Unearthed footage: Nasum vs New Zealand

I recently got a YouTube link sent to me with ten minutes from the Nasum show in New Zealand. The footage was discovered on an old external hard-drive and then edited and uploaded to YouTube. It’s not the greatest footage but it’s a fun reminder of the 2012 farewell tour.

When I think of it, it’s amazing that playing grindcore has taken me and my friends all around the world. Who would have thought back in 1992 when Rickard and I started Nasum out of boredom that 30 years later I would spend less than 24 hours in a country literarily on the other side of the world?

Going to New Zealand isn’t the easiest thing in the world. It isn’t next door to anything, not even Australia which mapwise seems close. In reality it’s quite a flight even from Australia but we figured that it was doable on the very weird part of the farewell tour that took us to four continents in two weeks. We had about a week in Australia doing five shows and then a quick stop in Auckland, New Zealand before doing a few days in Japan. That said, we didn’t bother to apply for any work visas for New Zealand in advance and we figured that we would just smoothly enter the country just like that.

Little did we know that airport/customs guys would object. If memory serves me right, some of us just went through the customs without any problem but then someone got questioned and all of us were called back. We quickly came up with a white lie that we had a layover on our way from Australia to Japan. When they asked what our band was called, we couldn’t really say the truth because it would be very easy to find out that Nasum would play in New Zealand the same day with just a simple web search. Jon came up with the solution and said that we were called Acursed, which is/was one of his older bands who are basically invisible on the Internet.

It all worked fine in the end and we entered New Zealand to “not” play grindcore… I also remember another detail from the customs and that was that Jesper was forced to throw away some Kangaroo jerky he had bought as a gift for his father. You can’t bring food to New Zealand!

Being a film buff, New Zealand has been on my radar since I saw a copy of a copy of a copy of “Bad Taste” on VHS back in the early 90’s I guess and later on refined in the many hours of extra material on the “Lord of the Rings” movies. It is for sure a place I would like to spend more time in than less than 24 hours where most of the time was spent in a venue that frankly looked like any other venue in the world. However, I truly enjoyed the van rides from the airport and into Auckland. It was really nice scenery even though it wasn’t any of the epic and interesting landscapes that the country has to offer.

I remember that we were really well treated at the venue. There was a band hostess that had made some tasty cupcakes for the backstage room. That has never happened before or after, I can say for sure. I don’t remember much of the show but my old notes indicates that it was a good one. In the footage I can tell that Jon wasn’t his usual self this night. During or just after the soundcheck he got a cold and was mostly spending time curled up in a fetal position on the floor of the backstage area saying stuff like “Anders – I have AIDS!” to exaggerate his man-cold. So he’s a little bit reserved on stage.

The songs in the clip are: ”Scoop”, “Bullshit”, “Relics”, “Shadows”, “Corrosion” and the intro of “Multinational Murderers Network”. Thanks to Andy Young who uploaded his friends footage to YouTube.