Here you may find the original english version of the TURISAS tour diary, exclusively published on metal.de.

15th and 16th of March, 2008

Heeeyyy reader. I’m writing from Holland, Nijmegen, where our happy group arrived this afternoon. Today we’ll play in Doornroosje. It’s a kind of sad scene: it rains outside, and most of TURISAS and a couple of tech guys are pretty ill. I am already on the better side, after coughing and near-dying experiences for four-five days.

Happened in the story so far: TURISAS started the tour on 1st March in Northampton, Great Britain. This was our second headliner tour there, the first one done in September ‘07. Back then we did bigger cities, such as London, Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow – some of which we had done already during the Lordi tour in 2006 + some one-off concerts in 2005-2007. This UK tour included thirteen shows in total: the cities were now mainly a bit smaller, not commonly on many bands’ tour routing – Sheffield, Aberdeen, Exeter and so on – and this was also the case with the venues. With capacities of 300-500 people each night, and with many of the gigs sold out, the atmosphere was hot, humid and intense – excellent! There was only one overlap with the earlier tours: we already had played London for a couple of times before, and now we did our biggest gig there yet, in Camden’s Electric Ballroom. Some 900-1000 people showed up, so it was quite a party! A very cool and a big venue. On this tour we’re playing with NORTHER, our new Century Media labelmates & Finnish fellows, which has proven a nice match. All the guys are really nice chaps, so everyone has had a nice time both on- and offstage.

OK, so we wrapped up the UK tour on Friday in Brighton, which is a popular summer vacation city for the Britons: now in March, it was pretty cold place. Still, they had a working fun fair built on a pier (right next to the sea). I put my newly-found health in test in a rollercoaster – worked all fine! The gig was held in Concorde 2 just on the seashore. Not too bad: nice view, good technical equipment and the service was alright (although it always seems to take ages for the British crew to get the stage ready). Most of the band was already ill at this point, so pretty much everyone else was just lying on the backstage, fixing their multivitamin & pain killer drinks.

This was the final night for the supporters ALESTORM (only for the UK leg of the tour) and we had decided to come up with some kind of a tour ending trick for them. What funnier than men dressing up as women? I had asked a local friend of mine to pick up some raunchy & sexy wench costumes from a second-hand shop, and so me and two technicians dug out our feminine side and did our best onstage during one of their songs. I think I’ll stick to the battle paint in the future, rather than lipstick.

The gig was quite alright (fucking crazy crowd again!) and so we started our way back to the mainland. People were pretty happy about this, actually: there is a limit on how much you can take triangular stuffed sandwiches, fitted carpets with fungus and cold showers, you know? We celebrated the successful escape by buying all sorts of weird shit from the gas station: bubble dinosaur hammers, plastic battery-operated stethoscopes and the likes. Apparently we went over the canal by ferry, but not many of us noticed it. Could have been fun.

In Holland everything seemed pretty alright: the weather was better, sun was shining, the traffic was once again on the right side of the road… and then the bus broke down. I think it was some problem with the gearing system or something; we anyway had a LOT of problems with the bus already before (the shit air conditioning being the main reason for people getting sick in the first place + being on tour in Great Britain with a driver who can’t speak English). Luckily we just managed to get to the hometown of our Dutch production manager, so we only had to waste a few hours on working around the transportation problem. Finally, a standard coach bus arrived and we could make the last 30 kilometers to the venue in Haarlem. However, it was already quite late so we really had to hurry to make it in time before the doors opened – technicians were moving like lightning bolts (in a mild fever & flu, that is). Everybody was feeling like shit, especially our accordion player Netta, but the excellent service in Patronaat saved a lot of people’s nerves. Nygard was having trouble with his voice as well, but as it was a sold out show, canceling was not an option.

The crowd was amazing and helped us to pull off the show, even though Netta had to give up in the end (we played the last two songs without the accordion). We were really glad it went that well, and everyone was just hoping we would find the strength to do the last show before the day off in Hamburg (tomorrow).

So, here we are. Things are not looking too good, as people are still ill, especially Netta. The venue seems pretty nice anyway, and it’s sold out today as well, so I think we have no other option than to continue and just make it work somehow. I’m off for breakfast now, keep your fingers crossed for us, see you in a few days!

18.03.

In Hamburg now, sitting in the venue’s hallway. There’s a huge amount of young girls all dressed up outside. Unfortunately I doubt they would all come to our show: we’ll play tonight at the same time with a J-Rock band called AN CAFÉ. Never heard. What’s with these hot chicks that turn out to be guys when you have a closer look? Fucking weird.

So we left from Holland two nights ago. The show in Doornroosje was cool in the end, although the sound suffered a bit from missing the accordion: as I told you in the earlier edition, Netta was forced to cancel her appearance. At least I got to play a lot of violin, as many accordion parts had to be played by me. The crowd was really cool again, and forgave this minor beauty error. We also had a second supporting band in addition to NORTHER, as there was also HEIDEVOLK, a local folk/pagan metal band playing. They even had a violin in the line-up! Sounded quite alright.

The problems with the bus forced us to get it repaired: the air condition was really fucked up, and the temperature kept changing with over 10 degrees, depending on if the bus was moving or not. Also the windows leaked air, which did shit things for Hanu’s and Warlord’s voice. Luckily we had a day off to get things fixed. The bus dropped us to a hotel in Reeperbahn with the stuff we’d need for a day, then it drove straight to a garage and the guys tore it apart. Apparently this whole thing could be counted as their error, so the extra hotel night wasn’t a disaster for the band. Anyway, moving all the baggage in and out every day is a bit frustrating, so I really hope the bus us properly fixed when we get it back.

The day off came really into need, as the people who were the illest could have a rest in a good bed. For the rest of us, it was also an opportunity to get e.g. our laundry done: a lot of dirty clothes were waiting! Our tour manager was able to tell about a laundry really close to our hotel, so everything went quickly and smoothly. After some attempts to have a stable connection with the hotel’s network, I also got to sleep a bit. We even got a nice surprise for the evening: the Norther guys went walking around the Reeperbahn when they happened to come across with NIGHTWISH’s manager. By incident, NIGHTWISH played in Hamburg that night, in the Color Line Arena. As they knew each other from some years back, the manager promised to check if it was possible to get us in for the gig. I think the guys asked him humbly to arrange TURISAS + NORTHER + 15 on the list, hah! In the end there were only me, Netta, Pete, Heikki, Jukkis and his girlfriend to attend the show. We didn’t even ask any Reeperbahn hookers to join us. How lame. It was a pretty cool concert in the end, even if the set list was almost exactly the same as in a concert I saw back in January in Helsinki Ice Hall. We took a taxi back to the city pretty soon after the concert and checked out the “official” after party at The Other Place bar (near the window shopping are, wink wink). It was dead empty but we still decided to stay there for a beer. Some of us continued the night later in a really lousy & price-flexible tit bar. In the next morning I found out that Heikki had ended up returning to the after-party place (still no Tuomas Holopainen there) and staying there until 8-9 a.m. Pretty cool, as the place closed down already at 6 a.m.!

Fast forward to the next morning. We had lobby call at 11.30: there were taxis to take us to the venue, as the bus company still hadn’t managed to repair it. It was anyway a pretty relaxed transportation today, as we were so close to the venue. I was still a bit tired – wish I had slept more! Not as broken as the two Norther lads, though. They seem to be professionals anyway. The afternoon was really lazy – everything took ages and we only got the equipment delivered to the venue after 4 p.m. I felt a bit crap and decided to do at least something useful, so I hunted down a bottle of face paint, as the old one was causing a bit trouble. The others weren’t fully recovered during the night either, and our merch guy and Kride from NORTHER had actually gotten ill as well. Fucking flu.

I guess the sound check might be doable in the near future, so I should probably head towards the stage now. Tomorrow I’ll let you know who actually won the fight over the fans: our ill, sweaty red-black metal combo or the Japanese gaylords! Stay true, stay healthy and hit on the shemales only if you really intended to do so in the first place. Cheers!

20.3.

This time in the bus, just left Munich. I’ve been a bit down lately, so my nightly soundtrack shall be STRATOVARIUS; what better cure than the cheesy brainchildren of the insan… I mean genius Timo Tolkki? „Elements Pt.1“ is perfect leave-your-brains-out stuff.

OK, to the point: we were left to the time before the sound check in Hamburg. Marx is a helluva small venue – we used the same room as a backstage during the last time we played at Markthalle with ICED EARTH in October! It was fucking cold in the venue, all the little girls were apparently going to prefer seeing the Japs to seeing us, and everybody was feeling kind of under the weather. Because of the flu, most were also on medication (I had a strange feeling of distorted self image that day – I guess I should have some kind of review of my drug cocktail!) At least the hour-long trip to the city cleared my head a bit.

When I got back, everything was still kind of running late. Load-in had to be done through a floor full of antique shops. That was interesting. I wish I had the money to invest; we would have surely had cool stage props. Torso sculpture and paintings, you probably haven’t seen that shit on stage in a metal concert for a while? When we at last had the sound check done, we had to rush for a small meet’n’greet. (Edit: Enough of Stratovarius. This shit is starting to get on my nerves.) Had even time for cold filet and potatoes. Yum yum, fast food! The happening was a bit lame, as there was only one person attending, haha. I guess she was a winner of a competition or something, I couldn’t find out thoroughly. Anyway, it didn’t matter: she was cool, we had a nice talk and took the photos together. Still, we had to take some time on watching the crappy J-Rock band playing. It was utterly disgusting, seeing these small guys acting and being “kawaii” – and shit, our stage clothes are more stylish than these fools’! And of course, the audience’s enthusiasm was the saddest part. Sob, we want more female fans! OK, then we had to get behind the stage before Norther started their set (backstage in the word’s truest meaning, that is). Our show itself was hot, humid and crazy. The audience was totally bonkers from the very beginning, starting from the guy in front of me in a strange blue gnome hat, to the beer-drunken guys who started a manic “Bier hier” (or something) chant. It made quite a good improvised blast beat humppa! Mathias still had problems with his voice – singing is hard when just the talking makes you cough uncontrolled – so we had to cut our set a bit short. Still, it was hard work enough, and the audience surely had their money’s worth of entertainment

After the show we met a journalist, Andrash, who was going to travel with us in the bus until Switzerland. He was a very nice guy, helpful and kind. And probably now writing some disgusting, revealing stories of us, hah! We had these guest journos with us already two times before: one from the very beginning, staying for two days and writing to a Finnish metal magazine; and one for three days, from London to the first Dutch gig, writing for a Finnish youth magazine. That will be interesting: a scoop of six coughing Vikings, next to a story of Jared Leto. Our glamour doesn’t quite match the Hollywood style. Yet!

We continued to Karlsruhe where we played on Substage: it’s a completely underground place (not the music, the venue is under ground, stupid!). I managed once again to sleep until 4 p.m., so not much to tell about the day. We ate, played and left. Well, actually I also lost my other earplug, which is kinda annoying. They are the custom-made type, molded straight to your ear, with changeable filter and all. Fuck, it costs me like 200 € to get new ones. I guess it had to happen sometime, as I already had these for over five years. It wasn’t my best day anyway. We crowned the triumphant performance by fooling around with our production managers’ walkie-talkies and with a good sip on Vodka. Surprisingly, the night pretty much changed to morning before I was in bed.

And again, I woke up at last at 4 p.m. It’s kind of wasting your time, you know? I got to the venue only to find out that there was one Metal Hammer quiz to be done pretty soon. I put my stage clothes drying, started the hard drive fixing program (this laptop piece of shit has been doing weird stuff lately) and got some breakfast. The quiz was us versus NORTHER, and me & Hanu disappointingly lost by 5/6,5 points. I’m pretty sure that CANDLEMASS’ album name is „Epicus Doomicus Fungus“. Or something. The show was quite alright, which made my grey day a bit brighter. Hmmm… What else? I think I’ve reached the page limit by now, so maybe we’ll continue in two days? I’ll try to remember that OBITUARY guy’s name in the meantime. Some difficult questions they had!

23.3.

Yo yo yo. In Berlin, club Kato. The past few days have been fast, I just wrote the last edition! Fuuuck, the deadline’s approaching and I have nothing on screen yet. I’m not at my best at the moment. Last night we had a new bus, replacing the old piece of shit. And did we get a good one?! Umm, yes, quite. It has a really good air conditioning, separate sleeping/lounge areas with doors, antique mirror on the toilet wall, computer, playstation, computer controlled lights with color themes, Jacuzzi, helicopter landing area, bowling alley… OK, the last ones were scheiße but you get the picture. Soo, obviously we had to celebrate it a bit. Had a good vodka/PRODIGY/ Finnish hip-hop (really!) -ridden party. Jukkis played some cool WINTERSUN demo stuff… Hah, you wish you heard that! So, all was good, the night turned to morning and I woke up after three. Pffft. A quick review of the past few days, here we go:

Munich. Oh yeah, the quiz thingy. Still can’t remember the OBITUARY guy (must be Allen West, just checked it out from internet). Mathias and Jukkis entertained the backstage audience by performing a weird silent cabaret act behind closed curtains… The show itself was really good, finally a proper sized stage again! The monitor guy operated the stage smoke machine like his life depended on it. Couldn’t even see Mathias sometimes on my left side, let alone Jussi on the other side of the stage. It was a nice crowd, not packed but still a good living and breathing mass of human flesh. Nothing that spectacular. By the way, it’s funny how you don’t remember almost any details of the shows at this point. I mean, we’re playing a more or less fixed set, with additions or deductions occurring only sometimes, so that’s only natural. Still, the shows tend to blend into this giant “Turisas European tour 2008 show”, including bits and pieces of 30+ shows. So I can’t tell you anything that miraculous of them… Anyway, we packed our things, I forgot some personal things to the venue – again (luckily it was only a few violin cleaning rags, but still). I’m starting to get sloppy. Fucking routines, I should be alerted all the time! Had something to eat from Burger King, talked shit, went to bed.

Enter the next day. We were in Winterthur, Switzerland. I remember we were there with DAR three years back, but have no idea of the venue. Won’t even bother checking on the internet. This time it was Salzhaus. The stage was low and shaped like a Gauss curve made of blocks (do the maths), so the audience was kind of surrounding me, Warlord and Netta on the center. Funny. I did a small interview for some local newspaper. We also got nice, almost-like-homemade dinner; a nice change compared to the British sandwich torture. Took some funny pics with real sized Elvis & Marilyn cardboard figures. The show was intense. The venue’s capacity was apparently 700, and it was nearly sold out: a looot of drunken Swiss fans going all crazy just beneath our feet, crushing their fellow countrymen and -women at the front. We were really uplifted, even added one song for our set list at the midway (we had cut it short earlier in order to save Warlord’s voice). Excellent show, excellent crowd. After that was again the fun part: anyone who has seen us onstage can imagine that getting rid of the costumes and the war paint is not the easiest job out there. Because of that, we can really appreciate a good shower after the show, but unfortunately that’s not always possible: like in Salzhaus. We had to take a ride to a dayroom in a hostel to get a shower, and still then only two people got warm water. Shit. Always the same weird, frustrating problem. That would rarely happen in Scandinavia. After everyone stopped shivering and swearing, we headed back to Germany, drinking a bit and watching the last SENTENCED Live DVD, swallowing man-tears. Andrash, the journalist, was leaving the bus in Stuttgart, and unfortunately he fell asleep just a bit before the city. Sorry about the weird symbols on your forehead, man!

Enter the next day. Waking up in Bochum, Germany. Weirdly enough, again I slept far too long. The days tend to get short this way… Anyway, today we expected to see a lot of the label guys as well; our guest list was something like 40-50 people. Matrix was a really cool place. Excellent catering, by the way! Greetings to our lovely hostess. The show was cool otherwise – the normal shit, good crowd, pretty nice venue – but I broke my G string. Not the underwear, the violin string. It happened at the end of “Holmgard”, and I rushed in for our tech Hans to get a new one. We managed to do it in time for the next song, but it felt weird. The sad part was, he had given me D, instead of G… Guess I pronounced it bad. So we changed it again, missing a bit of “Portage”, but in good time for my part in “Cursed be Iron”. As I already said, we also got our bus changed finally, wooo!

About Berlin + drunken frontmen at the next edition; stay tuned, folks!

25.3.

Vienna, Planet Music, backstage. The second supporting band is playing and I’m tempted not to write this tour diary. Uhhh. Well, at least I’m not feeling as shit as Jussi. You guys in tonight’s show, you’d better respect this guy if/when he pulls off a complete gig tonight: he’s practically never complaining but today it’s a tough one. We’ll see…

OK, so, Berlin. Ummm. I was a bit drunk the night before, so no time for sightseeing and stuff. Woke up (almost too late), made some coffee (woohoo, no instant shit) and started to clean my violin (before the sound check). You see, playing in a battle metal band differs slightly from your average symphony orchestra in many ways. First, instead of wearing a cool black suit, you can dress up as a smelly barbarian warrior. Second, you can get away with far more wrong notes in a metal band (although this is optional and not that recommended anyway). Third, the chicks like you more when you show some skin. No, really. Fourth, our show puts your equipment under significant stress: the paint, the blood, the sweat, the moist in general + whatever shit you can find onstage normally makes it hard to play, whether these substances end up on your bow hair, strings or your fingers. Or eyes. So, cleaning your equipment is quite essential in order to make the show going on. I’ve found that a mixture of surgical spirit and water is quite a good solvent for the shit & also the rosin (that is put on the bow hair in order to make it properly sticky). So far, I don’t have a real violin technician of my own, and since the instrument differs quite a bit from standard guitars and basses, I’ve decided I take care of it on my own, rather than trusting someone else. Of course this takes time away from cigarette smoking and instant messaging many others do while I’m doing my shit (boohoo, how rock’n’roll), but it’s a good way to keep a proper touch on the instrument apart from the live shows. Warlord was seeing some business people, so there were a few interviews left undone; I took care of two, Jussi of one. OK stuff. Then we had some pizza (mine looked like a pile of cheese and a regular home garden ingredients mixed; rucola rules) and did a small meet’n’greet session in the venue’s bar. Nice people.

We had heard stories of audience in Berlin, and also felt some of the famous “craziness” and “interaction” (yeah, right) on the Iced Earth tour in October. I guess the people there have such a great variety of concerts to attend and stars coming and going, that no one really bothers to be excited anymore. Or so we thought. Actually the venue was packed and the audience one of the best ones in Germany! What a surprise. The manager guys told me they have practically ever seen the audience in Kato that excited… well, believe it or not, it anyway felt good. We Finns are not that easily licked, haha. I guess we have to have a second date there at some point to prove this experience right. After the show, some guys went to this nearby night sauna thing; the rest went straight to Columbia Club bus park. The night pretty much took the same course as the night before; this time our drummer Tude was the bartender, explaining his method of making Vodka drinks (to be kept secret, sorry). At 6 in the morning I decided to give up, leaving two members of Turisas and Norther downstairs; when I woke up late in the afternoon, the other one had just gotten into bed – halfway – and the other was sleeping outside the bus. It’s March anyway, for Heaven’s sake. The latter notorious guy didn’t give up, but stayed relatively awake for the rest of the day. We spent the day being lazy, as even the shops weren’t probably open due to Easter; mostly riding on the nearby club’s wireless Internet network, and taking a shower in the dayroom we got from a hotel. Also, I meant to do some laundry, but couldn’t bother leaving the bus. In the evening we went to eat to this one sushi place our production manager Hans knew beforehand; a nice restaurant called Sumo on Bergmannstrasse. Apparently also the laundry place was closed down, as it seemed quite empty as we walked by (in October it was still running). Too bad, but at least we didn’t walk there with our dirty clothes all for nothing. The restaurant was excellent, decent prices and great atmosphere. We had some sake, had great food and some drinkers from the night before fell asleep for a moment in the toilet (before even ordering). We also shot a nice stop-motion short movie with three newly made sake-figures – it tells an epic tale of an evin Sake Ghost drinking empty the Three Mighty Cups, as his two substandard sake-figure pals are away. Quite cool. We finished the night by watching episodes of a great Finnish comedy series “Kummeli”, Yngwie Malmsteen’s concert in Japan in 1985, Bruce Willis’ “16 Blocks” and a bombastic character glorification clip “Kingdom in Heaven”. Orlando Bloom is quite one-dimensional… And this was our day off.

Next edition: Vienna stories and Turisas’ first concert in Slovakia!

25.3.

Greetings from Bratislava…. Today we don’t have the Internet demon bothering us, neither have we good and calm backstage area, so I might as well start this diary already today (had thought delivering it tomorrow). It’s pretty noisy here: the audience is just behind the curtain (apparently an Eastern European way of separating private / public space; they had the same in Czech). We just finished a tough table football match between Turisas and Norther and… well, it’s a nice weather. Fuck it. I was never good at football anyway. Kride is playing on his mini amp, the music’s playing loud in the bar; it’s hard to gather your thoughts. Umm, let’s try.

Vienna. We crossed the border again during the night, so our tour manager asked everyone to give their passports. Almost everyone. One Turisas frontman was sleeping after his day-off activities, and they didn’t dare to wake him up. I guess he’s crossed all the borders now without showing his passport. Some control, huh? I woke up when we had already been in front of the venue for some time, but still surprisingly early. It was only me and Tude who were awake from Turisas. This guy has to wake up the earliest of us anyway, as he should be building up the drum set as soon as we’re allowed onstage. It’s a bit unequal, but he seems to take it alright, as it means he is forced to have some kind of steady rhythm. Not too bad, actually: not having a routine is probably the main thing eating time when you’re on road. If you have to get up at certain time, you will also go to sleep according to that (I try to get 8 hours of sleep). When the ultimate limit is around 4-5 p.m., you can easily stay up until 5-6 a.m. and still reach that amount of sleep, but it also means you will lose valuable working time before and after noon. Too bad; there was a pile of things that I was planning to finish here on road, but surprisingly I have done waaaayyy too little so far. I guess the last week is going to be busy. That’s actually also surprising: each time on tour the first few days are long, but after a certain number of gigs the routine kicks in, and before no time you’ve actually been on road for 3-4 weeks. Gets you every time. Weird.

OK, that’s it for the miracles of bad scheduling and time perceptions, back to the story. So, we’re in Vienna. I have always liked this venue pretty much, although it’s hard to do the load in and load out (the actual place is under ground, and you’re doing the backline with a forklift, rest by hand through nasty stairs. And there’s a dog onstage (the monitor guy’s, I guess), which might upset you if you’re allergic. I’m not, so I’m quite alright with all that. The showers suck cock as well: I’ve never had a complete, normal, hot shower there. Either the warm water runs out midway or there wasn’t any in the first place. The food is pretty good and the equipment generally quality stuff as well. So I was pretty happy. The weather was bad, so I didn’t feel like going out watching the city at all. For some reason I’ve always had a “cold” feeling of Vienna, both temperature-wise and atmosphere-wise. The fact that we’ve toured there in February, October and March, respectively, might affect this a bit, though.

The gig was fun: not completely sold out, but the atmosphere was great. There was this Xena woman asking from us to come onstage during our show, but it didn’t work out in the end. She would have only wanted to come and pose with a sword or something. Nice. As I told you earlier, Jussi was already doing quite bad, so he went first in shower and got into bus afterwards. The rest had to deal with the inevitable, cold water. Some of the band ended up waiting until there was warmer water again (2 a.m. or something, the boiler must be shit).

The next day (today) we arrived to Bratislava. This is the first time we’re playing in Slovakia. Pretty cool. I had time to go see the city briefly before the soundcheck; I thought I was late (got a bit lost) but the local guy was still placing the drum mics. Pretty slow. Jussi was reeeaally bad today, and he went to see the doctor. This dude didn’t speak much English, but apparently he managed to do the tests and diagnosis, took the X-ray pics and all. Some lung disease, possibly pneumonia. He had pretty much fever. Maybe it was just lack of language skills, but the doctor told him that “I hope you won’t die.” Hmmm. Jussi got a prescription for antibiotics, but obviously they won’t work instantly. He is tired all the time and is shivering. We still don’t know what to do with the show: most definitely we don’t want to cancel it (even because of some member being possibly deadly sick), but we’ll see. Without guitars it won’t be possible, and a guy in civilian clothes sitting on a barstool is not too convincing for a band like us, known for our energetic live shows.

Anyway, now it’s time for food (chicken-something and chips); in the next edition I’ll let you know about the sickness thing.

28.3.

Hey hou. In Ragnarök festival now. It’s a weird place: we were there in 2006, faced some organizational problems, pulled off a cool show and gained reputation as cocky motherfuckers. Not all of that was our fault, really. Hmmm… more of this later, maybe. Bratislava + Prague, s’il vous plait:

OK, so our first gig in Slovakia was endangered by the fact that our guitarist Jussi was terribly sick and maybe dying. Not cool. We had a look at the different options: canceling the show (no way), Jussi playing on a chair onstage, in normal clothes (not cool), playing without guitar (not realistic), getting Kride / Pete from Norther to fill in (possible, but not on this warning time). Finally we decided to do it so that Jussi will do his guitar parts from backstage (or next-to-the-stage) on his wireless guitar and with the help of a monitor. I know, sounds weird, but it was pretty much the best solution we came up with. Like this, he didn’t have to dress up his wet fur clothes nor to do the silly make-up, or put too much energy to the live show, or generally to torture his body/ heart. It can be quite exhausting on stage sometimes. So, our production manager did all the necessary arrangements for him. He was a bit out there somewhere (because of the fever and the medication) but claimed he was up to the task. You don’t know how much I have respect on this guy: he doesn’t often complain about anything, and is going through all this shit despite being really, really sick. Obviously, we were a bit excited about the gig, just because it was a whole new arrangement only e.g. considering the stage setup (less people, different positions).

Everything was going pretty slow in the venue: the soundcheck took ages, and Norther had to do theirs while the audience was already entering the venue. Also, there were two separate backstage areas: the other one further away with showers and everything, the other one, a really small one, next to the stage. Because we didn’t want to walk to the stage through the audience in our full costumes, we had to get dressed in that small room and take a shower in this other (the bar still running in between the rooms).

The show itself went really well: the Slovakians were crazy and really energetic. Just the way we wanted it. We explained the missing guitarist situation and the audience of course took it really well: I mean, it’s a bit weird to see a live show, without seeing the guitarist (actually, that’s Korn I’m describing here). Warlord asked Jussi to come onstage at one point, and the audience gave a massive applause to him.

The after-show stuff went the ordinary way: staying up too late, listening to random music, talking bullshit. Enter Prague. Surprisingly, I got up late again (feeling slightly hangover) in front of Rock Café, the venue. The load-in had been done already (sorry guys). Deadly amount of stairs. Again, things were running late: there was far too little mics and stuff. But, after one miserable day off the Internet, everybody was happy we got online on the bar’s network. I just got some books loaned in Finland that were due the day before, so I just got to renew them. Ah, the wonders of the ‘Net. I also did one interview that day for this one webzine: normally Mathias is doing most of the promotion, but it’s pretty ordinary nowadays for us to share some of the responsibilities. Anyway, after a looong time waiting, we finally got some stage power (it was gone before) and all the mics and shit put together, so we had time for a really fast soundcheck. It was actually overtime already, as the doors were meant to open at 18.30 and by then it was already something like 18.40. Norther didn’t have practically any time onstage, as the local supporting band had to get their equipment ready to be able to play at 19.00. There was only one way to the backstage, through the stage, so we had to get inside quite early. I managed to grab some pizza for dinner before I had to rush into backstage, waiting for our turn. The situation with Jussi was still the same: he was sick as a dog, although apparently the antibiotics had started to kick in. Too bad there was only a limited space for him to play on the backstage, so we had to wire a monitor and floorboard for him in the staircase. The stage itself was pretty OK, but the lights were pointing to our eyes and there was hardly any on the crowd, so you couldn’t see anything. Also, the audience was a bit static. It felt like you were playing on a display window with one-way glass; a bit naked. Also for me, the show was a bit worse than on the night before: the switched stage positions didn’t feel comfortable now and I was generally a bit disoriented. Jussi played well and I think overall the concert was pretty good. After the concert there was a bit partying and drinking, and the bus trip back to Germany was following the standards. > Next edition: Turisas & Norther on Ragnarök festival – how to treat people nicely and still get a lot of bullshit on you!