Doomriders just returned home from their recent European tour, here's the band's complete tour diary:
"arnhem holland - played the goudvishal. the club with the infamous deadly staircase that is worse than the excorcist stairs. the show was great, arnhems chapter of turbojugend came out to support. slept on piss stained mattresses, and met the ncf guys for the first time.
herten germany - first night of many where they told us we were too loud. boo hoo, your mixing board has a volume knob. turn it to the right. max did our show, great guy, made us great food. met some new friends sarah and ollie of ox magazine. a drunk german dude kept singing at the top of his lungs all through our set and at least an hour after we were done.
antwerp belgium - reflections fest. got to hang with friends in cave in, pelican, modern life is war, rise and fall, and many others. ate food made by no other than cindy frey photographer extrordinaire. RAGED with cave in and pelican in the band room. objects were thrown. we took all of the toilet paper because we knew it was going to be a hot commodity. kinda like cigarettes in prison.
norwich uk - small show, but still awesome. played with some great local bands...sindromes and bossk. the dj was awesome. he was the original drummer of talk talk. told us some great stories about the old days such as seeing the specials in 77. none of us will ever be this cool. tonight we blew the first of many marshall amplifiers. didnt stop nate from putting down his guitar and running into the crowd with the mic. awesome show.
hartlepool uk - another small show, but still a great time. linz from break it up came out. apparently every kid under the age of 18 in hartlepool smokes like george burns and drinks heavily.
manchester uk - due to an unfortunate mix up of date and venue changes, alot of people were confused about when and where this show was. well i'll tell you.....it was in the COLDEST club in the world. andy from thirty seconds til armageddon came out. although the turnout was small due to the mixup, this show was great. everyone who came out had a great time.
milton keynes uk - big room. they had a pool to swim in and a karate dojo. awesome. small turnout tonight, but the vibe was good.
liverpool uk - the roadkill is an awesome club. foxy is the man and this show was awesome. we almost got in a couple fights with drunk liverpoolians on the street outside.
swindon uk - big surprise of a show. we didnt expect a turnout like tonight. lots of kids with nikki sixx haircuts and skin tight girl jeans. big ben and pugs came out and cleared the floor with some drunken antics. we loved it.
london uk - awesome show. doomriders, ncf, coliseum, and lords. all the cave in dudes came to hang out too because they had a day off. this show was a fucking RAGER. we had a great time. adam gave us the best introduction ever, and then joined us onstage to sing listen up! ben looked like a homeless lumberjack doing stagedives with a beer in his hand. pugs went house! thom hooper made an appearance. so did sheep. good times.
brugge belgium - ramzi of zinestar did this show. first night with rise and fall. we referred to the audience as "a bunch of waffle eating motherfuckers." rise and fall rules.
trier germany - smallest show of tour. someone asked us to "just play the first song again." jr's german inlaws came out and made the evening for us.... they all bought shirts and wore them for the whole night and danced their asses off!!! it ruled. plus, this club had an indoor basketball court/soccer field. we balled till the wee hours.
munich germany - the famous backstage club. marco and ivonne were great hosts. soulfly was playing across the street. we love this club because after the bands are done it turns into a dance club where girls mosh! like for real. moshing is a legitimate form of dance in germany apparently. you dont need to know the electric slide or the running man!!
lustenau austria - good riddance was playing across town. sweet. didnt stop us from having a great time. highlights of tonight : nate getting offstage and just dancing in the crowd, then kissing a dude on the mouth who turned out to be the promoter and who was more than a little freaked out by it. later on that night we threw pieces of ham at some underage girls who wouldnt leave. they didnt appreciate it. oh, the hotel we stayed at that night had a strip club IN IT. BAD NEWS. or good news depending on how you look at it. if you wanted to sleep....bad news. if you like naked women....good news. so it was a little good and bad for everyone.
pinarella italy - beautiful pinarella. our good friend mayo did the show. awesome night. tons of kids, great food, the show was awesome and then there was a dance night afterwards. we had a great fucking time, then we went back to the hotel and used the bidet. the hotel was 3 blocks from the beach so we took a walk in the morning. ah pinarella.
bolzano italy - thomas backed the van into a wall. we laughed at him. alot. the show was awesome, we blew off soundcheck and just had a blues jam for about an hour much to the soundguys chagrin. after the show the promoters busted out a bunch of air mattresses for us to sleep on that they had to blow up with their mouths. that shit was funny. imagine two cute little italian girls trying to blow up air mattresses and smoke at the same time. of course we didnt help. it was just too cute.
vienna austria - HUGE room. way too big. but whatever, this club rules, they made us great food and there are clean showers! thomas from glw/drk magazine came out and there were a bunch of rowdy skaters getting wild tonight. good time.
budapest hungary - amazing show. tons of people who all came to have a good time. zoli the promoter really outdid himself. this was one of the 4 best shows of the tour by far.
warsaw poland - we drove all night from budapest and we stopped at auschwitz on the way to the show. talk about a depressing place. being american its hard to understand sometimes just how fucked up the holocaust actually was ( we read about it in books and see documentaries on tv), but when you are actually standing in this place where so many people suffered.....well it hits home to say the least.
the show on the other hand....another one in the top 4. kids danced, clapped and fucking generally boogied their asses off all night. nate went out on the floor and danced with all the lovely ladies who were shaking it during "listen up". kids actually did this wierd "rowboat" thing on the dancefloor, and it was awesome. this was one of those shows that you leave with a smile on your face no matter what. everyone was truly happy tonight. this is what a good rock and roll show is all about.
prague, czech republic - we drove all night again. this time we stopped at a church that was hundred of years old and contained an ossoleum. an ossoleum is a room MADE OUT OF HUMAN BONES. this place was unbelievable. it was built with the remains of 40 thousand people. there will be pictures posted from this place in the near future. on to prague. this show was the climax of awesomeness in eastern europe. kids went fucking NUTS. i know in almost every one of these i've said the shows were amazing, but this one fucking took the taco. dave green and his lovely wife were there. they took chris and jr out on the town and good times were had.
lichtenstien germany - and back to germany we go. this show was a good show, but we were still reeling from the prague show. it was like getting dumped by your girlfriend and dating a new girl who is really awesome but you just want the old one back. we had a good time despite the fact that half of the tour was sick like dogs.
bremen germany - they made us a giant pot of sauerkraut. we bought some tennis balls and threw them around alot in the backstage room. sarah and olli of ox magazine came out again...good to see them. good show, good vibe and probably our best show in germany on this tour. rise and fall fucking owned this night though.
amsterdam holland - our friends sanjay, and hellman flew in from the states to meet us and party! also chris's bandmates from blacktail were in town too! fucking awesome!! last show with raf and ncf. coliseum and lords played also and it was likewise the last night of their tour, so you can only imagine the amount of hijinx that when down tonight. we played listen up last and had all the bands join us on stage to sing along with us, then those jokesters from lords and coliseum got up in the balcony and dumped about 30 gallons of coke, fanta, and beer on us along with a truckload of potato chips and peanuts. all of a sudden the stage transformed into the bottom of a dumpster. this night was truly out of control. a fucking great way to end the tour with our friends.
reykjavik iceland - flew in and gudny and eva picked us up at the airport, then took us to their house where our friend siggi was making some great food for us. that night we went to the show and this fucking show was the most insane show of the whole tour. iceland knows how to get down people. the floor was littered with broken glass. half the crowd was shirtless. a couple of them were shirtless before any fucking bands even played!! there were a few punches thrown, a few kicks to the chest, but it was all in the name of good fun. we sold every peice of merchandise we had.
the next morning we got up early and we all went to the blue lagoon. ironically enough more than half of the people there were from boston. we made a new friend lynsey and her mom who was awesome. hellman decided he was just going to live among the lava rocks and never return home. we talked him out of it. off to the airport. bummout. got on the plane and they showed that uma thurman movie prime. it sucked.
and now here we are, back home and ready to play this weekend.
we want to thank avocado booking, rise and fall, ncf, thomas and tschepitz at nomads of prague, trashmark merchandising, reflections records, frith street tattoo, tony sylvester, big ben, pugs, and all of our other friends we encountered on this tour. it was amazing and we cant wait to come back again. cheers."
