Diary - Matt Drake
Day 3
30/09/2009
The gig was down at the harbour in Hamburg, I would have liked to go on a wander and have a look around but we didn’t have time. we parked up nice and easy, by the time I had got my pants on the gear had already been loaded inside the venue. It’s been good playing a few gigs with Drone, they’re decent guys and have the same attitude to this whole touring thing that we have, to make it as easy as possible for everyone involved. Big thanks to those guys.
Me and Ben spent most of the time reflecting on the fact that we’re aged 28 and sat in a camper van going around different countries taking the piss out of anything and everything we see whereas most people our age are married and have kids and mortgages and have an actual job for a living (although I usually do have a full time job) so we realised that we really haven’t grown up at all, and probably never will. Considering the idea that we find it funny saying starbucks coffee backwards, we probably never will grow up. Which Is fine with me.
The gig went well, we played a lot better than the night before, we still need many many more gigs to be able to get used to playing the new songs live. It’s one thing practising them in your room or at the rehearsal room but doing them on stage is a lot different and they need a lot more stage time before they’re as comfortable as the older songs, but they do feel really good to play live, they’re a lot more comfortable to sing for me. Playing Time No More and Infected Nation live is a lot of fun, they feel right, I can’t wait until we figure out a way to make Metamorphosis work live. I noticed a problem last night though, after playing for about 45 minutes my right arm started going numb and I couldn’t feel that I was holding a plectrum anymore, I couldn’t feel what I was picking which was a bizarre feeling, I couldn’t tell if I was in time or not and I’m guessing I wasn’t. I’m assuming it’s because we rarely play gigs longer than that and I’m just not used to it yet, I will have to work on that.
After loading the van at midnight we set off on the drive for Helsinki, we had 3 hours to get to the first ferry which was from SOMEWHERE to Denmark, most of us stayed up on the first drive and got off the van when we got on the ferry and walked around which was a big mistake, it was like dawn of the dead, a bunch of really creepy men were hanging around, and they were constantly staring at Lucy who let’s admit, is about 39ft tall and blonde, so you do see her coming, but these dudes were completely creepy and started to follow us around, the ferry trip was only 45 minutes but it felt like 3 years thanks to a bunch of pervy old bastards. Ol had the right idea with staying in the van and sleeping. We got back on the van and started the next drive across Denmark to Stockholm.
29/09/2009
Day 2
When we woke up we drove to THE BASTARD CLUB (excellent name!) in about 5 hours, when we turned up we found out that as well as being a live music venue it also has a skate park inside, didn’t dare have a go because I would be shit at skating and break my face on my own knees. The promoter Schnalli was a cool guy, and we met our European booking agent Volkmar for the first time who ended up being roped into loading gear with us. Drone were supporting us and it was good to see them again since we met at Metalmania in Poland last year.
Well an hour and 20 minutes was hard haha. We’ve never played more than an hour and that extra 20 minutes makes a BIG difference, but it was a good gig, good times. For our first ever headline show in Germany it was a good turnout, thanks to everyone for coming down! Although there is an obvious language barrier, it isn’t helped by the fact that we’re from Yorkshire so it’s 6 times as hard for anyone to understand what the hell we’re talking about, I may as well have just danced in between songs haha. We fucked up a lot of times but it wouldn’t be us if everything went like it was supposed to. So far nothing massively entertaining has happened, I’m glad I’ve found out that my voice can last for 80 minutes, I’m very glad I had lessons and reading this must be getting boring now because nothing amazingly brilliant has happened yet. Although I have started a challenge of watching all 5 seasons of THE WIRE before the tour finishes, game on.
It Begins!!
28/09/2009
We were picked up by our driver Lyall at 11.30am at mine and Ol‘s house, loaded all of our ridiculously extensive backline (3 cabs and a drum kit) into the trailer and set off for the south. Destination - Dover Ferry Port, but with a little detour to Canterbury to pick up our Merch Girl Lucy who will be with us for the next 7 weeks selling our shirts to those who wish to wear them. For a change everything went smoothly for us on the way to the port, even getting on and off the ferry was easy, nobody even checked our passports, well done border security, although I guess they aren’t going to care if we were smuggling anything OUT of the country. I spent the ferry trip listening to the new Alice in Chains album, which was quite good, it doesn’t stand up to the hype though, but still quite good considering it’s following the greatness of Facelift and Dirt.
We drove through France into Belgium in what seemed like 17 seconds and pulled up in a service station to get our heads down for the night, only 400 miles to go until our first ever headline show in Germany, I’m not expecting huge crowds since we haven’t toured Germany as much as we would like to, but you have to start somewhere. Apparently our set length is going to be an hour and 20 minutes, we’ve never done a gig that long, but it’s not like it’s anything to complain about, the Beatles used to play sets of up to 10 hours in Hamburg, they just used lots of drugs to get through it, so an hour and 20 minutes should be fine.
New Guitar Day
23/09/2009
I ordered a Custom Jackson last year but the custom shop have been ridiculously busy and i will be waiting a little while longer for it, but in the meantime i have got my hands on a white RR24 and it's bloody beautiful, i can't wait to try it out at the release show this coming friday. Just re-strung it and set up the action how i like it, and it's a monster, theres nothing as good as the feel of new strings, other than chebs.
Today is my 2nd to last day at work for the local council, and people i work with have been brilliant, some of them have even gone out and bought Infected Nations to support the band, they don't even like metal but they have gone out of their way and spent their money on our new cd, which is overwhelming really, such good people, i will miss them all. So to everyone at RDS Kirklees, thank you for a good few years of comedy and typing.
So now i'm watching Ghostbusters on blu-ray, which everyone must agree, is maybe one of the greatest films ever, and is it wrong that Sigourney Weaver is really attractive in it? of course it isn't. Watch Galaxy Quest. Years and years ago when i was in junior school there was a small bookstore inbetween two classrooms, and i snuck in one day and i found a "making of" book on ghostbusters, i was already pretty obsessed with it at the age of 7 and finding this book on how it was made sold me on the world of film, and made me want to be involved in film making (i planned on being a miniature model maker in movies as i was also obsessed with making models) but that never happened. I remember going to the cinema to see Ghostbusters 2 when i was 8, and it blew me away, i bought all the books, i used to draw the logo on everything i could find and i can't understand how you can't like 2 as much as 1, ok granted it isn't as good a film, but theres no way you can follow the first when it was THAT good. The idea of a painting being threatening is quite shit, as he actually is (shit) when he gets out of the painting (taken down by singing??) but it's every bit as enjoyable. All the stuff with Janosz is comedy gold (So vy are you came?).... and i'm not really sure where i'm going with this. I'm enjoying Ghostbusters.
Found out Infected Nations entered the official UK top 100 album chart, we're in a chart with the fucking Beatles!!! how insane is that? it blows my tits off. Thank you to everyone who has bought the album so far, and thank you to everyone who is going to buy it, we will see you on tour! I plan on updating this every day of the tour with Amon Amarth for those interested in reading random thoughts.
Did anyone ever try and ride their cat like it was a horse when they were a small child?
The Time is Now.
20/09/2009
So, the new Evile album is released tomorrow, we've worked hard on it, we're proud of the riffage, i'm proud of learning how to use my voice more effectively BUT i'm sort of shitting myself a bit because tomorrow is the big day and you never know what's going to happen, whether it's going to go well and you can continue trying to build a career out of this, or everyone can absolutely despise the album and we get nowhere. So let's see which one it's going to be, we love the album and we can't wait to be playing it live though, so hopefully it's the former haha.
Just seen we have a 3 page spread in Metal Hammer magazine, if you haven't seen it yet go and have a look, it's weird seeing us featured as a proper band that people may have heard of, i doubt i will ever get used to that regardless of where we end up.
At the moment i'm listening to the score for Batman Begins, i think Hans Zimmer peaked with the Gladiator score because ever since then most of his scores have sounded remarkably similar in tone, but they're all still excellently written, would love to see him do a full tour with an orchestra playing tracks from his entire back catalogue!
We have also been practising again recently getting ready for the upcoming tour, mostly argueing about which 5-6 tracks we should play when we open for Amon Amarth next month, although we haven't practised too much, we would hate to get everything right..... it just wouldn't be us then.
I've also just finished series 3 of the West Wing, if you ever get chance to watch this show from the beginning then do so, it's filled with fantastic characters and it digs into you deeply, i'm only 3 series in now but i'm already regretting that in another 4 series time it will be over, but not to fear, after that i've lined up The Wire, Mad Men and then the last series of Lost starts. The USA really does give us the best tv drama, what does england give? The Bill? great.
Get out tomorrow and get your copy of Infected Nations, then head over to our official forums or the myspace and tell us what you think.
