Australian Metal Has it All Wrong: Thoughts on the Ouroboros hoo-ha

I knew that the Ouroboros funding story had gone mainstream when my mum called me up to ask if I knew them. No, mum. I haven’t met them. I’ve heard two of their tracks and it didn’t do anything for me. I like my heavy metal to be ridiculously heavy.

For anyone not familiar with the story, it goes like this: Midweight Aussie melodic deathmetal band Ouroboros get $20k of arts funding from the government to spend on using a real dinky-di orchestra on their next album. Conservative radio host pensioner Neil Mitchell rants on his popular radio slot about how death metal is not music and how this is a waste of taxpayer money.

Metalheads around Australia then react like this:

Now, you can either read the comments section on the link I posted above or you can check out this article “in defense of metal music” which thoughtfully summarises and articulates the position of Australian metal to Mitchell’s hatchet job. And it’s to Australian Metal I want to say the following very important thing, which everyone seems to have forgotten:

People like Neil Mitchell aren’t supposed to like or understand death metal.

Now maybe it’s my age showing here but when I grew up, metal OFFENDED THE FUCK out of everyone. That was its purpose. It wasn’t meant to be a safe little burlesque Alice-Cooperish shock. Deicide were burning crosses into their fucking heads. Cannibal Corpse were releasing songs like “I Cum Blood”. Even softcock hair-metal crap like W.A.S.P. usually featured a picture of Blackie Lawless dismembering himself with a chainsaw.

Gigs could get intimidating. You were a gutsy chap if you went to some of the shows. My mum nearly had a heart attack whenever she walked past the old “Extreme Aggression” shop in Flinders Lane, and I was forbidden from consorting with such people. The music was fucking angry. What struck you first about ‘Reign In Blood’, huh? It’s delicate instrumentation, or the 100 gigaton explosion of great vengeance and furious anger that reached out from the stereo and violated you?

And now we all get in a strop because some old fogey announcer doesn’t understand the artistic nuances of death metal? Give me a fucking break. Man, I grew up when Couchman had his shock-horror episode about death metal featuring live performances from Necrotomy. It seemed every six months, there’d be another special on TV warning about Satan in metal. I take it as an indication of how far metal has fallen that it has taken this fricking long for the usual mainstream commentators to find something in heavy metal to complain about. The day the Neil Mitchells, Andrew Bolts, and Alan Joneses of the world start appreciating metal’s fine, hard-won technical musical skill is the day I switch shit up and start sampling babies getting fed into woodchippers for distorted 30,000 BPM remixes. Metal is not meant to be safe, it’s not meant to be liked, it’s not meant to be understood, and it is supposed to fill every non-metalhead in listening distance with a violent urge to flee to quieter, dumber music.

STOP WITH THE IMPASSIONED SPEECHES ON THE MERITS OF THE MUSIC. You all remind me of that idiot english kid who thought it would be a laff to wear the Cradle of Filth t-shirt of the nun having a wank to school, then got in a tizz when they suspended him. I happily applaud anyone who provokes, but if you complain about receiving a reaction to your provocation then you are an idiot who deserves mockery. It’s the same deal if you’re listening to death metal. It’s wonderful music that provokes. Upset that people don’t get it, but still want to be an arty-farty airy-fairy musician? Then go listen to some Frank Gambale, you skirt.

Despite me ripping on almost every single person who has commented on this 3AW funding wankathon, this doesn’t make people’s arguments about the merits of the death metal any less valid. It IS funny to hear normals complain about not understanding metal lyrics (quick, off the top of your head what’s the chorus to Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose”? The verses to Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box”?)  But make no mistake, the roots of death metal are in shock, awe, and offense so don’t be surprised when people are shocked or offended by it. Furthermore, if you’re in an extreme metal band and people AREN’T getting shocked by what you’re doing, take a good hard long look at yourselves.

To anyone frabjous enough to think that Neil Mitchell’s commentary might impact arts funding for death metal, I’ll firstly say WHAT?! And secondly I’ll inform you that a number of high profile Australian metal bands have received government funding before, usually in the form of small business loans. Not quite as juicy as a freebie $20k, but still a nice little assist. These have always flown under the newsworthy radar and unless funding rules change these loans will continue to be available. See, it’s all part of the trade off of having to register an Australian Business Number when you start gigging, isn’t it? …NOT.

And a huge high-five has to go to Ouroboros. They may have got $20k in funding but they’ve managed to get $250k in publicity. I’d consider Neil Mitchell an honorary metalhead for the amount of exposure he has managed to get the genre this week. All Hail Neil.

“Coming up, did Jamie Ludbrook influence Slipknot? Our lines are open, lets hear your thoughts….”

* obviously a doctored photo. Neil doesn’t wear blue shirts

First Show in Scotland

I love Scotland, always have. At first it was because of the grievous little adventures I got into there on tour with the cheerfully homicidal Scottish folk. Later on, when I moved to England and spent the first years in a fog of council-tax-TV-licence-chavs-Jeremy-Kyle-WTF, I loved their bloody-minded hatred of everything English. In my day-to-day life in Bournemouth everyone seemed completely OK with England’s homogenous grey drab concrete high-street mediocrity and to me, the Scottish loathing of England seemed evidence that I hadn’t yet gone insane. Yes, I realise what I just typed.

 

 

I worked for an American bank in England and most of my colleagues were Scottish so it was like this ménage a trois of hatred and bigotry. The English hated the Americans, the Scottish hated the English and Americans, I hated the English and Americans on behalf of Australia, and the Americans hated no-one because you need a soul to feel emotions. The Scottish guys were always floating the idea of taking a hacksaw to the length of Hadrian’s Wall and kicking England further away into the channel, an idea with some merit.

 

 

Some of my funniest times were on an IT helpdesk shift with an English guy called David and a Scottish guy called Robbie. We’d play three-player Tanks on a spare machine between taking IT calls whenever we were stuck on nightshift, and the sledging would get absolutely brutal. Robbie and I would start on David for being a degenerate imperialist cock from an abomination of a country. David would gently remind me of my criminal heritage. I would point out to David that he came from a country so incredibly venal that it needed to colonise a land mass a hundred times its size just to find a place to put all its scum. Robbie would be laughing at this point, so I’d speculate on his exotic appearance usually by inferring that one of his female ancestors had an unfortunate encounter with a Portuguese pirate.  David would then explain to Robbie that his country didn’t actually exist and that ‘Scotland’ was merely a brand-name the English used to identify a tiresome acquisition. All of this back-and-forth was punctuated by us bombing each other into oblivion on the computer. We’d get Robbie to the point where he’d be spluttering with fury and then he’d get a call that would push him over the edge…some manager travelling in the countryside around Guangzhou who got the blue screen of death on their laptop, or a retard trader who was trying to work out how to log on remotely; an unfixable problem from someone who had no chance of understanding our instructions, which possibly wouldn’t help them even if they did. Robbie would sit there suffused with fury and Dave and I would laugh at him. I heard Robbie got a tumour on his lung a few years later and had to have his entire lung removed, and I like to think that the tumour was a physical manifestation of all the anger built up from working on shift with us.

 

 

I digress. Scotland, I’ve always liked. I’ve tried to explain why, but that didn’t quite work did it? So it might be a case of first love – the first time I went to Scotland was to play a show in Glasgow and Jesus Christ that night was rough and I loved it. Every time I played there I came away with another story.

 

 

Berzerker was on its first headline tour of the UK. We were touring with Labrat, Red Harvest, and Insision. The Red Harvest guys were Norwegian dudes. They were lovely, even their singer who has the most psychopathic hundred yard stare ever.

 

 

…like, EVER

 

 

Insision are a bunch of Swedes. Their singer Carl is a total maniac. His face was constantly bright red from screaming at everyone, and he lost his voice halfway through the tour. Lastly, there were the Londoners Labrat. They were bad, bad, bad boys and agent provocateurs. Whichever direction your worst intent took you, there’d be one of the Labrat guys urging you along. We called them ‘La Brats’. They broke up not long after tour and their collective components spread across England’s metal industry like cholera. I hear they’ve reformed. Fortunately, I live in Australia now.

 

 

 

the four face case for the reintroduction of chastity belts

 

 

 

All the bands were travelling on a nice Skyliner bus except for us. We were on a small bus without heating during one of the coldest Decembers in recent history. Additionally the bus toilet was broken and leaking effluent into the carpet. Our tour manager Baz from Blah Blah Blah tours dealt with the problem by laying cardboard on the floor to soak it up. By the second day of tour even the cardboard was starting to get soggy and the smell was eye-watering. It took me until the second-last day of tour to wise up and steal a berth on the Skyliner instead.

 

 

 

We arrived in Glasgow in our Chariot of Piss to play a club called Strawberry Fields. We were there all of five minutes when we saw the posters in the men’s toilets. The posters were of three people murdered on three separate occasions out the back of the club over the last six months or so. The bottom of the poster carried a reminder not to venture out to the back alley alone – the very alley our bus was parked in. Hmmm. We managed to unload our gear and soundcheck without getting stabbed to death, and headed out for a few pre-show beers with La Brats. I wasn’t too concerned about the warning to be honest. We’d played Detroit already and the British Isles are all about knife crime. At least I had the option of outrunning potential assailants.

 

 

 

“…but all I want to do is entertain you!”

 

 

 

The pre-show beers didn’t last too long. We got kicked out of the pub. One of La Brats – possibly Nathan – went to the toilet with some Nutella, and came back with it smeared all over toilet paper. He ‘accidentally’ tripped over and got it over singer Martin’s face. This was followed by one of our mates doing a line of pepper off the table. That was enough for the publican. We didn’t really understand what he was saying but we got the message: Get out. You are lowering the tone of a pub in Glasgow.

 

 

I can’t remember too much from the show except it was a cracker. The crowd went apeshit from go to woah, and both Matt and myself stagedived at the end of the set. We were told to get out quickly as the place turned into a gaybar thirty minutes after the show ended. Our wonderful promoter Kelvin organised a night out for us at the Cathouse. The guys from Co-Exist came along, and I was introduced to the drink Buckfast by their drummer Quzzy. Buckfast “gets you fucked fast” according to the locals and is the most Scottish of drinks. It is as clear as present danger, as caustic as a billion amplified bagpipes, and as intoxicating as the image of a Scottish boot stepping onto an English face, forever. Quzzy looks like a dangerous thug and we slugged back shots of this potable paint-stripper together straight out the bottle all the way to the Cathouse. I’d say the day was getting better and better but honestly, I didn’t see daylight once the entire two weeks we were on tour so I’ll say the night got better instead.

 

 

We partied hard at the Cathouse. I can only start remembering stuff from when the night began drawing to a close, which is fortunate because that’s when things got weird. I had picked up some Scottish girl with a black eye, not because I was particularly into her but because she said she had some crack that I could smoke. This happened back in the early 2000’s so I’m hoping that the statute of limitations for behaving like a dickhead has passed. This black-eyed strumpet had some crack to smoke, I’d never had it before and I figured when in Glasgow drink Buckfast and smoke crack.

 

 

Not Even Once

 

 

In retrospect, I think it was all just a cunning ruse to get me back to her flat and use me sexually. She had already gathered that I wasn’t that into her and her offering of crack was just a ploy. She had already asked if she could blow me and I’d responded only if I could wee in her mouth. We were about to leave the club to head for her place when two of La Brats turned up like God himself making a chess move, and asked her if she could recommend a prostitute for them.

 

 

Yes, she said. Her flatmate was a prostitute. Her place was a short walk away. They could come along with us and she’d hook them up. So we happy few walked down the stairs and across town, us band of brothers, me with this chick with a shiner who had by now consented to getting pissed on and would share crack with me, the fellas giddily looking forward to destroying some Glaswegian hooker. We exited the town centre, crossed a few streets, and entered the area known as The Gorbals.

 

 

Here are some choice excerpts from Wikipedia’s entry on The Gorbals:

 

The Gorbals has long had a reputation as a gritty and rough area of Glasgow. It became widely known as a dangerous slum and was subject to efforts at redevelopment, which contributed to more problems such as homeless people and diseases spreading. The name is remarkably similar to a Lowland Scots word gorbal/gorbel/garbal/garbel (unfledged bird), perhaps a reference to lepers who were allowed to beg for alms in public. Throughout the 1980s, the Gorbals was often referred to as the most dangerous place in the UK, as street gangs and casual violence were rife, particularly from the famous Glasgow razor gangs. Ian Brady, the Moors Murderer, was born at The Gorbals as Ian Duncan Stewart.

 

We skipped and tra-la-la’d into this place with the girl leading the way. It took me a good ten minutes before I sensed something was wrong. I was pretty drunk and had a mammoth ego that blinded me to even the vaguest flashes of reality, but I started getting a gut feeling. I realised that we were the only ones out on the street, and that no cars were driving down these roads. Indeed, the only car I could see had all its windows smashed and was burned out.  There were buildings but their windows were boarded up. Even worse, our femme facilitator was now walking some distance ahead of us and had been saying “it’s just around the next corner” for about the last ten minutes. And every time she said it, it sounded like she was calling it out to someone else out of sight. This was not good. I was coming to conclusions at about the point that La Brats sidled casually over and whispered surreptitiously out of the corner of their mouths.

 

 

“Sam”, one said, “we’re in the Gorbals. This is the most violent place in the UK. I don’t think we’re going to get our prostitute.”

“I don’t think I’m going to get my crack” I glumly replied.

“There’s a main road back down the left”, said the other. “I reckon on the count of three, we make a run for it and jump in the first taxi we see. What do you think?”

 

 

It sounded like a good plan. Besides I was cold, starting to sober up, and had the feeling we were being watched. We whispered one, two, THREE then sprinted off down the street laughing our heads off. It didn’t register with any of us that we’d left this girl by herself. In my mind she was setting us up for something so she deserved it. We got to the main road and hailed an elderly cab driver who seemed astonished at the sight of two very alternative English and one giggling Australian sprinting out of the Gorbals waving at him. When we arrived back at the bus, Baz, the bus driver, and Kelvin the promoter nearly wept with relief. Someone had turned up at the club after we’d left and told them we were last seen walking into the Gorbals, and everyone was convinced that they wouldn’t even be able to find our bodies.

 

 

Years later when I told this story to my Scottish work colleagues, they’d piss themselves laughing. Then they’d tell me that it was amazing I wasn’t killed. Then they’d start debating amongst themselves; no, it was the English that would have been killed. They would have kept the Australian alive as a curiosity because of the accent, and I would have just been maimed a bit. Then they say that the Gorbals aren’t as bad anymore as they used to be. At least that’s what I think they say, because they all sound like this.

 

Despite my adventures, I was the first one out of my band back onto the Four-Wheeled Portaloo. I crawled into my bunk which was floor height so I could get the stench of chemical toilet right in my face. I was starting to doze off when I heard Luke get on the bus with some guests and a few girls. I saw feet by my face. One of them had very pale delicate ankles. I reached out and grabbed it and heard a girl scream. I fastened on with the other hand and tried to drag her into the bunk but her friends grabbed her and after a brief tug-of-war they hoisted her out of my reach. They made their excuses and left.

Brain Drill get Arse-Drilled

I’d like to think that I’ve personally experienced every ridiculous metal story of misfortune that ever was, but I must admit – I never got cavity searched. I am a sadistic prick who LOVES hearing about other bands’ misfortune and stories don’t get much more unfortunate than this:

Brain Drill getting cavity searched on tour

Well, tour stories do get more unfortunate than that – Evile, Decapitated – but even my schadenfreude has limits. This is about as bad as it gets where I can still sympathetically laugh about it. It also serves as a good example of why you should never transport drugs on tour.

The story’s old, I know. Love the band, listening to ‘Quantum Catastrophe’ at the moment.

“Sir, we need you to bend over, touch your ankles, and give us your most gutteral death-growl”

The Gig Where Nothing Went Wrong

I’ve got to write about this gig, just so I can justify writing up another ten or so articles about ridiculous bullshit that went wrong. If you have ten stories about stuff going wrong and one about when it was alright then you’re heroically relating true stories; if you just have ten straight stories about stuff-ups and disasters then you’re either inept, a whinger, or both.

This isn’t to say that every show I’ve had has been a disaster. There have been quite a few great ones. I’m a lucky dude. But few of them were as perfect, fulfilling, and enjoyable as the one I’m about to recount.

I joined UK death metal band Mithras back in 2009 when their old bassist/vocalist Rayner left them. I was already rehearsing with Leon, the main Mithras guy, in preparation for the Senseless ‘Floating World’ album. As soon as I heard about the lineup vacancy I not only volunteered, I swore that I’d kick any other contenders down a flight of stairs. And I totally would have as well. Mithras were often maligned as Florida death-metal clones or Morbid Angel wannabes. They weren’t, there’s a real psychedelic splash of colour to their music that other bands of the genre don’t have, but they were similar enough to really rock me. Ever since I started playing an instrument I just wanted to be Dave Vincent (minus the codpiece, perhaps) and seeing as though Morbid Angel wouldn’t hire me, Mithras would do just fine.

I have no idea why they wouldn’t hire me. I would have fit in so well.

Did I just say Morbid Angel wouldn’t hire me? Quick side story: I finished the Art of Noise tour in 2003 with Berzerker down in Tampa, Florida and was fortunate enough to get on the piss with Morbid Angel’s drummer Pete Sandoval. We were a good portion through a bottle of Jim Beam and I was asking how the ‘H’ album was going…last I heard, they’d be in the studio any day now. I specifically asked if Dave Vincent was back in, as per the rumour going around. Pete confided in me that the negotiations had fallen apart last minute. He had no idea who was going to do bass and vocals on the album. He was freaking out. This was my chance! I said “I’LL fucking do it! I can play all of your albums A through to D, note for note, know all the lyrics, and can do all the vocals!” When Al Dawson from Earache confided the same problem to Luke – no Dave on the H album, don’t know who to use – Al was told the same thing. Sam can do it! He can already play all of their stuff! – Hey, you gotta aim big sometimes, don’t you?

Needless to say that one didn’t fly. Shit, it didn’t even start flapping.

Had my own wig and everything

Anyway, I auditioned and got the role with Mithras. There was another unexpected pleasure on joining Mithras which was everyone could play their instruments WELL. I mean REALLY well. We locked in real tight together, and even though Leon regularly gave Ben hell about his drumming it was a step up from a lot of the other dudes I was used to playing with. The main thing I loved was that no-one forgot songs, or made ‘car-crash’ mistakes; mistakes where you have to stop the song and start again.

I was so used to years in Berzerker where you were never sure if someone was going to forget how the song went, or start playing something different entirely. I remember some show in Adelaide where we were supposed to play ‘Abandonment’. Luke and I started playing the song, but Matt started playing ‘No-One Wins’ and Gary played ‘Painless’. This was after plenty of rehearsing and a few shows. There were no problems like that with Mithras. It was pretty rock-solid from early on and only got better. I think we looked at each other after the first rehearsal and said, hey, that would have been a passable show. As a result I always felt super-confident stepping onto a stage with those guys. Sometimes with Berzerker I’d be in my mask just shuddering, thinking dear god what’s going to happen tonight?

This confidence was a good thing as we booked our first two shows about three months after starting rehearsals. The first show – which wasn’t the perfect one – was in Rushden, or Kettering. I have difficulties telling those two places apart. About twenty people turned up to the show. I guess it was good as a ‘first gig’.

The second show was the perfect one, and that was two weeks later in the Czech Republic playing at Brutal Assault 2009 Festival for around ten thousand people.

We went to fly from that English airport beginning with ‘S’ whose name I can’t remember right now. The stupid one the global-warming protesters shut down a few years by yelling at the fence, that one. Air travel with a band would normally be cause for disaster, and to be fair we tried to incite disaster in two respects. Firstly we brought along our soundguy Bob. Bob really shouldn’t travel anywhere foreign, or even be let out of a cage. He is a bald middle-aged red-faced foul-mouth whoring bigot on an array of medication. By bigot, I totally mean raging racist. He doesn’t like foreigners unless he is perpetrating sex crimes on them. Even then, I fear he still doesn’t like them and that his graven libido is fuelled by loathing. He just has that aura about him: “Born to Hate-Fuck”.

And that’s the other side to Bob, the man requires constant sex. He just Has To Have It. It doesn’t matter if it’s strangers, homeless women, personal ads in the paper, or mobile numbers written on toilet doors, Bob would be in there faster than a pig to shit. He is the sexual go-to man for every woman in the Midlands who requires loveless debasing by a revolting thug.

Bob nearly lost it when we went through security screening. We all got through fine but he was pulled aside by a black security dude and made to remove his Doc Martens. Bob’s face got red and his eyes bulged, and we barely managed to drag him away post-search before he started quoting Hitler and mouthing all manner of racial epiphets. He spent the rest of the trip speaking to everyone in the Czech Republic in a Borat accent, but apart from that he was fine.

Stanstead! That’s the name of the fucking airport! So we nearly missed our plane because we were all lounging around eating sandwiches and having drinks. Fortunately, Leon is super OCD about details and managed to alert us that the gate was closing in five minutes during one of his many paper checks. The guy was detail-obsessed about every aspect of the flight, the bookings, the show, to the point where he was even reading the fine print under ‘carriage’ to find out what we were and weren’t allowed to take on the flight. He had me ringing up the airline at one point to get their definition of what constituted “electronic equipment”, which was tricky as the airline’s customer service helpline (like all UK helplines) was an M.C.Escher nightmare of phone options leading from one to the other and staffed entirely by robots. About an hour into that call I was cursing the obsession with detail, but it saved our ass that day. We made our flight and were the last ones on board.

Made it on board even with a Weapon of Mass Destruction wrapped in coffin-shaped cardboard. Nothing but the best on these multimillion dollar tours.

So, this is where the gig became perfect. It became perfect because the team behind the Brutal Assault festival were involved, and when they’re involved, shit goes right. We arrived in Prague, met a dude holding a sign for the band, and jumped into a van. We were riding with the guys from Pain who were lovely, and a guitar tech from Opeth who was a douche. You know, one of those industry support people who thinks they’re more important than the band itself. We drove for an hour and a half and arrived at a small town jam-packed with metalheads near the border of Poland. The van drove into a large old military fortress and parked in a large carpark area.

We got out. The driver told us to wait for a minute, that help would be along shortly. Everything had been going smoothly so far and this is where everything took a step up in wonderfulness. About a minute later, a person from the festival came and gave us laminates, drink and food vouchers, and pointed at where the food tent was. Another minute later, a dude on a quadbike towing a trailer along turned up and asked if we had merchandise to sell at the merch tent. We gave him our boxes of shirts and CDs which he swiftly counted, wrote down amounts and prices, then gave us a stock sheet to sign. He was just disappearing around the corner when another quad-bike-trailer combo turns up. This guy was to take us and our equipment to our backstage cabin. I loved it. BAM BAM BAM! The three top problems of getting ready for a gig taken care of with minimum fuss, one after the other. Normally just organising food, backstage, and merch would take hours and screaming and frantic negotiation. I was enjoying myself already. We headed off to the cabin.

Now the festival site is a BIG old army fort with a few layers of walls. We were already inside the main compound. To get to the backstage cabin area, you walk down a large tunnel which takes you through the last wall into the festival area. The ground is gravel and dirt. We walked through the tunnel which approaches the two-stage setup from behind, and as you approach it you just get the huge bottom end of whatever band is playing booming at you. When you exit the tunnel it opens up to a huge outdoor area, all the sound frequencies pound your ear at incredible volume, and you can suddenly hear thousands of people. It’s like being a gladiator and walking out into the Colosseum. I went to a gap between the stages and looked out. We estimated the crowd to be around ten thousand people. They filled the open area and were sitting on a hill that ran up the back of the site. I could see them in the distance. Biohazard were on, telling everyone how real their shit was and reminding people that they were in fact from Brooklyn. Tera Patrick was dancing on stage. I looked back at the people. They were smashing the crap out of each other. In a few hours, I thought, I will be onstage playing to them. My stomach dropped away and I felt lightheaded. It felt like my first gig all over again.

We went to our cabin which was stocked with water, soft drinks, fridges, and towels. We got our equipment out and started double-checking everything. Bob went off to check the soundboard and say things to strangers like “my wife, she is number one prostitute in village”. Our assigned assistant turned up. I forget her name but one thing I won’t forget is how ridiculously hot she was. She was taller than all of us, blonde, slightly tanned, great english. She said if there’s anything she can do for us, do not hesitate to ask. Thank God Bob was out of the room.

The other guys had a good long look around, I think I went for some food. When I checked out the festival site later I found the sheer number of people so overwhelming I scurried back to the cabin fairly quickly. The thing which was playing on my mind the most was that with all the Berzerker shows, both Luke and I would do vocals…but he was the only one that regularly talked to crowds and introduced songs. I think my last attempt at stage banter with Berzerker didn’t go over too well. We were starting a tour in Rushden – or Kettering – and some drunken idiot stage-diver managed to tangle up and unplug all of the drum trigger leads as well as the mic for the guitar cab. I think Luke screamed at me to say something, tell a joke, anything, while they took time to try and plug everything back in. I told a joke:

Q: What’s the difference between an apple and a dead baby?
A: I don’t cum on an apple before I eat it

So stage banter wasn’t my forte. It was starting to dawn on me that I would not only have to play bass and do vocals in this gig but address and engage a crowd of thousands, whose first language was not english. Gulp. I started compulsively chewing gum. The biggest rush doing a gig for me isn’t when I step on stage, it’s the two or three hours beforehand. By the time I step out I’ve already warmed up and got myself to a state mentally where I can handle anything. But the pre-gig waiting is when the imagination has time to fly and the butterflies happen. I love butterflies. To me it feels like your body straining against a leash, doing what it has to do to get itself into a peak-performance state. I never had butterflies like this before. It was unreal. It was like drugs. Thank god this gig was with Mithras. We were so well prepared, so ready, and Leon, Ben, and Bob were so relaxed that it was something I could enjoy.

“SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT”

The hot assistant came to our room and told us there was a lineup change, would that be a problem? I thought to myself, hah, here it comes. I knew this was all going too smoothly. This is where they say you’re on ten minutes ago, good luck with the last five minutes of your set. Or they say that some rockstar has had a strop and they need to cancel your show. I wasn’t prepared for what she said though:

“The lineup that we’ve got in mind would be Brutal Truth, then Turisas, then you, then Cynic on last. Would that be a problem?”

WOAH!  Brutal Truth are legends, Turisas are festival crowd favourites, then us, then Cynic – who had just reformed after over a decade in retirement. We’d be the last band on our stage, Cynic would be the last band on the other stage so I could happily fool myself that we were co-headliner for the day. I’ve got video footage of the moment I found this new arrangement out and I actually stop chewing gum for a second and start giggling.

Then I started thinking battle tactics. It’s a terrible habit of mine. I start comparing my band to anyone else we’re playing with, and trying to see if we have an advantage we could exploit. Brutal Truth would be on our stage before us – legends, but their gig is musically sloppy. Turisas would then go on the other stage – great band, but not particularly heavy. We’d go on, and then Cynic would be after us – musically amazing, but they just kind of stand around playing their instruments instead of pasting the audience with power. Shit, I thought, not only are we going to be in a great position but we might actually come out well against these other bands. Our musicianship will beat Brutal Truth, our heaviness will crush Turisas, and we’ll be pouring more energy off the stage than Cynic. We agreed to the lineup change and finished getting ready.

Brutal Truth went on. I think they stopped one song about thirty seconds from the end because their drummer Rich forgot how it went. Some guy without any arms or legs got onstage with them to party. I went back to the cabin to do one last warm-up and think of things to yell at the audience. Turisas went on and started their show on the other stage. As soon as they got going, we got our gear up on our stage and got it ready. It looked like there might be disaster at one point when I realised I’d forgotten to bring a UK-Europe power adapter but Leon, true to form, had a spare. I gaffer-taped my leads down, and checked the mic was in a good position so I could sing into it and see my bass. God, the stage was huge. I could hear Ben warming up on the kit. People were starting to drift over. We did a foldback check and pasted our setlists around us. I looked at the guys. They looked at me. I saw our backdrop behind Ben, high up under the lighting rig. Turisas finished playing. We did one last check to make sure our instruments were properly amplified. The stage manager gave us the go ahead. We started playing.

We had done some rehearsing for this gig and played one show. I had personally done a lot more preparation though in the preceding months. I was jogging in my spare time, doing pushups and crunches. I’d rehearse the set twice a day and always do it after my exercises when I was most exhausted. I had a large mirror in my lounge room and I’d perform into it, not looking at my bass, and working out what looked like cool frontman moves and what looked like a dork. I practiced playing in the dark, practiced playing one handed so I could plug my lead back in, practiced finger-picking in case I dropped my pick. At that point in my life my long term relationship was crumbling and my job was shedding people left, right, and centre. I needed something to obsess about, something to keep me occupied, and I occupied myself with rehearsing and preparation. I was ready for this gig.

I’m not going to do a song-by-song breakdown or anything like that. But some highlights are worth noting. Big crowds are awesome. I remember looking out and the mind couldn’t really encapsulate how many people were out there. It was like a blur. I yelled out ‘HEY’ between songs and heard about a thousand people reply. That’s a rush, right there.

The playing was REALLY good. No car-crashes, no real stuff-ups (except for me starting ‘Wrath of God’ a little early). Ben was drumming extra-fast this evening but we were rehearsed, pumped, and the foldback was great so we rode it no problem. And my vocals were my best ever. I was in the zone. I remember I was so on-point that night I managed to walk away from the mic between verses of one song while bashing away on the bass, walk a couple of laps of stage, and recommence the next verse the moment I strode back to the microphone. It’s one of those simple things that is impossibly tricky to time. I did it without thinking, playing to the people sidestage, backstage, the other bandmembers, the crowd.

The doppler effect – occupational hazard of superfast blasting

The crowd were pretty quiet during the show apart from the applause at the end of each song. There were a few fans up the front losing their shit, but everyone else was subdued and watching intently. They were trying to work out who these three office-worker types were, from some band they’d never heard of, who had suddenly appeared on the high end of the bill and were setting about totally destroying their set. They also had another reason to be confused. I neglected to mention the band name. Oops. I might have screeched it out once, but that night I learned a lesson about the big gigs: when you say your band name, say it many times and say it slowwwwly…ESPECIALLY when you’re playing to foreign crowds. Pretend you’re an Englishman in Spain somewhere trying to order chips.

The gig finished. There was a ten minute break before Cynic was going on. The crowd cheered, then drifted off to their stage. I looked at the guys. They looked at me. We did it. I packed my gear up, not quite able to believe we’d not only played our show, but played a great show. We stashed everything in the cabin and went sidestage to watch Cynic play. Other bands were there. Cynic started playing some of their old ‘Focus’ material. I looked at the crowd. They didn’t seem that into it. Quite a few of them had drifted off, probably back to their campsites for some sleep. I didn’t care. Sean Reinert was drumming just a few metres away. The guy was so fluid behind the kit, it was like watching a great dancer, or a kung-fu expert. You see his movements and know you’re in the presence of a master. I thought of a driving trip I had taken up the coast of Australia back when I was in high-school listening to their album. I could never have predicted I’d be watching them in such circumstances.

OK. The rest of the night was pretty tip-top. We got paid – not always a given with festivals. We got paid, Tomas the festival organiser was happy with the show, we got our itemized merch back with sale money and a receipt. Bob, in addition to being a soundman and a total freak, also had nifty tour-manager skillz and managed to get everything else wrapped up while we were basking in the post-gig glow. We got a lift back to the hotel where we’d be staying the night, riding with members of the band Grave (“I love you dudes, first heard you on Triple-J radio station in Oz back in the 90′s!” etc etc). Our driver was a madman superspy fella who dealt with a traffic problem by taking the vehicle offroad, finding an invisible side-road, and gunning down it in the dark.

Note: After writing this story down I asked Leon to check it for me and make sure nothing of note was missed. He sent me this -:

“One thing you didn’t mention was when that guy was driving us back to the hotel we had to cross to the wrong side of the motorway as there was that massive traffic jam, the driver changed lanes and started gunning down to find his invisible turnoff. Two huge articulated lorries were coming the other way blaring their horns, and Bob was asking the driver “how do you say suck my balls in Czech?” I was sure that was the last thing I was going to hear in my life but we just made it round the corner before the trucks got there.”

We got to our hotel alive and in reasonable time and sized it up. Nice. It was a big old place, set on the town square. The driver told us what time he’d be there in the morning to get us to our flight, unloaded our gear, and left us to it.

We got our room keys and divvied up rooms. Ben and I grabbed a room together and I went straight down to the lobby. I needed a goddamn drink. I required libations and celebrations. I went to reception and asked if they had a bar. The answer was no. But! They sold alcohol from reception! AND they accepted credit card! Just when I thought things couldn’t get better, I looked at their drinks menu. THEY HAD BECHEROVKA.

Becherovka is a potato vodka with a bit of a medicinal cinnamon taste. It goes down absolutely deliciously and I can rarely find the bloody stuff anywhere. But they sold it here in cheap little frozen aperitif bottles. I bought eight or so, and as many beers as I could carry. There were a couple of couches and a table in the lobby area so I sat down there and settled in for some drinking.

There were another couple of dudes down there drinking as well. One of them was the sound guy for Pain. He ended up giving us a bottle of Jagermeister. It was in the bands rider but they were all too exhausted or sick to drink. When a band is on tour it’s usually a given that at least half of them will be ill with something at any given point. I gratefully accepted the Jagermeister, and bummed a smoke off the other guy sitting with us. He was a nice mannered young dude. I asked him what his name was. He said Mathias. I asked if he was playing with the festival and he said he’d just played. Which band? Turisas, he replied.

WOAH! I asked if he wanted to get the rest of the band down to help with the jager but apparently they were already in their rooms asleep. I looked at Ben and Leon. I doubted if the few of us could handle the alcohol we were beginning to accumulate. We needed backup. Fortunately, the cavalry arrived: Brutal Truth.

What General Custer would look like if the Indians were alcoholic and came in bottles

The first time I met these guys was at a show in Melbourne in the early 90s. I lent a cigarette lighter to Danny Lilker so he could take a hit off a hash pipe just before playing. I looked over while he was toking. Rich, the drummer, had cut an acid tab in half. If my youthful memory serves correctly, he took half and gave the other half to Kevin. Then they started playing a set which went for over an hour. Somehow Rich was still able to function well enough to sell me the ‘machine parts’ EP after the show. THESE people can be my drinking buddies, I thought.

Kevin and Rich got involved. They had been drinking and smoking all afternoon. They tried some of the Becherovka, then had some Jagermeister. Then a little more. After a while, Rich casually got up and walked out the front of the hotel. There were big windows and the front door and lobby was all glass, so we could see him clearly. He stood at the top of the stairs and bent over taking deep breaths. He turned white, then green. Kevin was commentating: “Oh man, he’s fucked. He’s gonna throw up. Hahaha, oh yeah, he’s gone”. Somehow Rich managed to pull himself back from the brink and rejoin us at the table.

Cynic arrived back. I watched in silent awe as Paul Masvidal walked past. Didn’t consider offering him a drink. No-one plays music like that unless they subsist on tofu and spring water. There was an almighty crash. I looked at the front doors. Sean Reinert had run up the stairs carrying a drum flight case and a bag of spring water and had run straight into the doors, which were now cracked. Bottles of water had gone everywhere. I stepped out, pretty drunk.

“Can I help you there Sean?” I smirked. Must suck to be famous, smirking aussies you’ve never met walking up to you in the middle of europe addressing you by your name.
He kind of looked at me blankly. “I’ve….got to….get this water”
I helped him pick up the water, ensured the door was open, and he scurried inside and up to his room. Guess he won’t be drinking either, I thought.

I got back on it. The Brujeria dudes arrived. I saw Daniel Erlandsson, whom I’d met once or twice before. I waved the jagermeister bottle at him, taunting gently “Erland-sson……ERRRRLANDSON”. He backed away with fear on his face – “No. Oh no no no. Not jagermeister”.

It was a good night. I laugh when I see these facebook pages “Party Like A Rockstar”. They’re always pictures of insanely dressed people doing duck-pouts in plush looking venues with hot women everywhere. Get real. Rockstars don’t party, they’re usually in bed early when on tour so they don’t wreck the next show. Or if they’re up, they’re sharing convivial drinks with other industry people. You don’t have the energy after a big show to go wrecking rooms or pillaging wenches.

I woke up the next morning after about three hours sleep with barely even a hangover. I went downstairs for breakfast (food! we even got FED!) and saw Rich sitting at the breakfast table, chowing down. I was shocked. “But…but…but….I thought we’d KILLED you?” Nup, he was fine. Years of experience, I suppose.

Bob and Ben were missing. I found out later that Bob had seen a rather sussed picture of a man gobbling a sausage on the side of a lorry, and he’d basically forced Ben to join him on a citywide hunt to find the store that sold the offending product:

Dying! Dying! Dying for a sausage

The lobby was full of bands all departing to their next gig, or their next festival appearance. One of the guys from Atheist was trying to get help, one of his bandmates was down with the flu. I pointed him over to the pharmacy across the square and reminded him to get a receipt to claim on his travel insurance. He thanked me and went. I thought, christ, you guys should have been Metallica-sized with ‘Piece of Time’. I heard a SMASH, and looked around. Sean Reinert was standing at reception, and had dropped change all over the floor. I gave him a hand picking it up.

“My…money” he stammered, trying to explain.
“Mate, seriously” I said. “Do you leave ALL of your co-ordination behind the kit?”

Our pickup van was on time. Kevin Sharpe gave me some goodbye shit about the carboard boxes I was transporting my bass in, then we headed to Prague, got our plane, arrived back in England. Paid, fed, gigged, partied, rested, and satisfied. Best gig ever. We waited for a shuttle to take us to our respective carparks. Bob watched black guys exiting customs suggesting they’d just held coups in their home countries, and checking his watch to see if he was going to be able to make that night’s swinger-club session. We laughed at his comments in that sort of way where you pretend you’re amused but are really worried that people will think you’re his friends, and shuffled away surreptitiously.

I got in my car and drove back to my home in Bournemouth, where I swiftly descended the peaks from that weekend. It was a great festival, an immense gig, and the last moment where it felt like life was perfect.

Footage from the show:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

The best footage – Worlds Beyond the Veil

recommended reading – The Rotted tour diary

Just realised a few things all at once:

1. The Rotted have a blog
2. They are on tour at the moment
3. Their blog is actually interesting to read, candid, and well written

A little bit of knowledge is an awesome thing. My tour stories probably end up sounding like a broken record (kind of like my music)….always “this went wrong”, “then he started bleeding”, “didn’t get paid”, “no food so we ate the setlists”, etcetera. Reading The Rotted tour stories reminds me of touring all over again: the exhaustion, getting anything resembling a daily routine smashed to bits, band hierarchies on tour, the social life exclusive to a touring band, and so on. Anyone who is starting off in a band would do well to read it and see what’s in store for them.

http://therotted.blogspot.co.uk/

gentlemen AND scholars

 

Nebraska Strip Club, US Tour 2001

You’re young, male, in a band, travelling in a foreign country, and you have some time off. Where do you go? You head right to the strip club.

Boredom is a big problem on tour. People have theorized that this is why so many musicians turn to drugs. Eight hours of travel a day, staring out a window. Boring. Waiting for the venue to open up (always two hours later than the time you were given). Boring. Waiting to soundcheck. Boring. Waiting for doors to open. Boring. Playing your show. Well, that’s between thirty minutes to an hour of excitement. Sitting on merch for the rest of the night. Boring. Packing up, loading the van. Strenuous and boring. I’ve got to stop here before it becomes “reading thesenseless blog? Boring”.

But the long and the short of it is, touring is like groundhog day; the same routine again and again and again. We had a phrase for touring : “hurry up and wait”. Everyone would be telling you how important it was to be at the venue at this time, to be at soundcheck this time, to be offstage by that time…but you were always left sitting around waiting because every single fucking entity in the music business is unfailingly late. So you’d hurry up to get your shit together at the behest of someone else, then sit around for ages waiting until they turn up late and mosey on in like there’s all the time in the fucking world. You’d be wolfing down your $1 wendys burger like an animal and sprinting back to the venue for soundcheck, but the PA hadn’t arrived. Or the soundguy wasn’t there. Or the rest of your band had vanished to go have a good time somewhere else without telling you. So when you all get some time off to go enjoy yourselves together, you grab that opportunity with both hands.

That’s how we ended up at a stripclub at a truckstop town in Nebraska in 2001. It was the first Berzerker tour in the US and we had the Alarum guys in the band back then: Evans, Palf, and Racca. It was over a week into the tour. Our tour manager was a big fat Puerto Rican called Tito Piccone. Sounds like a gangster name, doesn’t it? Jesus I could write a dozen stories about this fella. A good half of them would be spiteful, vengeful, and libelous, and I’m sure I’ll squeeze them out at some point down the track, but for now I just remember the good things. He introduced me to At the Drive In’s “Relationship of Command” album which I adored, but the rest of the band hated. We were driving around the US in a splitter van and when he put that CD on I’d clap for joy but everyone else would start bitching. They all wanted to listen to that silly ‘musician’ music like Frank Gambale, or some jazz metal stuff. When I heard the first track ‘Arcarsenal’, to me it sounded like the United States of America, right there.

 

pre-tour: nourished, washed, excited, and conspicuously not hating each other

He was also the first person to play me Deftones and describe the music perfectly.
“Hey Sammy” he told me in his breathy high pitched voice while driving one fine day, “if you’re ever making it with a chick, you stick on Deftones, right? Because chicks LOVE Deftones. And then while they’re getting off on the Deftones, you’re eating them out, and they’re like” – at this point he put one hand on the ceiling, arching his back while driving with his spare hand – “oh! OH Tito, daddy! Oh my god TITO! Oh! OH!” I could see a few rolls of Tito’s stomach emerge from under his t-shirt while he impersonated female orgasm.

Come to think of it, it took me a good five years to try listening to Deftones again after that.

Anyway we were on a big drive through Nebraska and Tito decided that was enough driving for the day. We pulled into a tiny truckstop town. I call it that cause it was like one truckstop, one hotel, a few houses, and a stripclub. I don’t even know if it had a name. I didn’t even realise the stripclub was there at first. I went straight to the hotel room and started washing my underwear and socks in the sink. This was still the part of the tour we could afford hotel rooms. I stuffed up washing my socks in the sink and managed to give myself huge blisters on the inside of both my thumbs, right where they rested against the guitar. I burst them and put bandaids on them, when Palf walked in and told us he’d found a stripclub next door. I’m not sure if we all went but most of us pretty much dropped what we were doing and headed over.

The guy checked our ID at the door and saw we were all Australians. He asked what we were doing in such a remote place. One of us replied we were a metal band on tour. The dude loved this, he thought that was awesome. He let us all in, waived the cover charge, and told the DJ to play some metal for us. I think the DJ put on In Flames. Fortunately it was one of their older albums from back when they were heavy.

It was great. We were the only guys there apart from the staff. The strip club was one room and it smelled a bit weird. We got drinks and sat right up at the stage. There were a couple of mediocre strippers who were finding themselves having to dance sexily to Swedish Melodic Death Metal. I had brought some $1 bills along and coaxed one of the girls over to muster up whatever sexy-dance a $1 bill buys. She was topless and still wearing panties. She danced a bit, got up nice and close. I freed up another $1 bill, then another. I wanted to see them panties off and I was going to dripfeed her dollar bills until they disappeared. I think I finally realised that strippers weren’t allowed to remove panties in Nebraska roughly at the same moment I got a massive shock.

Without warning, around the region of my balls, there was a loud noise. The noise was like savage growling and yelling. Keep in mind this is a guy from a death metal band saying “savage growling” so you can guarantee the savagery quotient of that growling. I was sitting right up at the stage, all the better for the stripper to drape her legs over my shoulders and I looked down to see what the noise was. Underneath the stage was a cage and inside the cage were three german shepherds. The dogs had decided to start barking at me, right up against the cage. THAT’S what the smell was in the place! Dogs. The stripclub smelled of dogs. The owner kept his dogs underneath the stage the girls danced on. I wondered why they were barking at me. Maybe they were jealous.

We didn’t stay there that long. We were tired from travelling and were only on $10 pd’s a day. It didn’t take long to use all of them up, and I was bored again. I thought of one of the pre-tour goodbye parties I’d had back in Melbourne, where we went to Goldfingers. That place was clean, and big, and all glowing and shiny like a little casino. The girls were all hot and in the main room they were all totally naked and convincingly acted like we didn’t repulse them. This little truckstop place just didn’t measure the hell up. On the debauch richter scale it barely rated the thud you get on a sidewalk when you push a small child over.

The next night we were playing in Colorado. We were about fifteen minutes into our set and I noticed the front row was staring at my hands. I looked down and saw that the band aids were hanging off my thumbs, as well as two complimentary flaps of skin. I don’t know how I hadn’t noticed them. The flesh looked very, very raw. I think the red mist of performance had sent the pain offstage to get its autograph later. I waited til the end of the song then ripped the bandaids and skin off and threw them into the crowd.

The Senseless ‘The Floating World’ media roundup, April 2012

Sales for the new album: nearing 1/3rd of the way to my required goal for pressing physical CDs (figures not yet received from Amazon). EVERYONE wants CDs, that has definitely been made clear. I hereby commit to pressing them by the end of the year.

Reviews: Metal As Fuck, 1 user review on Amazon
Interviews: Lurker, Uberrock
Media: Mention on SMNnews, ‘Amazing Pain’ played on PlanetMetal 28th feb

Videos:
In Our Hearts (the floating world)
Walk – unmixed version (the floating world)
The Senseless rehearsal video with Leon Macey and Sam
Vacation (In the Realm of the Senseless)
Happy Ever After (In The Realm of the Senseless)
After Happy Ever (In The Realm of the Senseless)

Buy From: CDBaby, Amazon, I-tunes, facebook

Usual Sites: LastFM, myspace, encyclopaedia metallum, metalstorm

Ask Earache

I know I rip into Earache Records a bit based on years of association, but Ask Earache has been a guilty pleasure of mine for a year or two. It’s slowing down a bit now, but it still makes interesting reading for anyone who wants a candid window into the the thoughts of a once-legendary record label.

The link shows honest responses from Earache Records staff members to public questions and if you’re a fan of their back-catalogue or just extreme music in general, there are some fantastic stories in here. They also have the odd bit of advice which I recommend reading with a grain of salt; although much of it is solid gold, a lot of it is best read to educate yourself what a record label’s opinion or view is.

Lovely people, too

Tuck And Roll

Oh dear. I’m going to have to explain “Tuck And Roll”. I’ve got a couple more tour stories coming up where that phrase appears, so I’m going to have to illustrate how the band latched onto it and gave it a flogging.

First, a caveat: all bands turn into pirates within a week of hitting the road. ALL bands. It doesn’t matter what kind of music they play. Within seven days everyone in the bus will be unwashed, smelling of ass, drunk, and treating everyone around them including themselves like shit. You might as well all be in a motorised longboat looking for venues to pillage and girls to loot. Manners and hygiene just melt away, as do sobriety and sanity.

I say this not to seek forgiveness, but merely to explain. In this and upcoming stories, behaviour gets a bit questionable. We did things all right-minded people would object to. Whatever. I know that many people in our shoes would have done the same.

Tuck and Roll. This catchcry originated in El Paso, Texas near the start of a Berzerker US tour. We were all hanging out in the motorhome, which was freshly festooned with glowing christmas lights that one Jesse Pintado had found in a rubbish skip and kindly donated. We had some randoms visit that night, a young dude and his cute girlfriend.

Why do guys do that? For god’s sake, if you have a girlfriend never, never, NEVER take her to a tourbus. Not unless you’re one of those fellas who gets off on watching guys mercilessly hit on his girlfriend, in which case fill your drink with ice and go right on ahead. It’s guaranteed to happen, and half the time as soon as your back is turned someone will be getting it on with your girl. Or they’ll swap email addresses, or phone numbers, and within weeks your sweet girl will be haranguing you about being boring, or that she needs change and adventure in her life, and that will be that. Guys on tour are going to be sexually aggressive. They’re travelling to a different town each night, every night. They don’t have time to subtly ascertain a girls relationship status, or go through the slow process of trying to woo her with charm and character. They have a few hours at best to go from hey to money-shot, and don’t have time to faff around doing anything but being very, very direct.
 I’ve got a half-dozen stories lined up ready to go about the brazen shit we got away with when girls were on the bus. I’ve got a mental image right now of reaching drunkenly out of my floor-level bunk one night in Scotland and trying to drag in a terrified screaming girl by her foot because I liked the look of her ankles. Never, ever, EVER bring your girlfriend onto a tourbus.

Will shag anything on tour. ANYTHING.

So this young dude had brought his cheerful cute drunk girlfriend onto our tourbus. At that stage, we were onboard with Akim the tourmanager, and Walker. Walker was travelling with us. His exact role, I may or may not get around to explaining (and it requires a LOT of explaining). The young dude was pretty drunk. I remember a few of the guys were pretty into his girlfriend. They were into her the same way piranhas don’t give a shit whether you’re feeding them beef jerky or wagyu. Young? Cute? Drunk? Giddyup.

To cut a long story short, this young drunk dude decided at some point to drunk-drive his way home. Did anyone protest, suggest he was too plastered? I do not recall. I remember him telling the girl he was heading off once or twice, and she said she was coming. Well, she didn’t go and he eventually disappeared. This was a logistical problem for the girl as he was her ride home. This was no problem for us as now a cockblock had been removed.

It took about ten minutes before someone wrote on her tits with a texta. She encouraged us all to leave a mark, I remember writing “insert 9 inch dildo here” on her right buttock. A couple of the guys tried to ‘escalate’ with her. At this point, I should mention our camera policy, and it’s something I recommend to all aspiring young bands on the road:

As soon as you get girls on your touring vehicle of choice, roll the cameras. Get footage of them getting on the bus, enjoying themselves on the bus, you enjoying them on the bus, and them getting off the bus. One of the downsides of sexually and morally questionable behaviour is getting retrospectively accused of outright rape or molestation by girls having regrets a few days, weeks, or months later. Getting accused of that as an individual is fairly straightforward; someone accusing a band of that has multiple public outlets. They can – and will – accuse you on guestbooks, forums, and facebook and kick up a right fuss. This doesn’t create the outcry that instances of this crime would normally cause as the public expects its musicians to be savage and retarded. But still, we have parents and families, and we don’t want them reading about that shit. 

This was a lesson learned on the first tour of the US, and we didn’t even behave that badly. It was our first overseas tour and we were still learning the limits of our awfulness. We hooked up with a girl or two, one of them had abandoned her boyfriend during a pool game to come frolic. All was happiness and laughter. Then two months later, no doubt after her boyfriend realised what had happened and gave her a bollocking, she cried rape all over our fansites and everywhere. She only shut up when I requested she file charges against us with the police. So roll them cameras so you have a document of what really happened, and some evidence of consent. It’s easier these days as well, just get the video on your phone going and ensure the footage shows exactly what’s going on.

So the guys are trying to escalate with the girl, there’s a couple of cameras surreptitiously rolling, but no-one’s getting anywhere. The Napalm Death tour manager came up for a chat. They were just about to leave for Phoenix and wanted to know if we wanted to follow them? Gotta remember, this was before vehicle GPS was available let alone phone GPS. In those days, you would have to examine maps and make notes how to get from town to town. So we said, hell yeah we’ll follow you. Saves us having to pore over a map and argue with each other for an hour. Just follow the Napalm taillights. Sweet.

So we told the girl we were leaving. She asked us if we could drop her off home. We said no way. We had taillights to follow, and we weren’t deviating from their course. We said she was welcome to travel all the way to Phoenix with us though. She agreed. The cameras were rolling. After a few more minutes, the Napalm bus left and we dutifully followed.

The vibe changed right about here. A couple of the fellas went to bed. We turned the main room lights off. I was wandering around packing things away, or writing my diary, or doing something relatively un-fun. The girl was obviously thinking, these guys are into me, I’ll wait until we’re getting near a turn-off road then I should be able to convince them to drop me home. But our switch from drinking, harrassing, fun-lovers to sleeping, navigating, driving tour-pros probably unnerved her a bit. After ten minutes the road headed out into the desert. She started hinting that the turn off to her road was in ten miles time. We said, no way. Didn’t you hear? We’re not stopping. She went quiet then tried again two minutes later. Again, the answer was a firm no. Someone pointed out to her that we had told her that we were going to drive to Phoenix directly. She started sniffling. I think Walker came up with comment of the night when he mused out loud, “I wonder how long it takes to bury a body in the desert?”

She was openly teary at this point, and someone suggested a compromise. That compromise was Tuck And Roll - you leap off the moving vehicle, tuck into a ball, and roll to a stop, hopefully without breaking anything. This seemed to distress her further and we only got her to settle down by explaining we’d slow to walking pace briefly. Still wasn’t happy though. She told us she had a five mile walk from the turn-off to her house right through lost-wandering-mexican-desert country. Not our problem. Couldn’t she see we enjoyed tears? I thought of the movie Salo, the part where a girl is crying and begging for mercy from one of the libertines and the guy says the chick’s tears are the most exciting thing he’s ever seen. OK, we weren’t quite that far gone but there were four of us present so the simile holds up in terms of bodycount.

We approached the turn off. Our road was long and straight, so we could keep an eye on Napalm’s taillights easily. We slowed down. Akim was constantly explaining to her that she would have to get off, and this was her one chance to be within walking distance of home. He had a very convincing and soothing manner of speech with women that saved us drama at various times. He always reminded me of a cut-price Gene Simmons. His monologue was punctuated by the door being opened and the RV slowing down. This girl looked from guy to guy to plead her case, but they’d all gone cold. She went to the doorway. I was closest. She looked deep into my eyes, begging me to do something – talk my cohorts into making the turnoff, or at least slowing to a stop. She was a cute girl, despite the texta we’d smeared on her. She had really nice blue eyes. We were travelling at about walking distance now. I saw the t-intersection of her turnoff. I shook my head no, and gave her a kindly push out the door then shut it.

Unhappy? Bored?
How about a nice cup of TUCK AND ROLL

 

Edit:  The girl in the last photo is not the girl from the story. This girl is alive and well in Brussels, Belgium. The one from the story is probably still lost in the desert

Gary’s Foot

It’s time I wrote this one down.

I kept diaries when growing up, attending boarding school in the bush, living for a year up a mountain in Japan, and for all the tours I did. When I moved to England in 2005 (a wrong move if ever there was one) I left all my wordly possessions for safekeeping in a location. While living away, that location got flooded and I lost thousands of hours of writing and anecdotes. My remaining items were handed back to me in a couple of plastic bags to ensure the mildewy moistness didn’t stink everything out.

The point being, I’m now going to recollect a savage story from nearly ten years ago without any notes. My memory was impaired by alcohol, depression, and the cumulative brain-damage you collect from headbanging at over 300bpm. I was triple-retarded by that point of the tour, and I’m sure that other people might remember it all differently, but here’s my attempt at recalling it and setting it down for posterity before more time passes.

Berzerkers’ drummer Gary broke his foot on tour in the US in 2003, one week from the end of tour. Or rather, he had his foot broken for him. We were on tour with Nile, Napalm Death, Strapping Young Lad, and Dark Tranquility. We were fast-rising at that point. Our gig was better than ever. Kerrang had flown out some people to do a feature on us a couple of weeks beforehand. We were off to Europe in two weeks to do a headline tour. All the doors were opening and the stars were aligning. We were starting to reap the rewards of five years of work.

Then Gary broke his foot, and the band hit an extended layoff period from which it never recovered. We lost our momentum and missed the window of industry interest and could never regain it again. There was always a modicum of interest there, but there was definitely a ceiling set in place that we couldn’t bust through. So it’s safe to say that this was the night that changed the future of the band.

Band pic, including drummer with two functional legs

The gig was in Poughkeepsie, NY. That town could be bought by a billionaire and everything recreated in gold and diamonds, but to my mind it is and forever shall be a shithole. Our motorhome was a little more crowded than usual. Our tour manager Akim had only recently broken up with his long-term girlfriend and he was finding solace in strippers. He’d bought two along, I think he was dating one of them. There was a good and bad side to this. It was good to have some caring, nuturing girls riding around with us, especially hot girls. It was bad to wake up and see a mystery blanket pumping rhythmically opposite me, then have someones panting flushed face pop out from underneath it mid-orgasm.

We arrived at the club and received the usual warning you get at so many venues in the US: “Don’t go down the street by yourself”. This was the first place where I didn’t feel particularly safe at the club either. The bouncers were huge skinheads with swastika tattoos. I made a mental note to steer clear of them and make extra-efforts not to piss off the staff, and got about the business of loading in gear and setting up the merchandise desk.

We played the gig and it was a good one. I met Will Rahmer from Mortician afterwards, head of the NYDM gang. I remember we were having trouble talking as the music was loud and he’s a soft-spoken guy. Everytime he said something, he’d lean in to say it and I’d lean in to hear it, except we’d both lean into the same side so to an onlooker it probably looked like we were trying to tentatively kiss.

Will Rahmer, when he's not hacking people up for BBQ

I remember going to the toilets, always a good source post-gig for honest show feedback when you’re a mask-wearing band. You’d be having a leak and the guy next to you would be talking to his mate about how much you ruled/sucked and would have no idea who he was standing next to.

I remember working the merch table. We KILLED it in merch that night. We had the usual tricks up our sleeve – a TV playing at the table, backdrop on the wall, lights, two hot girls flashing their tits at everyone. There was a pretty good vibe except Akim got upset at Matt at some point. He’d brought some alien dolls along and Matt bit one in half. Apparently they were expensive.

It was at the merch table that things started to go wrong. I was talking with a Canadian friend called Ivan. It was good to catch up with him, he’d given me a copy a Massive Attack album the previous year. In mid-conversation, Gary walked up shaking a bottle of Budweiser. He said “Check this out”, and flipped the cap off. The cap and some beer foam hit my eyes. I consequently overreacted. Before I describe what I did, here’s a little background:

I had just got over a case of conjunctivitis. It had gone untreated for two days before I saw a doctor. I had caught it in Chicago, and woke up the next day with my pillow encrusted to my face. Nile took to calling me Pinky, and wanted me sealed in a bubble. Napalm Death claimed to be able to spot me easily in the pit due to my red glowing terminator eyes. My eyes looked like they were bleeding and really hurt. To this day when I get run-down or tired, one or both of the eyes will turn red.

Anyway Gary flicked that cap right into one of my recently-healed eyes then chuckled. Gary is a big slow Western Australian. Well he was back then, I haven’t heard from him in about eight years. I wiped the foam out of my eye, snorted up a big wad of phlegm, and spat it right down the front of his hoodie.

I wasn’t expecting a happy reaction but Gary acted like I’d just shot him. He gave a kind of shocked “awwwwwww”, and stumbled around a bit, then started chesting me. He actually seemed to want to fight me. For anyone who hasn’t heard what chesting is, it’s usually done in Australian Rules Football when one person keeps bumping up into the other person with their chest, usually because they’re too pussy to throw the first fucking punch. So this neanderthal bandmate was chesting me and muttering all sorts of semi-coherent shit. The gist of it was he thought I’d overreacted. I realised I had, and tried to make the peace.

Pussies

I tried to make the peace by popping out to the motorhome and fetching a couple of beers. I opened them both, gave one to Gary, said it was a peace-offering and that I was sorry. That didn’t seem to wash with him. He kept muttering unhappily, bumping into me regularly to make his point. I even tried ignoring him and carrying on my chat with Canadian Ivan but Gary would keep chesting and trying to start shit. Eventually I had enough and told him to fuck off. To my mild surprise, he did.

Fast forward to the Nile show. They were the last band on for the night. Towards the end of it, I became aware of something happening. All the tour managers, Luke, and some of the roadies were all talking with the promoter and some staff. They were all in a huddle and talking quickly. Luke didn’t look happy. There was definitely something going on. I went over and asked what was up. Luke said Gary had been shoved down some stairs by a bouncer, and had broken his foot. I wandered away trying not to laugh. Serves the fucker right, I thought. I was tempted to break both his legs myself by then.

From here on in, Gary wouldn’t tell me what happened. Every time I asked him about it, he’d say it was none of my business or he’d grunt and stay silent. Fair enough.  A day or two later I got something of a story from Nile’s lighting technician and Luke. You got to keep in mind, this is all third-hand stuff but apparently it went something like this:

Gary and the lighting technician were up on the top floor of this club, smoking weed together while the technician did the lights for Nile. They had one of those nifty little hash-pipe jobbies and they’d been smoking buddies for a few shows now. Luke was present as well, not smoking. One of the big skinhead nazi bouncers came up and told  Gary to stop smoking. Apparently, Gary’s response was to flash his tour pass and grunt that he was with a band. The bouncer said it didn’t matter, stop smoking or you’re out of the club. Gary repeated he was in a band. The bouncer said, right, you’re getting chucked out. He started pushing Gary, and when Gary failed to move sufficiently quickly the bouncer shoved him down a set of stairs. We all joked that was probably the fastest Gary had moved in his life. Matt later took to singing modified King Diamond lyrics to commemorate the event (“He pushed him down the stairs….to diiiiieeeee! No! Gary cried!!”)

The show was over and Matt and I loaded all the merch and equipment back into the motorhome by ourselves. We’d made a bucket on merch but it didn’t thrill us as much as it normally would. The tour was in uproar. Everyone was having quite a time Talking Very Importantly About What Had Happened. We told Gary we were taking him to the hospital. He kept belligerently replying “I’m fine” and refusing to go. We eventually got him and everyone back on the bus. Luke and I worked out where the nearest hospital was. It was late at night, cold, dark, and we were exhausted. Gary sat on one of the motorhome couches. One of the strippers was next to him, sympathising. Everyone else went to bed. We started driving, Luke at the wheel. The sympathy turned to hugs. Ten minutes later I turned around and Gary and the stripper were making out. I nudged Luke and nodded up at the rear-vision mirror. Luke looked, saw them, and focussed intently on the road trying not to grin. His eyes gleamed. A silent current of humour crackled between us. Akim had been boasting to us about how he had got both the strippers to blow him and swallow his load that afternoon.

Melts in the mouth, not in the hand

 
And that’s the end of the story of how Gary broke his foot.

Except it isn’t. I won’t describe the hellish week of trying to do gigs for the Worlds Fastest Band, but without a drummer. I won’t describe the ten day deadline in Florida of searching for a new drummer to play a headline tour with us. They can be stories of their own.

What I will say is that Gary ended up with a sprained ankle, broken foot, and some back injury. We were in the hospital for hours. He organised a special flight back to Australia through his insurers and left from Florida. The flight cost around US$13,000. I heard he had a special seat for his broken foot, a nurse, and the best steak he’d ever eaten. I think I traded one or two emails with him since then. Luke spent a year post-tour trying to get him to respond to the simple questions: Will you still play? Do you want to do gigs? Gary would chat with him but wouldn’t answer those questions. He never played or rehearsed with us again.

We put pressure on Earache, the booking agent, everyone, to sue the bouncer for assault. No-one would help us. There was a lot of yeah-yeah-yeah, and then everyone happily forgot about it. People sue for a hot coffee in McDonalds. People sue for injury, loss of earnings, distress. Gary had a great case for all of these and no-one would help him. Everyone sort of waited for us to get out the country then washed their hands of us. This is one of the many reasons I feel the way I do about labels, promoters, and clubs.