Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

Massive Music has issued as follows:

There we go. VADER’s in the States and brings fresh news from the frontier of their tour over the New Continent. For the upcoming weeks we’re gonna publish their tour blog from Back to the Black US tour 2013. Stay tuned! \m/

06.09.2013 Santa Ana, CA@ Yost Theatre

We play first show in USA in Santa Ana. My trip startedat 10 pm the previous day and since then I am bound to get no sleep for almosttwenty four hours. We leave to the States from Warsaw at 4am on Friday. We land in Los Angeles around Fridaynoon. Seems like a fast journey but we ‘lost’ 9 hours on our way, due to thetime zone difference. We’re picked up by Steve (Precision Metal Booking), getonto the bus and head for Santa Ana.Short distance, again no sleep. After our arrival we need to arrange our gear.Almost all of us got their gear provided by the US endorser. Spider has Schecter’sguitar and me a beautiful Blakhart bass guitar. After soundcheck we go to thenightiner for 3-4 hours of sleep…FINALLY!!! I wake up 2 hours before getting onstage. Go to the club – there’s a LOT ofpeople! Didn’t expect such a turnout. Quick change for stage clothes and I’mready. I get to see Vital Remain’s show for a while and here comes the time forus. We have no problems on stage. The audience greets us well. We play “HellAwaits” (Slayer) for encore. Right after the show we go straight to the buswhere we split a “welcome” vodka with Vital Remains and finally go to sleep.

I started my trip to US a day earlier, after I jumped into the Radex bus travelling to Warsaw at 6:20 PM. I booked  for me and James  familiar hotel “56” near the terminal. Wake up call set for 3:30 AM (Damned !!!!) , taxi drive to the airport and meeting with rest of Vader team. Our 14 hours long KLM flight to LA through Amsterdamn went nice and smooth so yet the same day (Sept. 6th)  we get into our nightliner about noon. This is gonna be our house for next month and we share it with guys from VITAL REMAINS and SUICIDAL SLAUGHTER. There is so nice and cool inside as california sonic hell is raging outside. We headed to the Yost Theatre at once. I like this place. A soundcheck took about an hour and … we went to sleep. 9 hours difference is real pain in the ass. When I started my preparation for a show, Suicidal Slaughter were raging on stage already. I saw a little of Vital Remains show too. LA is the place, where I met those guys for a first time in 1993 when we visited US for a first time. Brian lost His best friend today (this is what I was told about) so He’s tearing the air with screaming then throwing out aside the stage pretty intense. Then came tearing a bible apart… It is not forbidden in US as I see 😉 Quitw many people in the club. About 400 I guess. Response was great since opening “Sothis”! THX Santa Ana !!!!! Good start is priority tho. 110 % morale 😉 Quick interview for local internet portal (no idea how was I be able to do it…), cold vodka with old Friends from Vital and I reached my bett at about 3:30 AM. We drive to Frisco in few hours…

After something like a 17-hour journey we arrived at LAX to meet the tour promoter and the nightliner. There’s not much to say about the travel. It was just ok, no major complications, reasonably comfortable and of course boring as hell. We got straight on the nightliner driven by our resident sociopath, Ray, and headed straight for the Yost Theater. There we met our companions for the tour including our old friends Vital Remains and other support bands Sacrificial Slaughter, Execration and Extremely Rotten. We had a soundcheck (where I got to try out some new toys from Meinl cymbals and Tama drums) and then went straight to bed – as by this point it was around 23:00/00:00 in Poland. A few hours later after a nap, a coffee, a quick warm up and a line check and we were ready to hit the stage and it was really great to see so many people attending the first show and despite our condition and some problems with the sound onstage we actually had a lot of fun! All that was left was to pack down the equipment, get back to the bus and relax. A really promising start to the tour indeed!

our home for the next days

Hal’s new toy from Blakhart

Yost Theatre @ Santa Ana

07.09.2013 Oakland, CA @ Oakland Metro

I was sleeping till about 10 AM. The morning coffee woke meup, tho I still felt that 9 hours difference between California and Poland.Quick breakfest in Subway during short stop at gas station. The last part ofthe trip I was watching the beautiful area and testing USA Navigon maps on myiPhone. Oh yeah – we made a quick stop by Wal Mart for shoping. Bateries, binfor our electronics, socks, underwear and some food. We were by the OaklandMetro before 4 PM. Local support bands were already playing on side stage andfew girls were making some nice smeling barbecue on the grill. Country style inthe middle of the city 😉 Venue quite decent tonight. However no backstage areaso our nightliner was our dressing room for tonight. Soundcheck went smooth soI was able to still few hours for sleeping. Tonight we start at 11:30 PM so Iset wake up call for two hours before. In the meantime my amp was blown up.Dave – our guitar tech – set up the other one pretty quick. That one had but nomain volume control so I gave Halik real Hell on stage indeed. We startedalmost on time and huge moshpit started with us. An about 500 maniax in OaklandMetro… For the first two songs I hear my laud guitar only also few painfulfaces in the first raw. All problems were gone on “Fractal Light”tho. Fantastic response ! Great show indeed! We played “Hell Awaits”as an ancore and all Fans started to leave the club. Some photos and signaturesand a bottle of Jack found in the bus fulfilled the evening. All in great mood,we left California few minutes after 3 AM. Direction Oregon…

Most of the day was taken up by travelling from Santa Ana to Oakland. There wasn’t much to do except write tour diaries about there not being much to do and watch the scenery drift by. We eventually made it to the venue at around 4pm and after load-in there was just enough time for a short soundcheck and then more sleep! After another coffee, another quick warm up and another line check, it was time to hit the stage again. The audience was really awesome and the show ran pretty smoothly. I had a guest at the side of the stage, Anton from Sick Drummer Magazine, so you’ll be able to see some footage soon and judge for yourselves how the tour is going! With the next show done, it was straight to the bus for immediate departure to Portland, Oregon…

Oakland Metro @ Oakland

Show’s poster

Peter’s morning coffee and reading