Day 6: Sometimes shit just happens
I was woken up by Luke and Vellu, totally comatose from lack of sleep and excessive alcohol consumption. The surreal walk to the house where the others were staying is a foggy haze to me. We got some breakfast and headed towards Newcastle, the home of Newcastle Brown and Venom. I have no recollections of the ride except taking some pictures of Vellu with his pants down at a supermarket parking lot.
We spent a lot of time getting lost in the city before finding the right place. The place itself was the lower floor of a pub called Tap&Spile. Playing with us were three other bands, I remember that one was called Jinn and one was Fucked in the Face. They were all different from each other and us which was cool. I was feeling a bit sick so I didn’t spend much time seeing bands though.
When we were supposed to start our set the PA gave in. I think the second band had fucked it up by connecting two mixers to it or something. We started assembling a makeshift PA out of spare guitar amps and stuff. The place had an 11pm.curfew and we had like half an hour left. We tried our best but didn’t get to play until 10.45 after which Mikko broke a string. It was funny but not ha-ha funny I tell you. So Newcastle got 10 minutes of a very pissed off Hero Dishonest before the owner of the pub came in and told us to quit. Of course it was a bummer that he wouldn’t make an exception but we obeyed so that the people putting up shows here could do so in the future. Lets just say that after the set I didn’t feel like talking very much, most of us were probably pretty pissed off. I know I was. Not at anyone in particular actually, sometimes shit just happens.
Day 7: Finnish heavy metal attacks Scarborough
Woke up freezing. Someone had opened the window because of the smell. We had stayed up pretty late with the nice people of Newcastle drinking wine and listening to music. I had learned that the guys from Venom lived in the same neighbourhood but I hadn’t gone knocking on Mantas’ door though.
We had a pretty long drive up to Scarborough ahead so we left pretty quickly after shower and breakfast. When we had left Leeds on the first day of the English leg Sned had told Dingo to make us listen to Motörhead every day. He didn’t exactly have to make us, the new Motörhead album "Inferno" was a favourite for the entire UK tour. That’s most of what I remember from that drive, Motörhead and coffee. Good times.
We got to Scarborough at sunset. It was a lovely town by the sea and the guy we were staying with, James lived right on the shore. Nice. The club was pretty neat, they mostly did cover bands that had some very creative names and amazing poster art. Only Tuesdays like this one were for bands with original material. We were billed as a Finnish metal band in the clubs own schedule...
We played with a very young band called Diminished Society and James’ band Belligerent Declaration. There was a decent crowd of young people there. We played last, it went without problems. I don’t think most of the audience were very much into us. We loaded the van again and rode to James’ place which was as nice as I had imagined. Fifth story, a view over the beach and a castle on the hill on the right side. Postcard scenery. None of us felt like partying so we just ate and went to sleep.
Day 8: Gotham City
In the morning we went to the beach and the castle for some sightseeing before leaving for Aberdeen. Aberdeen is almost on the northern tip of Scotland so it was going to be a long drive. To make it even longer the bridge near Edinburgh was being repaired so we had to sit in traffic for an hour or two. But we still made it to Aberdeen in time.
Aberdeen used to be a big mining town, the entire city was built from granith taken from the same mine. So every house is made of grey rock, I have to say it looked pretty damn impressive!
The show was in a smallish rock club, Dr Drakes. We were going to play first and following us would be two Czech bands, See you in Hell and Homo Consumens. We would be playing the next three gigs with them.
Our show was ok, we were followed by See you in Hell who put on a very energetic show. Homo Consumens were great, fast as hell hardcore although I only caught the last half of their set because I took a walk around the now dark streets of Aberdeen. Two words: Gotham City. The local band played last and it was a good show, their drummer was pretty crazy.
After the show it was time to go to Bens place to drink, eat and sleep. They had a really cool apartment where a few people lived, it was decorated with a lot of cartoon stuff. We stayed up with them for a while and everyone found a place to sleep eventually.
Day 9: Five go mad on caffeine
We left for Edinburgh and got there pretty quickly. We had no idea how to get to the area where our hosts lived so we just took a lucky guess and whaddyaknow, we ended up a couple of blocks away! Their house was pretty big and nice, it was a home for chech punks who had moved to Edinburgh. All the bands, us and the two chech ones were going to stay there. Before going to the club we ate and drank too much delicious coffee, by the time we left me, Jussi and Mikko were caffeinated out of our minds…
The caffeine buzz made the ride and waiting for the show extra funny, the club was called The Merkat. We played first again. Not too many people had showed up when we were on but it was pretty cool nevertheless. After our show we met a Finnish girl who had just missed our show by a few minutes. The local band Afterbirth played as well as the two chech bands, the crowd was really into them. Actually there were a lot of punks from the Czech Republic living in Edinburgh and naturally they were at the show to see Homo Consumens and See You In Hell. Back at the house there was a party going on and we stayed up for a while. All the other bands stayed there as well.
Day 10: A 1 in 13
Tonights show was in Bradford, next to Leeds. It also meant getting to play with Easpa Measa again, they were going to be with us for the remainder of the UK tour.
So we left Edinburgh pretty early and drove back to Leeds, to Sneds place. It was refreshing again: showers, food, emails, washing clothes and such. For Tiia it wasn’t too great, she had received an email about two of her relatives having died...
Before the short drive to Bradford we stopped at Dingos place to get some more cd:s to listen to. More Venom!
The place we played in, 1 in 12 was really cool. Everyone of us agreed that it was pretty much perfect: downstairs was a pretty big hall with a stage, a bar and lots of space for distros and such. The next floor had a full size pub and the uppermost floor served both as a restaurant and as a backstage area. Do I have to mention that the food was excellent and the people working there really nice? Well I might as well. We pretty much spent the time waiting for the show wondering what it would take to get a place like that going in Helsinki.
The show was a one day fest, the other bands playing were Broken Access, Jinn, Afterbirth, Sons of Saturn(from France), Homo Consumens and See you in Hell, we were going on last.
The crowd was really big and seemed to enjoy the bands, especially the Czech bands got the crowd going pretty well. We also had a blast, I would say this show was the best one in the UK. Some good heckling from the crowd who were chanting ”Rasmus! Rasmus!” between songs. At one point Pentti wanted to thank everyone in Ireland, Scotland, England and someone yelled out ”What about Wales?” to which he replied ”Yeah yeah save the whales!”. A lot of people from the other shows were present, a bunch of people from Newcastle, James from Scarborough and the Edinburgh punks of course. Afterbirth playing there and all. But yeah, I think it would be safe to say that Bradford was rocked.
After the show I was so exhausted that I almost puked. It’s a shame I didn’t, it would have been funny. We slept at Sneds place.