Toulouse

France, the 23rd of November

Hey guys,

Right now we're about 200 km from Toulouse, where we're playing tonight. Our last blog was before our gig in Lindau. Since then we've played in Germany, Switzerland and France at some very nice venues.

The Lindau gig was great. There were two backstage rooms, so we shared backstage with Týr. We were treated really well and had a great show, even if the turnout was one of the smaller ones on the tour. 

After Lindau we played the two Swiss gigs of the tour. We were quite nervous before both shows because there are strict volume limits in Switzerland. The limit is 100dB, louder than that lands you a considerable fine. We didn't have any problems though. Since we are the first band on the bill we are the only band which gets a real sound-check, and Fríði has been doing a great job making us sound good.

Anyway, the Dietikon gig went great. We had our own backstage room and the other three bands had one room, which didn't really make sense. And, apparently, a crate of beer in Switzerland is a six-pack. We're not complaining though, we had a great time and we had a big crowd. 

Monthey is the most beautiful place we've been to so far. Dietikon is in the German speaking part of Switzerland while Monthey is in the French part and must be close to the alps. Instead of getting food at the venue we were all taken out to a restaurant where we got a 3-course dinner and wine which was magnificent! We stayed at a hostel in the nearby Montreaux(google some pictures!) and it's definitely not the last time I'm going there.

When we were in Monthey we found out that five of our passports had been left at the hostel in Zürich, so we had to take a slight detour back into Zürich on our way to France to pick them up. It all worked out well though, thankfully. We still haven't been required to show our passports, but you never know when it might happen.

After Switzerland we headed into France where we played in Colmar. The special thing about the Colmar gig was that we had a day off after the show, so we didn't necessarily have to hold back on the partying. France is strange, you can only buy cigarettes in designated tobacco stores, but their supermarkets have a HUGE variety of alcohol which is very cheap. 20 euros for a bottle of Glenfiddich and 1.15 for a bottle of cheap red wine. Not too bad. :) We stayed around after our show and checked out the other bands properly, and they are all great! Two of the local guys from the venue gave us rides back to our hostel after the show, which made everything a lot easier. All in all we've had a fantastic impression of France so far and Colmar was no exception.

Yesterday we had our day off in Lyon. Lyon is a beautiful city. The hostel where we stayed was the nicest one we've been to yet, with a large terrace overlooking the inner city. We all went out during the evening and had fancy three-course dinner with white and red wine and cognac, which was a fantastic experience. Needless to say the dining culture in France is in a different league to where we're from. I and Jenus walked around the city for a couple of hours and watched Lyon's Champions League game against Ajax in a local pub, which was also very interesting(couldn't get tickets to the game though).

We're on our way to Toulouse now, it's getting really warm outside and the sun is shining. We're playing Madrid tomorrow, Barcelona on Friday and Bilbao on Saturday, so the tour shows no signs of getting any worse for us. We'll keep you posted.

Until next time,

Theodor

Lindau

Lindau, 18th of November

Hey guys,

We're on day three of the tour. So far we've played in Ludwigsburg(DE) and Vosselaar(BE). The first two gigs have gone great. It's a tour, so there'll obviously be small hick-ups along the way, but all in all everything has been going great. We've been averaging about 700 km a day so far, but the next four days we're going to be driving much less which will give us time to enjoy the other bands' sets and have a few beers.

The Ludwigsburg gig was special, it was our first ever gig outside The Faroe Islands and Iceland. The show got delayed for about 30 minutes because the turn-up wasn't great, but when we started playing there were loads of people. After the show we just relaxed, had a few beers and saw the other bands. We're privileged to be on this tour with these fantastic bands, and all of them appear to be really cool people to hang out with as well. So we couldn't be happier.

We played in Vosselaar(BE) yesterday and it was a bit more hectic. We drove 770 km to our venue today, so we had to load out all our stuff from the venue straight after our show so that we could get some sleep before the long drive. The gig went well though, we had a decent turnout and we played ok. We stayed the night in Antwerp, which was pretty special for me personally since I grew up there and haven't been there for about 12 years. We were lucky enough to get a hostel 500 m from Groenplaats, so we went out and had one or two Belgian beers and some food. This is my personal opinion and not necessarily the opinion of the band, but the food and beer in Belgium is in a different league to that in the Nordic countries. Like Samuel L. Jackson said, it's the little differences :)

Right now we're in Lindau(DE). It's the biggest venue that we've played so far, our hostel is walking distance from the venue and we're only driving 150 km tomorrow. So I'm gonna stop writing and find something fun to do. :) We've just had our soundcheck and it's sounding amazing so I can't wait for the gig!

Until next time,

Theodor

The journey continues..

Hamburg, Tuesday the 15th of November

Hey guys,

I'm writing this from our tour bus, we've just left Hamburg for Ludwigsburg, which is about 600 km away(good times!). Our first gig is tomorrow, it hasn't really hit us yet. 

We've had a few eventful days in Copenhagen. We arrived on Saturday evening and went our own separate ways to stay at friends' places. We had our first rehearsal with Jón on Sunday. Jón's old band, Solbrud, were kind enough to lend us their rehearsal space for two days which we are very thankful for! 

We rehearsed on Sunday evening and Monday evening, and especially Monday was a pretty eventful day. Sunday went down without any real problems except that we found out that we were missing one of the foot-switches for one of the guitar amps. When packing the bus in Tórshavn one of the foot-switches was left behind. Thankfully my brother Mattias was supposed to fly back to Copenhagen on Monday so he could take the foot-switch with him and give it to us before we left for Germany. But on Monday morning he called me and said that he was staying for another week, which made us have to find another way to bring the foot-switch to Denmark. We tried to find a foot-switch in Copenhagen, but locating a Single Rectifier foot-switch with one day's notice isn't that easy. We found one, but it was pretty damn expensive. There was a single flight leaving from Vágar to Copenhagen that day. But we're from a small place, so through friends and my brother we managed to get the foot-switch to Copenhagen. 

We spent most of the morning/early afternoon figuring out how to get the foot-switch to Copenhagen. After that we rehearsed for a while, and we had a pretty interesting experience on our way to the rehearsal space. We were driving on a narrow side alley when a police car turned up behind us, sirens blazing. So we had to turn off the road pretty quickly to let the police car pass. After we turned we heard a bang on the side of the bus. It turns out that the police car was chasing a scooter which was doing anything it could to escape the police. The guy actually drove into the side of our bus! He hit it very mildly though, there wasn't even a bump on the car, and the police were too busy chasing the guy to notice that he hit our car.

Anyway, the rehearsal went really well after which we went to pick up the foot-switch at the airport. Thanks Valborg!! And when we had got the foot-switch and packed the car properly came the highlight of the day - hamburgers! If you're ever in Copenhagen, there is a burger bar on Istedgade called Burger & Bun. I've been there twice and I can confidently say that they make the best burgers I've tasted in my life. Seriously, if you're in Copenhagen you don't want to miss them!

Today we left Copenhagen pretty early. We were slightly delayed out of Copenhagen, but since then everything has been going well. The first hour of our drive was really cold(or so I hear - I was asleep) as we didn't have any cooling liquid left in the car, so the heating in the car didn't work. But as soon as we put some cooling liquid in the car it got warm and cozy again and everything went as planned. We had lunch in Hamburg with Jörg of Dragon Productions, who has booked the Dead Tyrants tour. I've been emailing him for almost a year, so it was cool to go out and have lunch and talk face to face. We still can't believe that we're going on this tour and it wouldn't be possible without the amazing cooperation from Dragon Productions.

Alright, that's the update for this time. We're meeting the other guys on the tour and having our first gig tomorrow, so the fun starts now!

Keep it doom,

Theodor

Hamferð tour blog, Dead Tyrants tour

Thursday, the 10th of November.

Hey guys. This is Theodor from Hamferð checking in. Seeing as we will be driving for several hours every single day of the tour I figured that we might as well keep a tour blog so anyone interested can follow our tour through Europe with Týr, Moonsorrow and Crimfall. At the very least it'll give me something to do on the bus. I'm a tech geek, so I'll be giving you guys a run-through of the equipment we're running, our guitar setups etc. as well as writing about our experiences on tour so anyone interested can follow how we are doing. I'll be adding pictures to the blog, and if anybody has any questions I'll try to do my best to respond to them.

I'm writing this first instance of the blog from MS Norröna, the ferry between The Faroe Islands and Denmark. We left Tórshavn earlier tonight and are arriving in Denmark on Saturday morning. Smyril Line has been very kind to sponsor us with a large part of the cost of the journey, which has made the financial part of the tour a lot easier. We even have windows in our cabins so we can see the ocean, which obviously makes the trip that little bit doomier. The ferry arrives in the north of Denmark after which we'll have to drive for about 5-6 hours to reach Jón in Copenhagen. We're staying in Copenhagen for a few days to rehearse before we leave for Ludwigsburg, Germany on the 15th where our tour starts on the 16th. A few of the guys are already busy partying but a few of us are just chilling out and getting ready for an intense couple of weeks. 14 gigs in 16 days seems unreal to us. When you add the fact that we're going to be opening for great(and huge!) bands in some fantastic places it seems even crazier. This is by far the biggest thing we've ever done and it seems unreal that we've been given the opportunity.

We've been rehearsing a lot for the last couple of weeks, and the rehearsals have gone really well! We've got hold of some new equipment(amps, cymbals etc.) so we've been sounding better than ever. Jenus, our stand in bassist for the tour, has also blown us away with how fast he's been able to adapt to playing with us. We have 45 minutes of well rehearsed material, and we're only getting a 30 minute set, so we'll probably vary our set-lists slightly. I really feel that we're very well prepared, so hopefully that will carry on into the shows. 

That's it for now. Hopefully there are people out there who will find this blog interesting, and as I said, if anybody has any questions feel free to ask.

Until next time,

Theodor