Metal Shock Finland (World Assault )

VADER is 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/

14.09.2013 St. Louis, MO @ Fubar

We arrived at the club and did load in about 4-5PM. Then soundcheck. Quite decent sound. Bass sounded fabulous! The venue OK but no backstage area at all. We separated one corner to put all gear in. After dinner everybody went to relax in his own way (I was developing a necromant-summoner in Diablo 2 😉 Show was OK. We had just little problem with drum trigger so Ray had to run up and there few times during the show to fix it. We played “God is Dead” for encore. Then quick load out, quick beer in the bar and we leave ASAP to Chicago.

The club is named “Fubar”… Those who saw “Saving Pvt. Ryan” know the meaning of this word 😉 A place kind of decent, stage OK….but no backstage at all. My nose’s still running as Hell and it pisses me off. As our team was setting up the stage, I was changing string set in my guitar (yes – I still like to do it on my own, occasionally ). I noticed some St.Louis University buildings in the area, so I knew we may expect students tonight. The show was good! I somehow made through it, although not without help of a towel on stage behind my back.  I had to wipe my nose all the time or else I could not breath normally. I went to bed pretty soon this evening just after I watched “Possession”. Chicago tomorrow: a Polish day !

I woke up and got out of bed at around 10am. I came into the main lounge and was immediately greeted by an extremely drunk Vital Remains drummer. So instead of having my breakfast I had to waste my morning along with the rest of VR to try and convince Jack to go to bed. He was one of the previous night’s many moonshine casualties. We got to the venue, (and let’s just say some people had a very ‘difficult’ load in) set up and soundchecked and ate something; you all know the routine by now. All we had to do now was wait – we had about 5 hours until we started. There was no real backstage area so we just relaxed on the bus, some of us slept to make the time go a little faster, then after the usual coffee and a warm up it was time to play. It was pretty late and some of the audience seemed pretty tired and we also suffered from some technical difficulties but ultimately it was a great show! We left pretty quickly and went straight to a truck stop so our driver could sleep (he did another shift behind the sound desk today so he’d been working for around 15 hours) and we could take a shower if we needed to. Finally at around 4:30am it was time to sleep before we started the journey to Chicago.

two drummers – James and Jack

on the way to Chicago

15.09.2013 Chicago, IL @ Reggies

Chicago greeted us with some very un-American weather – lots of grey clouds and heavy rain – a good start to the day. We got into the venue and did all the usual stuff and then ate something. Lots of people also made use of the shower and laundry facilities backstage (a rare thing on tour in North America apparently). Some guests also came over to say hi to Spider and Pete, I didn’t understand most of what they were saying but they brought pierogis so they were instantly welcomed and relieved of their burden! We had a great turnout at the gig and Pete was actually able to converse with a lot of the audience in Polish so I’m sure Pete, Spider and Hal felt very at home. After the show Pete and Spider stayed with their guests while Hal and I visited a ‘Post-Vader Afterparty’ with the guys from Vital Remains and Sacrificial Slaughter at a metal bar a couple of miles downtown. It was a very strange party with fire-eating and lots of people dressed in extremely gothic clothing but after a few drinks we all got used to it! We made it back to the bus and left pretty soon after for Detroit.

The weather was horrible that day. I hoped to take a walk before the club was opening… We’ve been to this club already – we played our last show on the previous tour with Immolation there. There is a nice indoor record store too. This time I bought t-shirts of Slayer and Priest (oh yeah – I still do buy shirts 😉 Unfortunately I did not find anything in a vinyl sector. Our Friends from Chicago began to show up. Marcel brought delicious pierogis with onion. Ciapek did not forget about traditional sour pickles and… a bucket of pierogies (I ordered it already before the tour start). Many more friends came to see us: Baton with Adam and some Friends, also Wawrzyn, Sylwa, Ryan and few more. Many Poles on this show (there was beautiful Polish flag with Vader logo amongst the crowd too). Definitely the best show on tour so far! Great response, good sound (good job Ray!) and taste of our distant land (read: home made pierogies) 😉 My nose was still leaking, however, which didn’t make my mood better for the night. Hot shower after show and then nice chat with my Polish Friends in our bus. The rest of team were visiting a Metal Bar around the corner and getting pretty much wasted overthere. I gave up anyway… Detroit tomorrow.

Vader on stage in Chicago

Read also the tour blog from Santa Ana and Oakland HERE, Portland HERE, Seattle HERE, Denver HERE, Kansas City HERE.

Check out the entire VADER tour blog on facebook HERE.