Hello out there. Kevill here again, coming to you from some bar in Manhattan where I have found a place to actually sit down and write. Finding a spot took some time, and I had to buy a fucking $7 beer (seriously, what the hell?), but now it is time to recap on the past week of the tour.
So the show went off in Florida, where we proceeded to go to a hotel with our pals in Landmine Marathon (everyone on the tour is total bro-dude-pals by now, horrible gay jokes abound. That seems to be the truly consistent mark of tour-brotherhood, for some reason). This had been going on all afternoon as it was Adam’s birthday, but I missed the afternoon festivities to write the last one of these. We stayed up ‘til 5:30 or something drinking cheap beer, and Travis aka Richard, our merch guy, did some prank calls, which he is kind of legendary for. Usually just playing the typical Richard character, who’s a good ‘ol American trucker who calls the waitresses “sweetheart” at Denny’s all across the South. But for the one in New York, he does his best/worst New Yorker accent and goes, “Ey can I have a grand slam, ah?”, and the guy at Denny’s responds immediately “Ey, FUCK YOU! Ah?” and hangs up the phone. Stereotypes time and time again prove themselves to be hilariously true.
Next day is Atlanta, where we once again play the Masquerade. This venue is an old sawmill or something, and has the dubious honor of having some of the most consistently foul bathrooms of any venue I have ever played. I saw a full blown flood in one of them once…Definitely was not pretty. But the place itself is goddamn cool, there’s all this rusted old machinery lying around outside, and I spent some time examining it and trying to determine its purpose. No luck. It is a bit of a labyrinth in general, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some rooms in there no one has seen for years, with some forgotten skeletons in them or something. We are playing the stage called “hell” this time. It was a rager. After the show, Lazarus AD, Diamond Plate, and us go and drive about 40 miles to the nearest truckstop we can find and park in a closed-off formation so that there is a wide space between the vehicles that no one else can see. We proceed to break out the 30 pack and start partying in a truckstop parking lot. Diamond Plate, being young lads, of course do not partake, and of course none of the rest of us force those poor young boys to drink the beer-horn. We are all civilized here. Hahaha, those dudes got wasted.
I wake up the next morning, have a McDonald’s breakfast to follow up the previous night’s McDinner, and get rolling again. Since we booked it across the South in about one week flat, the drives are pretty easy now, especially by comparison. I roll into NC in the mid-afternoon, and we have some good time to hang out before anything happens. We spend it watching like 4 or 5 episodes of X-men. Hell yes. That’s about all there is to do, the only things in the area are a gas station and a really sleazy little bar with nobody inside. Bah. Show is fun once again, good stage and all. Some familiar faces and guys who have seen us like 5 or 6 times turn out at all of these, which is a great feeling.
On to Baltimore! Since these drives are short, and our van only sleeps 5 out of the 6 people we have, the last couple nights we have been taking turns having one guy ride with Diamond Plate in their RV. Tonight it is my turn. We go a few hours by night, where I get to see how much comfier the RV is than our van, and Mario talks about the cosmos. He tries to get philosophical about it, but it’s complete bullshit and I call him on it. Needless to say he’s been talking about it all the time ever since. We went a few hours by night, and then by day we should have about 2-3 hours to go—but the traffic demons strike, and it actually takes 6. Konrad, who was driving, bursts into flames with sheer rage. It was quite a sight. So we make it there extremely late, which is fine with me because I don’t know of anything in that area, except for a street full of some of the most horrible strip clubs I’ve ever seen. I tried going there once, never again, far too haggard…”Do you know what horrors lie beyond those walls?” So I go out to have a beer, and by the time I’m back the show has started. Tonight is the best one since the West Coast, a mighty rager all around. We play like 14-15 songs, which is a brutal experience on the band and crowd alike.
The next two shows are both pretty small, in rural Frederick, Maryland at a small cafe. I figure that the best course of action to make the show more exciting is to get drunk and start headbutting people in the crowd. I get a nice nosebleed going while doing so, and the few people there still get rowdy. Beer and ridiculous actions are clearly the best way to turn failure into success! The show in Kingston, New York had been moved, apparently because the venue owner had not paid the rent, and at the last show there (Immolation) he told the crowd to destroy the place, and they did. So the venue we were supposed to play is condemned, and there was a last-minute venue change to a tiny bar, Gloria’s in Newburgh, New York, apparently in the middle of the forest. Everyone knows that a venue change that late in the game means almost certain death for the show. So the best possible course of action was once again to get completely ridiculous and have as much fun with it as possible. The parking lot once again became the party zone. Since we were in the forest, we kept listening to Viking Bathory records and looking up at the stars. When we played it, a lot of the rest of the tour came in to troll us with laser pointers, and Dylan from Landmine came in with a naked-dude suit. Not naked, but wearing a one-piece clothing item that had nipples and like a leaf over the crotch. Total fucking absurdity. Also Butler showed me a new stage move–a variant on the “microphone machine gun”. It’s pretty glorious so I think I’ll start doing it now and then — it is the “microphone bow-hunter”. You can pretty much imagine how it looks. Ridiculous.
After the show, I passed out in the van, where it is extremely fucking cold. Everyone else on the tour raged, I was not there, but apparently I missed out big. Some highlights I heard of: people throwing a couch into the river, Adam swimming in the river. Ask someone else, I wasn’t there! There’s some video of it that will probably surface soon.
Denny’s, hotel, sleep, van repair, more Denny’s… then onward to Trenton. New Jersey roads are a pain in the ass and it takes like an hour to go 15 miles or so. It’s OK though because we get to the Championship where our friends are, and there’s a killer turnout and a pit going for all the bands — all night. Major hell yeah of a show!
So now we are in NYC, and I just about spontaneously combusted myself trying to get into the city and not run people over who walk way too close to where you’re going. “Hey, I’m drivin’ here!” As always, we are busy as hell today in New York, including a stop at the Guitar World offices, but we expect great things from this show. It’s the first time we roll up and see our name on the marquee! What a feeling. I gotta go and deal with more goddamned errands, but I’ll be writing again next week. Tour is about halfway done, with about an eternity and a half to go. See you all next week.
** Warbringer are currently on tour with Lazarus A.D., Landmine Marathon, Diamond Plate
20-Oct Webster Underground Hartford, CT
21-Oct Montage Music Hall Rochester, NY
22-Oct Broadway Joe’s Buffalo, NY
23-Oct Wreck Room Toronto, Canada
24-Oct Peabody’s Cleveland, OH
25-Oct Vaudeville Mews Des Moines, IA
26-Oct Station 4 St Paul, MN
27-Oct Reggie’s Rock Club Chicago, IL
28-Oct Blondie’s Detroit, MI
29-Oct Firebird St Louis, MO
30-Oct Beaumont Theatre Kansas City, MO
31-Oct Marquis Theatre Denver, CO
1-Nov The Complex Salt Lake City, UT
2-Nov The Alley Reno, NV
4-Nov Funky Winker Bean’s Vancouver, Canada
5-Nov El Corazon Seattle, WA
6-Nov Hawthorne Theatre Portland, OR w/Mayhem
7-Nov Thee Parkside San Francisco, CA
** Warbringer’s new album, World Torn Asunder, is out now on Century Media Records. Click HERE to nab a copy.
