First entry: Day 0 to 4 (updated with photos)

European tour 2007

Day 0 - travelling

Travelling is often seen as a pretty easy task, but usually it always turns out to be much more demanding than you would believe. It's a relative thing, of course, but anyway...

We left Örebro at 15.00 to go to the Skavsta airport just outside Nyköping. A quite short ride but it takes it's time due to the small roads that slows down the driving speed. Our friend Ante (Dead Reprise drummer, sometimes merch man) was supposed to drive us but he had his own tour (as merch man for Sworn Enemy) lined up, so he actually went with us and Logan (Path of no Return drummer) drove instead.

Surprisingly the drive to less time than usually, so we had quite a lot of time to spend on the airport, checking in and relaxing. There was a call for "mr and mrs Bear", which led to some funny associations.

We boarded right before 19.00 when the plane was supposed to take off, but the captain announced that we had no airspace and had to wait for as much as one hour before we could get in the air. In the end we waited just 30 minutes and then took off. The flight was fairly easy going with some major turbulence once we reached 35 000 feet.

When we landed at Frankfurt/Hahn we knew we had to take a shuttle to get to the hotel in Neu-Isenburg, but the information desk told us it was a little bit more complicated than that. We ended up taking a cab for over an hour to get to the hotel, spending 190 Euros. Expensive, but faster and easier than the other option we had.

So just before midnight our travelling for this day was over and we could check in and catch a few minutes of the naked word game on German TV in our rooms at the 14th floor, before calling it a day. We never saw Misery Index who stayed at the same hotel.

Day 1 - Marburg, Germany

We checked out at noon and eventually the Misery Index guys showed up and around 13.00 the two vans with Dew-Scented and the backline came to the hotel. We packed everything in and drove for about an hour until we got to KFZ in Marburg - the first venue of the tour. Unloading and loading (of food) went on for while followed by soundchecks, setting up the merch and all that usual tour related stuff.

At 19.00 we went on stage and did the first show of the tour. It went surprisingly good for a first show. Often you feel a little bit rusty on the first show since it usually is a while between the last rehearsal and the first show (in our case we rehearsed on Monday and this was a Friday).

Dew-Scented and Misery Index also performed well although Misery Index had some trouble with one of the guitars. At loading time there were some slight problems as we had to fit our instruments and Misery Index and ours merchandise into the vans. Tetris galore, but it went well in the end. We headed to a cheap hotel/hostel just 10 minutes away and then went to sleep - we had to get up early the next day.

Day 2 - Trier, Germany

This day we went to Ex-Haus in Trier, a place I've been to before on the last Nasum tour. I remember that we had to drive a very long way from Vienna to get there and that Suffocation's crew thought we were working there and started carrying our backline to their nightliner...

Enough about the old days. It was the second day of the Summerblast festival and we actually opened up the festival this day. While we were getting ready to go on stage the room was quite empty but it actually filled up just in time for the first song. It was a good show and a really cool crowd. We played the same setlist as on the first day. We have prepared two different setlists just to keep things varied, but I think we will play this "Setlist B" quite often.

As we were finished 14:30 we had the whole festival off, which was a crazy feeling. We took turns sitting at the merch table until we packed it up at 21.00 or something. For me personally the evening ended with a long time dream show as Converge played last. I've enjoyed this band for many years but never been able to see them live, and of course it was great. In a few days our paths will cross again - already looking forward to that!

Day 3 - Wermelskirchen, Germany

Third show day on the tour and we went to a little gore grind town called Wermelskirchen, famous - at least in the Coldworker crew - for being the birth place of (in)famous German director Uwe Boll. While in the venue we noticed very early posters of our fellow Örebro colleagues Millencolin, Voice of a Generation and The Accidents, and someone said that even Genocide SuperStars played here once. Seems like a good place for Örebro bands then.

A couple of hours before the show Joel felt very ill and laid down for a while but come show time he did an awesome job performing like nothing happened. The spirit of Uwe Boll! The show was very cool although personally it was the worst one so far. We even played some encores, so that was really cool.

Day 4 - Hannover, Germany

The club in Hannover was really cool, although there were a lot of nasty stairs to carry the backline. There were a few really cool metal statues outside of the club, which were really impressive.

For a change it was a late show, although it was a Monday, but eventually the club got crowded with metal fans.

Tomorrow we have the first long drive on the tour although its quite short compaired to what's waiting... We are going to do two drives that are over the length of Sweden... Crazy!

Photos (click for larger versions with captions)