Had to go up early to get off the tour bus at the boat. Unfortunately our dear English authorities didn't like the idea of our session guitarist Pablo playing in DEMONICAL. So, he got deported. At 08.30 they took him to a room where he had to wait to be deported back to France by some french officers. But the boat was gonna departure at 09 and the bus must roll, so the rest of the band took off...
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| Ronnie B in Camden town. |
Meanwhile, Johan decided to take a hangover-nap in the bunk while crossing the border, ignoring the signs saying something like "trying to avoid the passport control will cause a fine of 3.000 pounds". But what the hell. We are richer than we look.
The boat offered the first shower since Hamburg for some of us and was followed by some interesting left-traffic driving in a very busy London. Suicide Throne in the UK.
The Purple Turtle turned out to be a very cool little 250 ppl capacity venue located in the Camden area of London (where almost all concert takes place). Some of us spent the day checking out the area. We also tried to reach mr Pablo during the day without any response on either sms or calls...
But finally in the evening Martin reached Pablo. "Everything is great - I'm a free man!". It turned out he have had to sit in some room for four hours to wait for the authorities to get their shit together, but after that he got a coffee and a bag of chips as compensation, lucky guy. And an English stamp in his passport with a big "X" over it.
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| Pablo Corleone. |
Anyway, being professionals since birth, we did the show in London as a four piece. For some reason we have never played in England before, but it turned out to be a great show. The audience seemed to be really into our shit, and we even met a guy who said he traveled all the way from Russia to see us. Props!
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| Deathking666 equipment backstage. |
After we had drank all the english beer, we spent the evening drinking belgian vodka (well, russian vodka bought in Belgium) and smoking belgian cigarettes and ripping it up Stockholm style, before getting back on the suicide roads of London heading towards France again to save Private Pablo...
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| Ronnie B & Thomas Arroganz. |
Peniche Igelrock - Valenciennes, FRA - 10/5 2011:
Back in France, we picked up "Packan" at some hotel; the lucky guy have had a good day-off checking out the locals, while the other four members had to work hard. We got to Valenciennes in the middle of the day, and guess what? The weather was ripping today again. It turned out that the venue was located on a big boat in a river passing the city (this river didn't have much in common with the mighty Ljungan, but rather looked like a bigger version of Selångersån in 1962).
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| Under Jolly Roger |
Spent the day on deck, trying to avoid getting inside the boat as much as possible (it was hot outside, but even hotter inside). Some guys from the other bands found some kind of gym on the other side of the street where they cleaned their bodies, while the veterans (that would be us) spent the day drinking warm beer in the sun instead (cold food, warm beer, that's the good life the road offers).
As the bands began playing it looked like the audience was missing, but it turned out that the frenchmen just didnt like coming too early because when it finally was time for us to go on stage the atmosphere was just great. The crowd was ripping, and we really enjoyed rumbling this Titanic Sauna. Mr Soundguy forgot most of the instructions he got on the soundcheck, so intros and stuff like that disappeared into anti-cosmos, but it didnt really matter with the good response we had this evening.
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| Ripping it up French style |
Mr Organizer won the Gold Medal of the evening, and when leaving France it was definitely in a good mood. Looking forward to come back. But first: towards Germania again...
Das Haus - Neuss, GER - 11/5 2011:
Neuss is a rather small city, but very close to the Eurovision Song Contest (Düsseldorf). DEMONICAL played here once before, and it was a very good evening, so we knew that the people in Neuss knows how to bang and mosh.
At soundcheck the sound engineer as usual thinks that we are "too louuud" (this isn't Death Metal you know?!) and thinks the solution to too high cymbals is to lower the guitars (euhm?). Anyway, we tried to find some kind of compromise with the dude, but then we could suddenly feel the smell of MEAT, and soundcheck was over. The Grill was on, finally! The engineer had a digital mixing console, so we told him to save the exact setting for us. "No problem".
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| The BBQ-meister!! |
After a good very male meal, people started to show up at the venue. Considering that we soon were gonna spend some days in Italy, we went to a super market to bulk up with back-up vodka and other necessities before the concert.
GLORIA MORTI, ARROGANZ and FERAL all got very good response for their shows, and finally it was time for us to do our shit. Needless to say, mr Soundengineer fucked up everything we prepared on soundcheck (sampler channel muted the whole gig, etc...) but once again, it didnt really bother us too much, the concert was one of the best of the tour so far, with people banging like crazy through the whole gig.
We met people from previous concerts and among others longtime friends from DELLAMORTE's EU tour in 1997. The evening is ended with many chilling drinks, the tour manager passes out and faceplants in the bus, and the rest is history...
