Santa Ana. I grabbed our humble axe-slinger Wes Caley from his home in Oxnard on the way south for the show. The night was a blast, and I ended up getting really, really hammered. I try to hold myself to a zero tolerance policy with Jagermeister, but after drinking a six pack during the performance (which went down awesome and the kids were great, by the way!) and then meeting very cool dude Matt from Dark Descent Records (who put out the new Gravehill record, which came out pretty killer in my humble opinion) and coercing him to buy me a few more beers (the perks of being a “recording artist”, haha!) I was left vulnerable to wiles of that licorice-flavored Teutonic libation we all know and love/hate. The night got kind of weird from there, but overall a good time was had by all. Wes and I stopped off for some much needed Carl's Jr. to soak up the madness on the way to Long Beach where we were hosted by the lovely and kind Katrina Woehlcke (who also let me park in front of her house for the weekend, thanks again!). Needless to say, the next morning when we got up at 7am to head to LAX, I was not a happy camper. Regardless, we boarded the flight with a minimum of confusion and consternation, especially compared to our last trip. This wouldn't last too long though.

Being in a band like Exhumed is weird sometimes. We're far from rock stars (as our meager bank accounts will clearly attest) but when you go to someplace like Mexico City, you kind of forget that for a day or two. As soon as we got off the plane and into the gangway into the terminal, a baggage handler spotted Leon, and welcomed the band to Mexico. Not even in the airport yet, and we were already rockognized. Odd... Then as we were going through customs, one of the guys there asked us what band we were in, and when we told him, he waved all our bags through the x-ray machine and then played us something from “Anatomy is Destiny” on his phone. Odder... We met up with the very cool guys in Pathology, who would be in the same van and hotel as us, and also had the same flight back to LA. Somewhere between customs and the van, Danny's cymbals were lost, which we realized when we got to the hotel. We were able to figure out in our broken Spanish how to tell the guys from the festival, and they called the airline and figured out where they were. Unfortunately security would have to hold them until Monday morning when we departed back for California, but the festival also had cymbals on hand already, so that was a bullet effectively dodged.

We met a few kids outside the hotel, signed some shit for them, and got settled in before heading out for some food. There was a huge buffet nearby that we decided to check out. Anyone that knows any of us even slightly knows that Exhumed pretty much runs on Mexican food 99% of the time. Everything was delicious, so I ate a bit of everything there – meat, rice, all kinds of seafood, flan, I didn't discriminate. I had three plates of food, it was that good. Wes declared it to be the best meal he had ever eaten. If you're wondering why I'm spending so much time talking about the food we ate, keep reading. It will all become clear.

After that we had a few beers (surprise!) and proceeded to get really bored. We ended up hijacking the dudes in Hirax and hopped in their van to get to the fest, as hanging out at the hotel was getting pretty tedious. We all piled in the back with the gear and anywhere there was room and headed to the “Metal in the Forest” festival. We were all wondering about this fest – mostly we were wondering where the fuck the “forest” was in Mexico City. Well, a one-hour van ride later, we had our answer. It was pretty far outside Mexico City, and in the dark, it seemed very remote. We got there as Watain was playing and headed into the madness. If we thought the response in the airport was weird, being at the fest was ten times crazier. Our journey from the gate to the bar (maybe 60 feet away) was a 30 minute odyssey of autograph signings, pictures with the kids, hugs and handshakes. At one point we were standing at the merch booth with about 20 kids taking pictures and shit and chanting “Exhumed! Exhumed!” Totally surreal. At any rate, before too long we were in the backstage tent (yes, the backstage was in a tent) looking for beer when one of the Watain crew guys (I could tell by his cute little matching vest thing) came up to us and politely asked if were playing next. When we told him that we were playing tomorrow, he informed us that we would have to get out of the tent because Watain would be coming offstage. What an asshole. We were literally discussing the fact that we should go to the bar immediately before he said that, so we took off and headed for less douche-y territory. From there we quickly ran into old friend Antimo from Disgorge (Mexico, obviously) and Profanator. It was great to see him again and he introduced us to Ruben, and our party team was formed! Hirax played and were awesome and then Rage was scheduled to go on, but after a 90 minute soundcheck, ended up not playing at all because of some sort of weird technical issue. That was all pretty humorous (as was the guitarist's mullet, perfectly preserved from the 80s) and we were fairly intoxicated by this time, but it was getting really late and pretty chilly. We realized that if we somehow missed the van back to the hotel, we would be literally stuck in a forest, with no tent, sleeping bag, jackets, etc. So we stuck close to Katon and co. and piled into the van for a hilarious ride back to the hotel.

The next day, we were the last band scheduled to play, so I was very surprised when I was awakened by a phone call at noon telling me the van was here to pick us up to head to the festival. Needless to say I asked the guy if we could catch the next van which he told me would be there in an hour and a half. Three and a half hours later, we were headed back to the venue after eating something very Denny's-esque at the hotel restaurant and a few beers. Since it was Sunday, the festival was scheduled to end at 8pm or so (unlike the previous night, which went on until 2am or thereabouts), and we were supposed to be onstage at 6:30. By 7:40 we were actually onstage, and it was just hitting dusk. The show went over really well, and the kids were awesome. Since the festival was outside in a kind of park / recreation area, the ground it was set up on wasn't particularly level and the front of the stage was sloping down towards the ground, which was a little dicey to navigate, but we grinded out the set undaunted.

Obviously things (logistically speaking) were winding down as we played, and dudes were taking down the lighting rig about mid-way through our set, which was weird. Thankfully the kids stuck it out with us and were awesome. By the time we finished playing, the lighting rig was halfway dis-assembled, and the backstage tent was completely devoid of lighting, so we struggled to find our bags in the dark and amazingly didn't forget anything – except our banner. We were so rushed leaving and there was so much activity with the people taking down the stage that no one grabbed it. We headed back to the hotel to shower, and then decided to hit a taco place on the corner.

We ended up drinking and eating with the guys in Violator and Gama Bomb, a couple of excellent Thrash bands that had played that day. I was wishing Dekapitator was in the line-up as it would have been a perfect fit! A couple of the Pathology dudes cruised over for beers as well, as well a guy from Anarchus who literally just happened to be in the neighborhood. Crazy! Anyway, because we need to get paid in US Dollars, we were waiting to get paid for a few hours after the show, so beers and al pastor tacos kept coming and going, and by the time I finally got all the business settled, my stomach was a bit iffy. I laid down to try to grab four hours of sleep before catching yet another excruciatingly early flight. As I lay there, I could feel my guts a'rumbling. I thought “just sleep a bit and this will pass”. I took some stomach medicine and tried to get some rest. It was not to be. I headed to the bathroom and vomited intensely three times in rapid succession. Now, keep in mind, I had been eating really spicy food all day, and everything came up. Literally. So I had an entire day's worth of spicy food pouring out of my face in three massive inverse-gulps. Tears were flowing, vomit was pouring out of my nose, which was also running, and to top it off, I had extremely bad diarrhea. After that expulsion, I hoped that I had literally gotten it all out of my system, and laid back down. Wes got back to the room and passed out as I lay there tossing and turning. It was gonna be a looooong day.

At 6am or so, after throwing up a couple more times, we woke up. I told the guys I was feeling ill, gave Leon all our money and told him he was in charge. We piled into the van with the Pathology guys and headed to the airport. I rode shotgun with the window open and a bag in my hand (that I thankfully didn't end up needing on the drive), ready for the worst. When we got the airport, the line was huge, so I posted up near the bathroom, and left the guys to their own devices. After about an hour or more, and several agonizing trips to the bathroom for me, someone from Pathology had the wherewithal to discover that we were in the completely wrong terminal of a huge airport. Bad news. We headed to the correct terminal, all of our crap in tow, with me bringing up the rear. As sick as I was, I had to stop every 50 feet or so and rest, and I was sweating profusely. Also, I had to go the bathroom at least every 15 minutes. It quickly became clear after a 10 minute tram ride to the other terminal and yet another bathroom break for yours truly that our chances of making the flight were getting very, very slim. The Pathology guys, unencumbered by a shambling, vomiting albatross of a band member such as I had become, sprinted on to the finish line and boarded the scheduled flight. We however, didn't even reach the gate until the flight had been closed for 20 minutes.

Our options were to wait until tomorrow and catch the same flight, which would have cost us $400, but allowed us to get a hotel (which of course would have cost even more money) and some rest and try again the following day, or to wait in the airport for 7 hours and try to get on stand-by for the full flight that afternoon. Being in state that was at best incredibly tired and frustrated (everyone else) or vomiting and shitting profusely and practically non-stop (me) we headed downstairs and found some benches (which were thankfully located very close to the bathrooms) and crashed out for a few hours. Somewhere around 1pm or so, I finally hadn't thrown up for about 45 minutes. It was time to try to keep some water down. I don't think I've ever enjoyed a bottle of water that much in my life, even though I could only handle small sips at a time. By this time I could at least talk a little bit to the other guys and find out what was going on. Up to that point, I had been pretty much oblivious. We planned to head back to the counter at 3:30 to see about the standby flight. I finally got some solid sleep until Wes woke me up so I could see a guy holding a “Ted Bathing” sign in the airport that got a few laughs. I looked at my phone and it read 3:35 – which I found a bit distressing as Leon and Danny were nowhere to be found. I swear, I get sick for one day, and all hell breaks loose! Anyway, I texted Leon, who was of course a) with Danny, and b) at the bar. They hurried back and we were at the ticket counter by four. Thankfully there were four seats in the exit row (score! Extra leg room!) available and it would only cost us $25 each to change our flights, since it was the same day. Frowns were turned upside down and I even ate a little on the plane ride home. So, as the bard once sagely intoned, all's well that ends well. We headed home happy and relieved. However, my stomach was still bothering me even a week later at MDF... but that's the next exciting episode in the never-ending fight for truth, justice and the Armenian Way– or whatever the fuck it is that we're doing with ourselves on these ridiculous adventures.

MDF recap coming soon!