keskiviikko 16. helmikuuta 2011
14-Feb-2011: Rebuplik - Calgary, AL (CAN)
Our show started right after Barren Earth and we were noticing that people were still getting in when we started. But the place got pretty packed and we received very good feedback during and after the show from the crowd. Some people were still standing in the line around the time we finished, which was a huge bummer for us and them, but fortunately we're planning to come back after Cursed. My day continued with a well prepared interview with Jordan, the guitar player of Kataplexis. After the interview we were just killing time at the merch and the bar and at the end of the night we got an offer from Jordan and his girlfriend (whose name I can not unfortunately remember anymore) to join them in a small after party.
We loaded-out, got some pizzas and got a ride to Jordan's place for me, Mika, Finntroll's bass-Sami aka Tundra and Matias. We were having really good times sitting and chatting with Jordan and his two friends at his place until we left back to the bus in a huge hurry, because our bus call was at 6am. We got in there at 5:56 and I decided to jump on the Finntroll's bus to have one more glass of wine with Marko, Mikko, Matias and Tundra. I had to stay in there until we had our 1st truck stop where I could switch back to our bus. I was asleep around 8:30am, which was a bit late (or should I say early), but still worth doing because we managed to take some cool hat-photos during the last hours. Fintroll and Barren Earth have started to collect an impressive collection of party-head-wear and Rotten Sound will do everything in our power to join that group of people with the hats. I have a strong feeling, that some of the head-wear will appear on stage before the end of the tour.
13-Feb-2011: Day-off in the middle of absolutely no-freaking-where
Everyone was using their laptops for some time until there was a big demand from the shaman of the tour (Mikko Kotamäki of Barren Earth) to stop fiddling with the computers and to start a day-off party to kill some time. Everyone got pretty cheerful and we listened to lots of music including the upcoming albums from Moonsorrow and Rotten Sound. At some point our driver told us that we need to wait some more time because there was some mis-information about the schedule, but around 10pm we were finally moving towards Calgary. It was a battle against time because the ride was really long and our new driver needed to take some sleep too on the way.
Our party started to slow-down gradually and everyone except our spiritual leader was asleep some time after midnight.
12-Feb-2011: El Corazon - Seattle, WA
El Corazon - Seattle |
After the interview we got a very pleasant visit by Ryan of Trap Them: he brought us FOOD, delicious vegan burritos and nachos. It's amazing how much we end up starving during the days just because we either do not have anything to eat or we are just too lazy to do anything to the state of our stomachs. This dinner really made our day and it was also very nice to have a long chat with Ryan and his wife, who also came to meet us. Our evening continued at the merch in a venue, where we could not bring any beers or wine to drink. It meant, that I was having a day-off from drinking for a change. I also decided to skip shower again, because we are supposed to have a day-room tomorrow's day-off.
lauantai 12. helmikuuta 2011
11-Feb-2011: Hawthorne Theatre - Portland, OR
Portland |
Our set was again a good one although we felt that we were a bit spoiled from San Francisco because Portland's constant pit and stage diving wasn't getting us into the same level of euphoria as yesterday. As said, we were just spoiled, the show and crowd was great. We also got to meet Orion (finally) and Matt Jacobson from Relapse, who are at the Portland office. Matt brought us some pizza from his new venture, Sizzle Pie, which has named their pizzas according to the important stuff. Cheese-pizza is (obviously) D-Beat and Pig Destroyer has Pepperoni, Metaballs and Bacon in it. Very cool idea and tasty pizzas too.
Our night continued at the bar attached to the venue and we were having the pleasure to sing some karaoke in front of the tourage and some other people. I did a comic-version of Wind of Change with Matias, where he was dubbing my goth-rock-lows with black-metal vocals. Pete from Ensiferum sung some Tom Jones and I went for Imagine before we had to start driving towards Flying J on our way to Seattle, where we could take a shower for 9 bucks. I didn't because there's going to be one tomorrow and day after tomorrow. Finntroll's bus did not have any electricity, which brought couple of guys from there to our mobile party-space and that kept us going until pretty early. Good times again!
10-Feb-2011: DNA Lounge - San Francisco, CA
San Francisco |
Krisse the street King |
Our rest of the night was pretty simple waiting of getting back on the road to start sleeping. I'm starting to be in a mode where it's harder to fall asleep if my bed (aka coffin aka sarcofago) isn't moving a little bit. Some drinks have also helped sometimes, but now I was having a day-off from drinking after the madness in LA and Santa Ana and that seemed to be the case with most of the people in our home on wheels.
9-Feb-2011: Galaxy Theatre - Santa Ana, CA
Huntington beach |
Sunset at Huntington beach |
There was two locals today and Christina was helping again at the merch table, which gave us a lot of time to get well for the show. We also got some friends in the backstage with loads of beer-drinking-experience and that probably made us drink pretty heavily again. Our day ended outside the nightliners with some fans and friends and when we started to drive, our two mobile bars were full of people.
Our guys just went so sleep so early, that I decided to continue the party at the party-bus with Finntroll and Barren Earth guys. Only problem was that there wasn't any truck stops in a few hours and I ended-up getting stuck into their sofa, being really afraid to fall asleep because when one dozes on sofa, they will usually wake-up with some marker on their face. So, my night continued until 8am, when everyone else went to sleep from the party and at that point I was able to take a short nap until 10am truck-stop, where I could go into my coffin for the rest of the day.
8-Feb-2011: Key Club - West Hollywood, CA
Key Club, Hollywood |
We headed back to be at the venue on dinner-time and started to wait for the evening to begin. Our dressing room was a huge turn-on for us: a rotten bus outside of the venue and we even tried to take some promo photos in it with not that much of luck.
Cool backstage at Key club |
The evening begun with local Voices of Ruin and Barren Earth. Key Club isn't the biggest venue on the tour, but it was still awesome to have a sold-out show tonight with other metal shows in the city. Apparently Cradle of FIlth, Nacthmystium, Turisas and Daniel Lioneye were playing in Nokia Theatre and there was also some other shows elsewhere. Our show started with a moshpit and that pit didn't stop before we stopped.
Our night continued at the merch table with Christina, in our nightliner, at the Rainbow club and finally at the party-bus of Finntroll and Barren Earth.
Everyone stayed up until pretty early with some local friends who came over. It must have been the heaviest party on this tour, which may cause us to have a bit more rough day on 10th, but it's some kind of rule of touring to party in LA.
tiistai 8. helmikuuta 2011
7-Feb-2011: Clubhouse - Tulsa, AZ
Arizona & some cactus |
Scuba came to see us tonight and we ended-up listening to the upcoming Trap Them album in our bus before the doors. Sounded pretty amazing, but not nearly as amazing as some potential touring plans with (trap) them. Hopefully they will come together to continue our shared tours after the upcoming April-tour. The night started with two locals and we ended-up having one of the best responses on this tour. Active moshpit, headbanging and screams. Our merch was the place to be in until load-out and I guess that everyone were pretty beat because none of us stayed up for a party after the night at the club was over. Probably we were charging our batteries to have a proper party in LA, like everyone should.
6-Feb-2011: Day-off in front of Walmart - El Paso, TX
sunnuntai 6. helmikuuta 2011
5-Feb-2011: Tomcats - Fort Worth, TX
We started driving pretty early to be on time at the venue in Fort Worth. First 30 miles took something like three hours because of the icy roads, but the ice started to melt aroun 11am and we arrived to the venue after 1pm. It was really cool to load-in and set-up the merch table for a change. We are currently handling also the merch for Barren Earth because we could not take anyone on board to sell the merch for us and we offered them our services. This has never been a problem to RS and we usually end-up having a good time when we hang-out at the merchandise table. Some of you may remember the pictures from Atlanta...
After the set-up we started to look for a place to eat in. We saw a cool-looking Mexican restaurant after a while, but it was on the another side of a 4-lane road with loads of traffic. Stupid Finnish people decided to run for it and fortunately everyone managed to survive from the Frogger-game. Unfortunately the restaurant was closed due to frozen water pipes and we had to cross the road again to head back into an American buffet-restaurant, which ended-up being a god choise in the end. Four stuffed Finns headed back to the venue to start the night. There was two local bands playing tonight, which is always a good thing to get the audience properly warmed-up before the tour begins. Barren Earth had an awesome set and they also had really good sounds on this show. Our show was also a good one and it felt absolutely amazing to be on stage after two days of trying. We cheering and some mosh-pitting during our set before it was time to have a small party to celebrate Oppu's birthday.
Our final destination was our mobile home, which started driving towards El Paso to have a day-off in there before heading to Tempe, Arizona. This day-off felt a bit ridiculous after these two missed days, but there was nothing we could do about that anymore when it was obviously impossible to get us booked on our way to the next show. Original routing had Amarillo booked for this day, but that was canceled before the tour already. Driving conditions are again back to normal and the weather channel seems to think, that we won't see any snow before we're in Canada. Awesome!
perjantai 4. helmikuuta 2011
4-Feb-2011: Blizzard Day-off #2
I woke-up around 4am when the nightliner started to slide and hit the concrete barrier on the freeway. John (Andersson, merch for FT and E) had been sitting in front when it happened and he said that it was "scary as hell" to feel that the bus was not under control anymore. John also told me, that there was policemen blocking the way to the freeway and now, around 5am, we are parked on the yard of a gas station and are just waiting, how the weather develops and we also need to understand if we can drive in Texas at the moment. My hunch is saying, that we may need to cancel also the Austin show, which would suck big time. Time to get some more sleep and to wait for the final decision for today. The nature has really turned against us with the volcano on 2010 April tour and this strom of the century on this one. But safety comes first and I believe that taking this stop was the best possible decision for everyone on this tour.
11 AM
It seems, that we can't make it to Austin after all with this current weather. This tour is going to be renamed to "F**k the show"-tour unless we manage to pull off this gas station really soon... We're still in the same gas station as we were in six hours earlier and nobody knows, what's going to happen next. Skid (tour manager) just told us, that we have none more hours to drive, which probably means that we need to cancel Austin show. Time to continue reading books and waiting something good to happen to the tour for a change.
1 PM
Now it's official, we have no way to get on time (or at all) to Austin unless someone in the bus is inventing a teleport. Texas state roads were mostly closed in the morning and now it's too late to drive from Jackson, Mississippi to Austin. But we will do everything in our power to make it to Forth Worth already today/tonight. Fingers crossed!
REST OF THE DAY
Our day continued with deejaying, babbling and drinking some to pass the time. We were planning to drive almost to Forth Worth until the road conditions got worse again and the other bus was taking a short slide. We planned to do a short video diary for one Finnish site, but that didn't really work out as well as expected because nobody wasn't that motivated to do a video-diary, but we'll post something to here/YouTube from this day as soon as someone has time and energy to edit the video.
Our drivers informed us, that we have to stop for the night and we found some small bunch of gas stations, junk-food chains and hotels where we parked. Everyone started to look for two things: decent food and more booze. Well, there's a lot of counties in US, that do not sell any alcoholic beverages in any stores and we had landed in one of those. That was the 1st defeat, but not a major one because there wouldn't have been anything else besides our nightliners to party in. Only bar in the area had closed at 10pm - on a Friday night - and when we got that info, it was time to look for that decent food.
We seemed to have three options: vegetarian unfriendly McDonald's, Subways (which we had used earlier in the day) and another place called Dairy Palace. We chose the latter to realize, that it was probably even worse except for being less politically incorrect. Well, the food was pretty awful, super greasy and very bad texture. Everyone felt disgusted after the meal - just as junk food should make us feel.
3-Feb-2011: Blizzard Day-off #1 - Somewhere in Mississippi
Mika doing some shaving |
torstai 3. helmikuuta 2011
2-Feb-2011: Headliner's - Lousiville, KY
Beer: Helping Ugly People Have Sex |
Mika and Kristian extended their walk into some punk-rap-rock-pizza-place while Sami and Keijo went back to the venues to hear the ugly truth: Tulsa show is going to be cancelled. Additional day-offs are usually really boring and may cause severe injuries due to the fact, that people have nothing else to do besides drinking. Or that's at least how it has been before.
Merch guy- black metal-pose |
The night started-off with no local supports and Barren Earth played a good set in front of a half-full venue. Even more people came in before we started our short 30min set. Everyone had to play a bit shorter set today because of early and strict curfew. 30min didn't really bother us too much because we still got to play something like 16 songs, but some people thought that we should have played some more. Our stage sound was the best one on this tour and we really had a blast - literally.
Me, Mika and Kristian went to have pizza-slices at the rap-punk-pizza-place during Ensiferum's set and we enjoyed every bite while Sami was taking care of the merch-stand. The walk and pizzas made us pretty refreshed and ready to start a small party after the load-out.
keskiviikko 2. helmikuuta 2011
1-Feb-2011: The Masquerade - Atlanta, GA
The venue was familiar to us from the Carcass-tour, but we were playing today in the smaller room and NOFX was playing in the bigger room. Three of us didn't take a shower in Orland and that wasn't possible today and when we checked the tour info, we noticed that the 1st one will be in Austin in two days unless we're forced to cancel that date because of the blizzard, that's paralyzing multiple states of America. Let's hope that it doesn't get that bad, because it would really suck to cancel any dates.
There was no local support today I.e. we played as the 2nd band. There was a bunch of grind-freaks in the crowd, which welcomed us and Barren Earth with fairly nice cheers in between the songs. It also seemed, that most of the people were already in when we started, so this was another good night for Rotten Sound.
We ended-up hanging out at the merch for the rest of the night except for a short visit to the NOFX-show, which was really energetic and totally packed too. It's cool to see, that punk rock lives and breathes in US. Our merch-from-hell pictures of the days are featuring bunch of evil-eyes and unreal facial gestures. We have managed to demonstrate our intelligence and creativity in many ways over the years, but I believe that this is somewhere in the Top5 of all of them.
tiistai 1. helmikuuta 2011
31-Jan-2011: Club Firestone - Orlando, FL
Everything we ordered arrived on time, which was a huge miracle, and it took us a few hours to put everything together. Our shirt-banner also got some special guests from Barren Earth's merch because we offered our DIY-merch-services to them.
Barren Earth started their prog-rock-performance after one local band. The crowd welcomed them with cheers through their impressive set and after BE it was our time to hit the stage and give Florida their daily dose of grind'n'roll. We were amazed from the amount of people inside and the response was also beyond all expectations. Our dedicated audience even tried to start a moshpit during the The Effects, which opens our set on this tour, but unfortunately the security stopped the pit every time it got started. Apparently someone had lost his eye few weeks ago at the venue and that made them extra careful. But we saw some fists on the air, head-banging, loads of head nodding and loud screams from the crowd. Huge thanks again to everyone who watched us play.
We continued taking care of our and BE merch until the end of the show and our new friend Jeremy took us to 7-11 to buy some more beverages for the rest of the night. We ended-up being pretty hammered and everyone managed to stay up until 3-4 am, when the busses started to drive towards Atlanta.
Kristian and Jeremy need night-pizzas
Helsinki - Orlando
Probably the most expesive beers in the world...
Finnair wasn't serving more than a couple or free beers and wine around the dinner, but this time they continued serving gin&tonic until the end of the flight, when we had to pay for them. I guess we never were behaving that bad on former flights, it was just a matter of getting no revenue from free drinks we consumed on our way to US.
Our tables got filled pretty quickly...
Krisse's turn to get g&t's
Immigration and lay-over at JFK airport were much easier than everyone thought and both bands got into the country without any problems.
Kristian is scared of bass-theft at the JFK airport
We landed to Orlando on schedule and we got a nightliner-ride from the airport, which made our life much easier. Nobody felt that sleepy around 11pm (6am Finnish time) and we joined mr. Kotamäki, Tundra and Matias, who were sitting in a pub close-by. They were open until 2am and that was finally the time to pass-out into our bunks. Or we thought so until we found ourselves sitting in the Finntroll/Barren Earth nightliner. Our home was shared with Ensiferum, who were already asleep at that time.
Black-metal posing under the palm-trees
lauantai 29. tammikuuta 2011
Turku, Finland
Yep! Tomorrow we're heading to Helsinki-Vantaa airport and fly Helsinki=>NYC=>Orlando with Barren Earth guys and some people, who will hate all the noise we manage to generate together. Let's see, how many g&t's it takes for the airline staff to stop serving this bunch of grind/metal/proge-retards. Our plan is to land in NYC/JFK, go through immigration+customs and run to the flight to Orlando, where we're jumping on the nightliners.
It's amazing, what 10 months of break from touring is doing to me (and probably the rest of the band too). It's very hard to explain, but the touring dynamics has something so fascinating built in it, that we end-up waiting for it almost every time we hit the road. I guess it's that (mostly) relaxed feel and stopping all hurry-worries for a few weeks. It's also kind-of deceiving, because at least half of the stress I've had during the past 1-2 months has been attached to this tour to begin, but even that can not make me think differently about our new mobile home, that will be introduced to me in something like 30+ hours from this point.
Sorry, no pictures or vids today... Hopefully we're having a wild way to Orlando to show something else besides this rant of mine. Keep posted, there's going to be a lot to tell until I'm back in Turku.
Time to get a glass of Scotch to get some sleep tonite. 8 hours and 45 minutes to go until the bus to Helsinki-Vantaa leaves.
torstai 27. tammikuuta 2011
Finnish Metal Tour Part 2
As Finnish people, we are obviously very interested to know, which states we can drive shitfaced, because there's a few miles on the route and none of us can tour sober for five weeks. I've seen and heard about 0.8-limits here and there and also some states, where you can't drink at all behind the wheel. We also like to keep our open containers in the car just in case someone wants to recycle them. I hope that's not a problem for anyone...
Anyway, see all of you at the shows (which we'll post in here some day soon when we get the updated route) and stay on-line for a press-release about something very interesting and important before the tour. Could it be the 1st video or the official Rotten Sound underwear-fashion-update for the upcoming spring? Remember, yellow in the front and brown in the...
The Retarded Mongoloids
The Route
***The Finnish Metal Tour 2 w/ FINNTROLL, ENSIFERUM, BARREN EARTH***
Jan. 31 Orlando, FL The Club @ Firestone
Feb. 1 Atlanta, GA The Masquerade
Feb. 2 Louisville, KY Headliner’s Music Hall
Feb. 3 Tulsa, OK Marquee
Feb. 4 Austin, TX Emo’s
Feb. 5 Ft. Worth, TX Tomcats
Feb. 7 Tempe, AZ Clubhouse
Feb. 8 Los Angeles, CA Key Club
Feb. 9 Santa Ana, CA Galaxy Theatre
Feb. 10 San Francisco, CA DNA Lounge
Feb. 11 Portland, OR Hawthorne Theatre
Feb. 12 Seattle, WA El Corazon
Feb. 14 Calgary, AB The Republik
Feb. 15 Edmonton, AB Starlite Room
Feb. 16 Regina, SK The Exchange
Feb. 17 Winnipeg, MB The Osborne Village Inn
Feb. 18 Minneapolis, MN Station 4
Feb. 19 Chicago, IL Reggie’s Rock Club
Feb. 20 Detroit, MI Blondie’s
Feb. 21 Cleveland, OH Peabody’s
Feb. 22 Toronto, ON Opera House
Feb. 23 Quebec City, QC Imperial de Quebec
Feb. 24 Montreal, QC Metropolis
Feb. 25 Rochester, NY Montage Music Hall
Feb. 26 New York, NY Gramercy Theatre
Feb. 27 Worcester, MA The Palladium
Mar. 1 Philadelphia, PA The Trocadero
Mar. 2 Springfield, VA Jaxx
Mar. 3 Charlotte, NC The Casbah
Mar. 4 Raleigh, NC Volume 11