We'd pulled over at a service station
in the middle of the desert to fill up on gas. The rest of the guys
sound asleep, we decided not to disturb them and left them to their
dreams. It was an incredible feeling, sitting with Kev on a bench
outside the roadside café, supping on black coffee and staring off
at the dusty, silhouetted mountains on the horizon, the sleepy sun
hovering just above them. We were miles from nowhere in the middle
of Arizona. The Unites States of America truly is a strange and
wondrous land. No doubt it has a dark side to it but it's hard not
to be blown away by scenery such as this, scenery that carries such
weight you can almost feel it pressing upon you. I've drank coffee
all over the world, but nowhere quite as beautiful as this.
We played one show in Arizona, stopping
off in a strange little town called Tempe, on our way to the west
coast and California. Tempe was strange in that it looked like a
full scale model village, or small grid system city, brand spanking
new and shiny, in the middle of the arid Arizona desert. It reminds
you of the computer game Sims. It was boiling hot when we arrived at
the venue. We had plenty of time to kill since Nile were
sound-checking pretty much up until doors and we were simply line
checking before playing. With better things to do than watch them
wank their guitars off for a few hours, we took a look around Tempe.
Right next to the venue and looking
down on the small city from a northern vantage point was this big
dusty hill. I wouldn't call it a mountain but from the top of it you
could see the entire city as well as the silhouette of Phoenix off on
the horizon. Nervously ignoring the “BEWARE COUGARS!” sign, we
climbed to the top for a peek. On the other side of the hill was a
gigantic college football stadium that from our viewpoint we could
look right into. It says everything you need to know about the USA
that their school football teams have stadiums that hold forty
thousand spectators! It wasn't like that at Lodge Park I can tell
you... After spending an hour pissing about at the top of the hill we
headed back down into the little Sims city of Tempe and found a
coffee shop. The town was almost unnerving in it's quiet normality.
The Tempe show gave an insight to how
the tour was starting to unfold and what signs we could look for in
the crowd to gage how our set was going to go down. The easiest
marker to study was how well Decapitated's set went. Or more to the
point, how well their guitar and drum solo sections of their songs
went over. A common theme during the tour would become the six of us
stood backstage waiting to go on after Decapitated, all of us
suffering some level of hangover, Kev peeking through the stage door
to check out the crowd's reaction to a guitar solo and then
ultimately announcing we're doomed. The show tonight was one such
occasion.
The venue was big enough to hold around
eight hundred people but it looked they'd only sold around three
hundred tickets. However thin the crowd, they were lapping up the
Decapitated set and cheering every time one of them broke into a
solo. Not a fucking chance tonight boys! And so it was. The crowd
looked irritated at best, amused at worst by the six of us going
mental during our set. The stage was huge as well, must have been at
least six foot high, so we couldn't even get in their faces and kick
off with the cunts.
Funny thing is, the show wasn't much
better for Nile. The night belonged to Hypocrisy and Soilent Green
and to a lesser extent, Decapitated, with us and With Passion being
treated merely as a joke. This was the first night of many though,
when by the time Hypocrisy were done, the crowd thinned out
dramatically before Nile hit the stage. Something that would start
to cause problems further down the line.. I guess it could have a lot
to do with the fact Nile seem to tour constantly whilst this was the
first time Hyporcisy had played the States in over ten years..
Next stop was Santa Ana, California.
Never been here before, probably never need to go back. The venue
was on this soulless strip mall that disappeared proudly into the
horizon. I felt like taking a walk around when I got to the venue
but gave up after twenty minutes when I started to feel suffocated by
the endless traffic. It was like taking a stroll down the fucking
M1.
Typically enough, my friend Mark was
coming to the show this night. He's an English guy living in Sweden
who used to work with my wife. Insanely enough he is now the
chairman of Sony Records in Sweden. Anyway, of all the places to
hook up with a mate on tour, Santa Ana was a shite choice. He was on
holiday in Los Angeles but couldn't make our show there the day
after. He had a couple of straight looking friends with him who
looked scoobied by the whole evening. To be fair, I can see why.
The venue was this brightly lit theatre with a low stage at the one
end and had all the atmosphere of a bus station. And of course, we
went down like a fart at a funeral.
At least tonight the crowd were in
striking range. As we rattled through the set you could almost
breathe in the animosity we were creating. There were people at the
front of the crowd who looked physically insulted by us. At one
point, there were a couple of metallers who were stood there flipping
me off and I got pissed off and swung my guitar at the cunts, all
part of the show of course. They fucked off after that. If there
are people in the crowd who want to confront us then we're more than
happy to take them on, which makes things a lot more fun when the
stage is low and close up to them like it is here.
Mark caught up with me at the bar after
another stinker of a show and bought me a drink. “The people here
tonight really didn't seem to like you” he innocently notes. “No
shit!” I laugh. Mark seems completely confused as we get stuck
into the beer. Funny really, this is the first Speedhorn show he's
ever seen and it's in Santa Ana, California to a crowd that hated
us..
There isn't much to stick around for in
Santa Ana, and funnily enough Mark and his friends aren't too
bothered about sticking around for the rest of the bands, it not
really being their cup of tea, so as soon as we're packed down we
fuck off in the direction of Los Angeles.
It's only a short drive and we awake
outside the venue in Hollywood. We've played the Key Club before
with some awful nu-metal band which turned out to be a good show
simply because the band we were playing with was so bad we couldn't
help but look good. The show tonight would be different though. It
was obvious by now that these big city shows, where there is so much
happening every night that people are spoilt for choice, were going
to be tough for us. Even if there were kids in LA that were in to
Speedhorn, they were not going to be that into
us that they'd spend thirty dollars on a ticket just to see us..
I
spent the morning waking around Hollywood with Lasse looking for his
camera. He found it in a shopping mall on Melrose but then decided
to haggle with the woman over the price and got nowhere. It's weird
how they advertise items for sale in this country minus the tax. I
mean, does anyone ever fall for that? It was a beautiful day in LA,
hardly a smog cloud in the sky. Even though we were on a tour
playing to some really tough crowds, I couldn't help but feel like a
lucky bastard as I sat with Lasse outside a bar in Hollywood,
drinking a cold Corona. There are worse ways to spend your days.
Our
good friend Joe Barresi came down to the show this night. He's an
absolute legend in the business who we've been lucky enough to have
mix a couple of our albums. Despite his high status in the industry,
he's one of the nicest guys you could ever meet. The dressing room
for the show was an old hollowed out bus beside the venue, and we
hung out there with Joe for the best part of the night. The thing
with Lasse is starting to get a bit of a pain since he's grumbling
more and more about having to sell shirts all the time. Most nights
he's just got tanked up on Captain Morgan to kill the boredom. I
feel bad about it since I'm starting to feel like I falsely
advertised the job to him. Still, as soon as he pops the Captain
open the rest of the guys usually swarm around him like flies around
a turd, so he's rarely short of company for too long.
The
show tonight is exactly as expected. Actually, it's beyond. The
club is pretty packed and we're up on this high stage giving it our
all as usual. The majority of the crowd looks either bemused or
disinterested. There is one guy though, stood right at the front
that seems to be having a whale of a time. He's laughing his fucking
tits off whilst pointing at us, as if he can't believe what he's
witnessing. After a while he starts scribbling notes on a piece of
paper that he's found somewhere and gives it to Kev, who's screaming
songs in his face. Kev looks at it and starts pissing himself
laughing. The note says, “Your guitarist has a very tight t-shirt”
with an arrow pointing at Jay. Kev loves this. I'm on the other
side of the stage wondering what's going on as this guy continues to
scribble notes throughout the rest of the set and give them to an
appreciative Kev. “Your band is gay” and “Are you guys for
real?” being a couple of examples of the guys quips. The
guy doesn't even look like your typical death metaller, the likes of
which have been giving us shit since Day One on this tour. I don't
know what that says really. Seems like every fucker is against us.
Kev
happily passes on the notes to Jay and John as the set progresses and
ends up dedicating the last song to his new friend. As we finish the
set and pack down, the guy grabs Kev, “You guys are fucking awful
but I genuinely appreciate your attitude and sense of humour!”.
Kev gives him a big hug and we leave the stage. Kev thinks this is
by far the best show of the tour so far, despite the boos hounding us
off stage as we exit.
We
have a couple of drinks with Joe after the gig and watch Soilent
Green play their set. They truly kill it every night. Ben is a
great front figure. Whilst having a drink with Brian
later, he tells us he loves the band, that we remind him of his other
band Eyehategod. Apparently they'd once done a tour with Pantera
where they were really thrown to the lions every night. He said at
certain shows they'd literally be playing to a packed arena with
everyone in it giving them the finger. It's comforting knowing that
we have allies on tour at least.
We had
an eight hour drive to San Francisco after the show in LA. Dutch
drove through the night to get us there, leaving sometime around two
am. We spent the night getting pissed on Captain Morgan and cheap
beer, turning the RV into a mobile disco. Gordon and Lasse seem to
be bonding. We're all pissed up and dancing to AC/DC and the likes
as Dutch plods north up the highway. At one point, out of the blue,
Lasse grabs Gords around the neck and starts to strangle him, all in
good fun of course. The two of them fly forward and fall through the
dividing curtain to where Dutch is sat at the wheel listening to his
Ipod. The two of them fall through the curtain, almost ripping it
down in the process and Gordon's head ends up in Dutch's crotch with
Lasse on top of him. Dutch starts going crazy as he swerves about
the road, that pair of idiots pissing themselves laughing. “What
the fuck is wrong with you guys?”
Dutch
looks back at the rest of us, as if in hope of explanation, but we're
all pissing ourselves laughing too. “God damn it guys!”...
Gordon is actually a little bit pissed off by the time the two of
them are on their feet, claiming Lasse actually hurt him. They're
soon friends again though. The two of them seem to be made for each
other. I think Gords sees a lot of himself in Lasse. It must be
five am by the time we all collapse into our hard beds, fucking steam
boats, the lot of us. Next stop Frisco.
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