It was really annoying watching all our contemporaries get to Europe post-lockdown. Hell, even Matt got to go with his other bands a few times. Exhumed was forever the bridesmaid, having to cancel two, maybe three trips because of bad booking. This year, we finally made it back to the Old World to eat all the bread and cheese. Oh, and Gruesome came, too. So Matt got to go twice, the fucker.
The Long and Grinding Road continued across the Atlantic. The first stop was Scotland for the Lords of the Land Fest. We got into our hotel and the first thing everyone did was get stupid drunk and Adam and Baz ended up wrestling in my hotel bed.
The road is always troubled, so of course some badness had to befall us right away. Matt’s luggage was lost, so he would be forced to play our first few shows in blue jeans. BLUE. JEANS. The indignity. He also had to spend a bunch of money at a Scottish music shop, buying replacement pedals so he could achieve “tone.” I spent my money in a chippie and introduced Baz and Adam to the wonders of deep fried pizza.
From Scotland we headed to Newcastle. A fun thing we tried out and which ended up working smashingly was we bought some cheap-ass 32″ Google flat-screen televisions. At home, we have TVs encased in amp cases to play videos during our set, but we would be free-balling throughout Europe. It was my job every night to reassemble those TVs and gaffe them down onto the amps. Annoying, but the end result looked cool. Openers Coffin Mulch were really, really good.
In Manchester, we had a lovely family dinner at some Indian restaurant I found online. It was already proving to be a fun trip, what with both touring bands knowing each other very well and all of us hating Matt Harvey with a passion. We shared the empathy for each other’s pain for having to constantly deal with Matt Harvey and that truly bonded us like a real family.
I left behind my GoPros at the club in Manchester like an idiot. So much for getting live footage across Europe.
Often on tour, I feel like I’m the only one who wants to see anything. I was delightfully surprised by my tourmates’ wanderlust. Gus worked out a plan for us to go to the Marshall headquarters so we could worship at their amplified altar. In our van? Two Peavey 6505s and two Mesa Triple Rectifiers. We didn’t tell the Marshall folks that while they showed us around.
We played in Bristol and I got to see an old friend, Jaycee Fairclough, who sculpted the Ghoul minis lo so many years ago.
After Bristol, I arranged us a little trip to Stonehenge. I’d been there once when I was 21 and while I’m not spiritual, there definitely is a feeling to seeing some neolithic structure still standing. We were awash in lost history. Was it a religious monument? Was it a sun dial? Was it a sex garden? No one knows but the DRUIDS.
In Southampton, I was delighted to be reunited with some punk family friends, Steve Barry of Harrowed and Tez Hookham of Virus. Not to be outdone with the celebrity cameos, Ben Ash formerly of Carcass even showed up to give a proper “allo allo”
After Southampton, Gus arranged another side quest; the house on the cover of Black Sabbath’s first album: Black Sabbath. Unfortunately you gotta arrange a visit, so we didn’t get to recreate the album cover ourselves… but it was a neat landmark to see.
We headed into London, which was the most stressful day for me. Before we got to the gig, I had to head to an apostille, basically an international notary, to spend a lot of money for one guy to witness me sign a thing. It was a business thing at home and I was decidedly not at home. Lucky the team went to bat for me, made sure we stated on time, and I got to the appointment before it would get very difficult to arrange anything similar in a country that didn’t primarily speak english. Blessed that it all worked out.
Before the London gig we were treated very lovely at an in-store signing by the folks running Raven Records. It’s a great metal shop in Camden area, check it out if you get a chance. You never know who you might run into there.
The London gig was at a VERY tiny venue called the Black Heart, because we fucked up on booking the Underworld somehow. Oof, it was ROUGH. Probably the roughest show of the tour to be honest. It sold out, no surprise once I saw the place and the closet of a backroom. The difficulties were not helped by the openers, 10 Plagues. The band was fine, but the vocalist was an annoying shit dick of a panty stain and almost got his band kicked off the bill before the show started if I hadn’t intervened. I wish I hadn’t, I didn’t understand the whole situation and shouldn’t have tried to make peace. Other people were like “no, you shoulda shut up and let them get kicked off he’s been annoying everyone” and I was like nah, how bad could he be? Cut to me yelling at him and kicking him out of backstage as he knocked over all our shit in the very tiny room. I don’t openly talk shit much, it’s usually not worth it, but fuck that guy.
Anyway, it was Dan from Gruesome’s birthday that night and we delivered him a cake on stage, so it wasn’t all muss and fuss. We had some fun.
We took the chunnel and headed to our good friend Olivier’s house in gay Paris. Olivier is a great metal journalist, guide, and all-around handsome dude. He was also kind enough to receive a bunch of merch for us that we planned to pick up in the Schengen area once we were past the bloody anglo tax collectors. Paris was a fun show, except for the fact I hadn’t been taking care of myself, was completely dehydrated, and pissed a full stream of blood. That scared me a bit, ngl. For the next couple weeks, I made sure to stay very hydrated and went hard on the veggies in lieu of the usual bread and cheese euro-tour diet. I was fine, but it was a little reminder that if I wanna keep doing this, I need to continue taking care of myself.
In honest little Belgium, we had another birthday. This time, it was one of our drivers, Adele. We were getting to know her still at this time, but let me tell you, Adele quickly became one of my favorite people in the world. Hard working, smart, and with that wry Czech sense of humor that just takes no shit. She is awesome and I hope we can score her again the next time we get to Europe.
Next up to Tilburg, a tiny town in the Netherlands I’ve spent a surprising amount of time in. The 013 is there, where I’ve played Roadburn twice and the Netherlands death fest, as well as been to a few other tours. We played the Little Devil and I was afeared for another small stage, but the Little Devil has made some improvements and the show was very pleasant. And the pomme fritte in the Netherlands are beyond compare. Also, this kid had a fucking Exhumed Vegetarian shirt… I think we made like 100 of these in the nineties when we were stuck playing the basement of a library. No idea how it made its way here.
The music stays the same, the crowd just gets older. In Dusseldorf, after a fun group outing to a local goth and clothing shop, I ran into several old friends.
Markus Lempsch was there on the first ever Exhumed tour in 1997. And another old friend Lohm was there. It was another tiny fucking stage, however, so I was very glad that we were touring with our friends in Gruesome and sharing gear to save space. It was crazy balls. I was also glad that I checked the gear list before we left and nixed an 8×10 bass cabinet before it was too late. I love an 8×10, but in Europe, it’s just a no go. Two 4x10s offer much more versatility in setting up a stage and when you play some bunker down 3 flights of stairs, or some 100 year old pub up 3 flights of stairs, the last thing you wanna lug is an 8×10.
Next up, Logo in Hamburg. This was another very decent show with cool people working. The funnest part of the show was kicking a bunch of Mercedez Benz and BMW’s out of the CLEARLY MARKED “DO NOT PARK HERE” area that the venue had secured through legal permits for us to park in. Some well-to-do fucks thought they could park in front of their favorite hookah bar but moved very quickly when 10 dirty fucks got out of our vans looking tired and grumpy as fuck.
Thank God I ran into my old friend Conny Poenisch, the punisher in Berlin. She is one of my favorite people to ever exist and it put me in a good mood to be in her company. That was great because the venue, Urban Spree, a venue I really like situated in the RAW-Gelände compound that I hold dear, was being run that night by an evil Italian witch. She was horrid from the get go. I tried my best to accommodate her horrible attitude, but by the end of the night I was yelling at her and telling her to go to hell. Seriously, I’m a very peaceable person, I like to have fun, I tolerate a lot. She was the rock in the microwave at the end of Time Bandits.
Still, the promoters were fun as fuck and super cool and the show went great. The hotel we ended up at was like these little pods. I was too spun on adrenaline from the show and I couldn’t handle it. I walked out and ended up sleeping in my friend Conny’s van. Seriously, this is like Matrix shit. Dan said he slept wonderfully. Enjoy your space pod, Dan.
Walking around in Poland, we felt very welcome.
I kid, but actually everyone around town and at the venue were nice. I’m assuming the fella that threw up this graffiti was talking about yanks more broadly, which I can understand. Americans are a pretty terrible bunch taken as a whole. Hashtag not all Americans.
Remember Adele, our drive and one of my favorite people that I got to meet on this tour? The first thing I said to her when I found out she was Czech was “I must have smažený sýr and krokety. Make it happen.” It was half joking, to be sure, but I really did love that Czech dish. It’s a loaf of friend cheese served with potatoes. Starch heaven. And she made it happen! She timed it and reserved us a table in a traditional Czech restaurant before our show in Ostrava. What a god damn gem.
Escape Room in Vienna kinda feels like that… a tiny stage where you’re blocked in and want to escape. Still, a fun show despite the rain that hit us that evening.
A detour that was pretty hard to orchestrate but which ended up going swimmingly was one to Gruyere in Switzerland to see the H.R. Giger Museum. Dan and I advocated hard for this one against some people’s judgement, but in the end people relented and everyone had an amazing time. The town itself is gorgeous. Cheese and sweet shops line the quaint streets of this town nestled in the valley of the Sanne River. And then you get dicks and baby heads in a coffee shop.
The museum is a three story labyrinth just teeming with all the bio-mechanical goodness you can imagine. For some reason, I guess somebody name dropped somebody, the manager let us all in for free. Bonus!! And in the church below, we got to the visit the grave of the genius who inspired a metric ton of bad tattoos.
Fucking Switzerland. It’s gorgeous. It’s really no wonder why they were like “War? yeah, we don’t care who the fuck is being victimized, we’re gonna go drink a beer next to the most beautiful river that I bought with stolen gold.”
Anyway, the show in Solothurn kinda sucked. The Swiss are extremely neutral and that goes double for showing any enthusiasm at a show. But the venue was kind and treated us well, so we had that going for us. Even if they had pictures up of Left to Die with the Exhumed logo over it.
We played the Backstage in Munich at the same complex on the same night as Dogma. Our show was packed, I’m not complaining, but Dogma had a fucking line out miles long for the much larger venue. To which I must ask… what the fuck is wrong with you neckbeards? Sexy nuns? That’s so fucking played out. No shade to the women being exploited, er, playing in the band, but the whole set up reeks of K-Pop style financial slavery. It’s fucking weird. And the music is balls. That is definitely no shade to the women, because some dumb ass dude wrote that shit and is raking in the dough because some sponge heads wanna jerk off to the album cover. It’s embarrassing. I guess Baz and Adam partied afterwards with some of the members and they said they were nice. I hope they’re having a good time and being paid well, honestly.
Our last stop in Deutschland was at Cafe Central in Weinheim. The staff there were incredible, having taken the time during lockdown to really up the quality of their venue. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening.
A few of us took another outing to go see the Coliseum once we got to Rome. Seems cheesy, but yeah, worth it. That thing is fucking epic. But you know what’s really epic? The water fountains. They have free fucking bubble water in those fountains. God damn free SODA WATER. Bless.
The bad part about going to the Coliseum were the taxi drivers. The apps didn’t work and the drivers we spoke to wanted to rip us the fuck off. Time was growing short and we needed to get back to the venue. I finally found one driver offering a decent rate. You know what? He ended up cool as fuck. He wanted to talk about metal and we had a great ride with him. We offered to put him on the guest list. Usually, that’s a nicety and the people don’t show. But he showed up!!! He said we were monstrous.
At the Slaughter Club in Milan we ran into our old friend Marco from Brainwash. Everyone has a story about Marco. Mine is the time he and his bandmate and ex-girlfriend showed up at my parents house in San Jose when I lived there in like 1998. Exhumed had played two shows with them, so he found my address in an old zine and just showed up. That’s why I started using a PO box at some point, but it was too late… my address was out there. Me and Matt were leaving my house to go get comic books, probably, and these three vagabond are just traipsing down a suburban street in the valley. What the fuck. And he didn’t speak a lick of english then so his girlfriend had to translate everything. Anyway, I ended up housing them for two days and driving them to the Vans outlet to get cheap shoes. What a fucking weirdo.
We had a day off somewhere in France and the family kept… being a family. It was nice. Going hiking, hanging out, eating snails and other unidentified things at weird ass French buffets… it was good times.
There were so few openers on this tour, as well. Mostly, it was just Exhumed and Gruesome. I like seeing locals, really I do, but the pace of this tour was just pretty fucking relaxing.
Rex in Toulouse was good, as was Groove Club in Basque country. Then it was off to SWR fest in Barroselas, a town you would never ever visit in Portugal unless you were going to SWR fest. No shade, it’s just a tiny town. But the fest was huge.
The stage was the largest we played and to the most people and it was a blast. It was also the only time I’ve ever seen our latest banner completely unfurled! Turns out 16×16′ is a lot bigger than I had imagined it would be when I ordered it. Whoopsie doodle. Def going a bit smaller next time.
So often, the final show is the show you shouldn’t have played. Like, the second to last, in my experience, is always the biggest coolest one, and then it’s a let down as tour ends. But nah, not this tour. The show at Revi Live in Madrid was awesome. Great stage, great staff, and some dude gave me a G.I. Joe figure I didn’t have. Total win and I went home a happy man, having had a great time with some great people.
And then it was time to clean up. Gross.
