7-Feb-2011: Clubhouse - Tulsa, AZ

Arizona & some cactus

The weather was more than just nice and warm. It felt like a good summer day in Finland. We loaded in and started to walk to have some lunch before the show. Our plan was to find some cool Mexican restaurant and we almost went to one next to the venue, but we decided to walk some more and we found ourselves from a thai restaurant, which was pretty affordable, but we didn't like the food as much as we thought. After lunch we went to a dollar-shop and bought ourselves a jar for tips to the merch.

Cranky people looking for food...

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

El Paso

Oh yes, another day-off after one show. Absolutely nothing happened this day except for some retarded shopping from Walmart. Fortuately we're playing again tomorrow, these day-offs start to get really boring...

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...

Hungry guys and our driver waiting for a taxi ride to the hotel

Kristian owns this place - or at least he owned on stage later-on

Keijo getting some groceries

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.

Mr. Perttilä looking evil at the merch stand

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!

4-Feb-2011: Blizzard Day-off #2

5 AM
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.

Pete bought this beer bottle warmer. Strange product, isn't warm beer pretty crappy? Mika is having the party of his life in the background...

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.

Someone's BMW on ice. Kristian prefers whiskey on the rocks...

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.

Kristian is faking when he's giving a review for his veggie burger. Look at his eyes to see the real feeling.

Sami after his burrito. Yummy or not?

I finished the day watching a preview version of "Hollow"-video, which was matching my feeling perfectly. Casper and his team at Jawbreaker Productions had done really great job with the video, we're stoked to release it some time soon!

3-Feb-2011: Blizzard Day-off #1 - Somewhere in Mississippi

We had been parked outside a hotel, where it was possible for everyone to take a first proper shower of the tour. There was also loads of shops and restaurants close-by and RS ended-up eating at a chinese buffet. Pretty good and affordable meal . Some of us got a bit wasted in the night, but that was pretty much everything that happened during the day and night. I decided to go to sleep early to gather some extra sleeping hours, which I've missed until today. Super bored!

Mika doing some shaving

2-Feb-2011: Headliner's - Lousiville, KY

Our morning started with some desperation due to the fact, that we've brought the blizzard of the millennium from Finland to US. There was a lot of discussion going on about the fact, that Tulsa area isn't really prepared to handle excessive amounts of snow. We decided to go and get some lunch after loading-in and we found this awesome pub with affordable home made food.

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.

Finntroll on stage

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.

Pizza-black-metal pose. Serious stufffff!

Mmmmm.... Pizza!

Very nice throne!

This night we even got a cable for listening music in the nightliner and that really got us going until pretty early.

Keijo and Kristian posing in the night!

1-Feb-2011: The Masquerade - Atlanta, GA

Everyone woke-up around noon in the chilly Atlanta. Our plan was to find a grocery store and we did so after some wondering around. The amount of different options caused a serious brain-melt to four Finns, that were trying to figure out what to have as their breakfast for the next few days. After one retarded hour everyone were heading back to the nightliner to eat some bread, mayo and cheese and some apples. Very exotic and worth the hour spent.

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.

Would you like to buy something from these guys?

Wereworlf and a scared victim-to-come