Hellfest and Metaltown (updated with video link)

Although we had our first taste of the European festival season at the end of the US trip with the quick stop at FortaRock in Holland, it felt like we got into it for real during last weekend's visits to Hellfest and Metalfest.

The negative thing about Hellfest is that it's a fucking drag to get there! We took insanely early flights from Stockholm and Helsinki and landed in Paris, which is something like six hours away from Clisson. One quite uncomfortable van ride later and we arrived pretty much in time to our "riser access", which is a couple of hours before the show when we can set up the drums and amps and stuff behind the stage. Compared to a fifteen minute change over, this is luxury!

After the Mr and Mrs Gasmask stunt at the Örebro show our booking agent got flooded with requests from different promoters urging us to repeat it at their festivals. Hellfest was one of those, so we dressed up our tour manager in the male gear and had a French - I guess - girl, whose name I didn't catch, stand in as the bride. So they did their little play and then we went up on stage and did the biggest Nasum show ever (so far). We estimate that 10,000 people saw us (which is about 100 times the amount of people who saw us at Billy O's in Ventura). Amazing!



We were a little bit rusty due to the two week break, but we had lots of fun. Apparently Terrorizer Magazine liked what they saw as Lee MacBride wrote in their blog: "While Taake set the bar for the day's performance, Nasum followed it up with what could well be one of the best performances of the weekend. It was a full blown aural assault that left us physically shaken. We're still recovering!"

And then Olivier "Zoltar" Badin said some nice stuff about us in his "Video Croissant":

[...video not available anymore...]

After chilling out for an hour and a half we got into the van again and repeated the six hour drive and ended up at an airport hotel at 03.30 or something, with an early lobby call next morning... Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll? No: van, grind and van again...

Update: Here's the ENTIRE show at Hellfest pro-shot with multiple cameras... Enjoy! [...video not available anymore...]

The following day we shared "gates" at the Paris airport with both Integrity and Turbonegro, but that was quickly shadowed by sharing the flight from Copenhagen (where we had a lay over) to Gothenburg with Slayer! Totally absurd! Anyway, Metaltown is thankfully actually in Gothenburg so the van ride was considerably shorter and we even had some time at the festival before the riser access. Yet again we did the Mr and Mrs Gasmask thing with the original couple, but it almost didn't happen. Virtually two minutes before the intro started we realized that one of the gasmasks were missing, but Janne did an Usain Bolt impression and quickly ran back and forth to the backstage tent where the missing gasmask was located!

The beginning of the show got struck by some technical difficulties as Jesper's bass suddenly was out of order, despite working perfectly at the line check just ten minutes earlier. So we had an unfortunate break just after the first song, and when we got cracking again Urban broke a string... Shit happens, but then we rapidly got back into the grind groove again.

From a personal point of view I had a tough time during the first half of the set. My left arm was very tired from the night before (again - that two week break is to blame) and I had aching calf muscles, which I never get from drumming. In hindsight I blame the 12 hours in the van where I had to sit in a very strange position due to some weird table riser in the van floor...

Anyway, yet again it was a fun show in a packed tent. We met a lot of friends and other bands. For instance, we exchanged some words with Bill and Brann from Mastodon, who both were present - as Today Is The Day members - during the first Nasum tour in 1999. The press were also present and Sweden's biggest newpaper Aftonbladet gave the show four out of five. Not bad!

Although the big festivals have their charm, we all feel quite good about doing three club shows in Italy next along with a stop at Graspop in Belgium. But that's to be expanded on another time.