European Tour Part I

Can I bore you with stories of the Waterbury dirt mall, how confusing “Pirates III” was, why I have bought so many pairs of Air Jordans this year, a 10 hour flight to Copenhagen with no in flight movie, etc? There is truly no point. You know the drill by now.

We recently finished the Jagermeister and Monster Engergy Drink Present: Ladies night at the Monsters of Mayhem II tour Featuring: Hatebreed, God Forbid, Evergreen Terrace, Terror, The Acacia Strain, & After The Burial. It took us to some disgusting parts of the Midwest and Southern United States. The first 150 females over the age of 21 got in for free. Therefore, about 7 trolls and 2 hot chicks with boyfriends took advantage of this promotion everyday. It was just another tour, meaning that; it damaged personal relationships, forced me to not shower for days, and had me made me contemplate the rest of my life and how I am compromising whatever dignity I have left. Great times, plus Misha was there!

We are currently overseas performing at European Festivals. The first one was the Hultsfred Festival in Sweden. This thing was so fucking un organized that it made me yell at a sketchy German with a face tattoo. Sorry Schumpf! In retrospect, not a good idea!

We played on the first day of the fest and people were already disgusting! There was 30,000 people in attendance all camping out in little dome tents. By noon, people were covered in mud, missing shoes, and had written dumb things all over themselves in permanent marker. I am pretty positive these things are viewed like the prom to the Europeans, which means, a lot of people are fucking in those gross little tents.

Jamey and I wandered around the general population and scrounged up some Swedish Drones to purchase carnie vendor food. He just kept saying how sketchy the food was. That worried me because this is the kind of stuff that I eat everyday! We had hot dogs with garlic dressing which were put in a circular bun with a hollowed out center, disgusting cardboard pizza, hot donuts, and meat bread. Yes, meat bread. What is meat bread? Well, it is meat baked into bread.

I watched Converge and they were great once again. They mainly played selections off their last 3 albums but threw in ‘Forsaken’ for good measure. I then decided it would be a good idea to take a 4 hour afternoon nap.

I slept through Velvet Revolver, but got up in time to see Korn. Yes, Korn. They played songs from their entire catalog including, “I Did My Time”, “Got The Life”, “Somebody, Somewhere”, “Chutes And Ladders”, “Twisted Transistor”, “Falling Away From Me”, “Freak On A Leash”, and “Blind”. They only had 3 original members this time but had Joey from Slipknot filling in on drums.

Hatebreed went on at midnight. People were pretty dead at this point but still hung out late with America’s favorite hardcore band. Some of the Lamb of God guys showed up midway through the set w/ a member of Buske’s gang to catch the set. It was a huge party on the stage and a great way to close out the day.

After the show, Matt proceeded to get completely bombed and tell us about his personal favorite president, Franklin Delanor Roosevelt. Matt listed all his accomplishments, but failed to understand the relevancy when I asked if FDR enjoyed the company of naked ladies.

After Sweden, We flew into Finland to play a small show with Velvet Revolver and Patti Smith. Seriously.

On Sunday morning, we flew into the Netherlands and met back up with our bus. We arrived to the fields of rock festival pretty late due to all of our early morning traveling.

The lineup to the festival was insane! Backstage, I ran into Ozzy Osbourne, Munky and Fieldy of Korn, Slash, Life of Agony, Peter Steele (who looked taller than he did in PLAYGIRL), Dave Mustaine, Rob Flynn, Mike Clark (Suicidal Tendencies), Evan Seinfeld, Mikkey D from Motorhead and countless others. It was a pretty wild time. Frank actually got kicked out of the bathroom so Slash could take a shit by himself.

Before the show, Jamey and I talked about Biohazard for 2 hours. We talked about the oft slept on classic, New World Disorder and the 2 banger ballads that said disc contains. We started listening to Ill Blood by No Warning. Man, if the tail end sing along of track 4 doesn’t get you fired up; you aren’t alive.

I got to see Suicidal Tendencies for the first time in 9 years and they were great. The crowd was dead for them and Hatebreed, but I assume the masses in attendance were completely baked on hash.

Later on Zakk Wylde (Yeah, that Zakk Wylde) came on our bus and woke Wayne up by kissing him. Zakk is Wayne’s favorite guitar player of all time, so it was very cool to see it all go down.

Zakk said that he knows Hatebreed thinks he plays “piano Elton John shit” but he respects them and referred to our tour bus as a “box of sexiness.” Alcohol is one hell of a drug.