So I’m a day late in writing this, I was supposed to yesterday but I felt like the walking dead after driving through a blizzard to Salt Lake City yesterday. So I passed out on a couch and slept ‘til about 10 minutes before the show. I feel much better now, time to write this thing. My memory is getting really foggy — I think this is the 30th show with no day off yet. I feel like hell, but at the same time, I am totally in the zone, if that makes sense.
St. Paul, Minnesota is a killer town for us. We always seem to do exceptionally well there so we are excited about this show. I go and eat the bison burger that I always get around the corner. Bison rules because it tastes like beef, only more beefy. I have fucking bacon on my burger too. Die, tasty animals!
The show is awesome, Station 4 rages, some guy brought us some pretty nice micro brew tall cans (called Surly), and we raged. The promoter for Station 4 is called Sword Lord. That is pretty sweet.
Chicago is the next day. I spend most of the daytime grinding some Starcraft ladder in the bar next to Reggies, which is a totally killer venue. We’ve played there 3 times and it’s always been good. This time was amazing — might have been as good as New York City. Total mega rage and we had to do a double encore, which is always a great feeling. Special note about the show that night, Konrad Kupiec from Diamond Plate came onstage with us and played “Abandoned by Time”, which he said is his favorite Warbringer song. He nailed it and I forced him to stage dive after. It’s a pretty big honor that dudes as talented as him are fans of our music, feels good man!
We crashed out at the venue that night; they let us stay in the green room. I made the mistake of climbing too high on sticky mountain with Lazarus AD dudes (you figure it out!), and so I crashed out on a couch while everyone else was still up and about. This turned out to be a mistake, as anyone knows, if you pass out at a party you are fair game for sharpie drawings of dicks. At least it was on my arms and not my face. Gotta be a good sport about these things, I’ve certainly sharpie’d other unfortunates before. Also, a side note, every backstage in the world has drawings of dicks on it. I think it almost has to be christened in this way before it officially counts as a backstage. Not quite sure why, but it’s definitely universal.
Next is Detroit. We roll in playing the song “It’s So Cold in the D”, which I highly advise you to check out if you haven’t already. The venue Blondie’s here is the only inhabited building within a square mile of itself. We had to drive past about 20 abandoned restaurants to find one open one. Extremely sketchy. We need Robocop to come clean up this town.
Usually Detroit isn’t one of the strongest markets — people are very clearly having a rough time in this city. It was a Friday though, and we actually had the strongest Detroit turnout we have seen yet. I totally puked out massive amounts of beer on stage in the middle of a song (it’s nothing new for me, screaming really upsets my stomach!), but I didn’t miss a single word in the song despite all that. Trust me; I am a trained professional when it comes to these things.
After the show, the tour started to party pretty hard. There were these two really slutty looking bartenders and they started feeding everyone free drinks. The venue staff was partying too, and it was a pretty jovial mood overall. I think a couple of tour dudes may have gotten a lil action with said bartenders — hi fives all around. But I passed out in the venue at some point and woke up at 3:30 a.m. with my backpack and phone both missing, and all the lights in the venue were out. After a lengthy search, aided by a guy who was still there (?) and talked like he was in the Mafia or something (“Eyy, anything you need, I’m your guy!”), I found both and got my ass in the van.
Onward to St Louis! We were at a pretty nice spot here, and we learned that a bunch of our friends (Exhumed, Havok, Goatwhore) were playing down the street about half a mile away. Sucks that the two shows were separate, but it was good to see old friends. Goatwhore and Exhumed came out to our show and we pal’d around a little — it was only day 2 of their tour. I went down the street to their show and caught the second half of Havok and the first half of Goatwhore. A lot of people seemed to be show-hopping in general that night — they were literally 5 blocks away. Didn’t get to catch Exhumed ’cause we had to play, drat. After the show, I passed out, but the rest of the tour raged on. To report on the matter, Grace Perry of Landmine Marathon, who walked into this bar as I’m writing this, will now give you a rundown of the after show events.
Grace Perry (Landmine Marathon) comments: “The worst thing about tour is probably the liquor laws. They change from city to city and state to state. In St. Louis, Missouri, some parts of the city stop selling at 1:30 a.m., while others stop at 2. We were on the 1:30 side. So imagine 15 tour guys roaming the streets, begging every store they came across for booze. We ended up huddled on Laz-D’s bus passing around a single bottle of gin that tasted like rubbing alcohol. At this point, I was at the highest peak of Mt. Sticky, on the floor, covered in gin. I’m a classy gal like that.”
Next is Kansas City. I wake up and Grace was randomly sleeping in the front seat of our van. Don’t know how that happened, but okay. I start driving while everyone else sleeps. Missouri is weird because the two major cities seem to almost belong to Illinois and Kansas, respectively. This place we were playing, The Beaumont Theatre, was gi-fucking-gantic, we had been there once before when we opened for Megadeth. Fucking Megadeth. What the hell are we doing here by ourselves? The turnout was decent, the stage and sound were awesome, but we aren’t exactly able to pack out the Megadeth-sized room. Kind of a bummer, I wish we were in a smaller joint so it could be a more intense show.
October 31st we are in Denver, Colorado! It’s Halloween, so things are destined to be entirely ridiculous. Everyone on the tour prepares their costume as we hit up Party City on the way. Some highlights of the costume department — Diamond Plate Konrad was Green Man from Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Mario was a sleazy ‘80s rocker with tight zebra pants and Grace’s bra hanging from his guitar. Who can resist? Dylan once again wore his naked leaf suit, and Butler was “entirely camouflaged man”, including his guitar. Grace was a pregnant white trash woman, and Adam was the baby daddy, a hard drinkin’ trailer park boy named Q-tip. They had a confrontation on stage where Grace gave birth and he said, “That ain’t my baby! I ain’t havin no fuckin baby!” and ripped the baby’s head off. Good thing Sherriff Richard was there to arrest that varmint!
Lazarus AD all had superhero masks (Captain America on drums was my favorite. Fuck yeah, all American double kick!), and we had an assortment of random stuff. John Laux was a total nerd, Carlos was Flava Flav, Andy was fucking boring, and I summoned forth the Wizard…Of Time.
It was a nice, fun, fast’n loose kinda show, people were having a blast. There were also two hot babes who showed up dressed as Hitler and Stalin. People were all bent out of shape about the Hitler babe, but no one was upset about the Stalin one. If you people knew your history, you would be equally offended by both! But I wasn’t ’cause they were babes. I had a drink with them and then went onstage. Apparently while we were playing, some openly white power dude started pissing people off and got completely beat-down in a horrible fashion. There wasn’t a police report or anything. I don’t have much sympathy for people who espouse those ideas, but the guy did get beat to the point of hospitalization from what I understand. The offensively dressed babes obviously had to bail cause of this incident. Sucks.
Regardless, the night was a hell of a lot of fun. Except we got a ticket, which brings me to this next rant: fucking meter maids.
Seriously, what kind of person wants to be a meter maid? Your entire job is to ruin people’s day over stupid shit. Why ticket the band that is parked outside of the venue? We paid your fucking meter. I am convinced that in order to do this job, you basically have to be a class-10 douchebag and snicker like a slimy little shit when you write those tickets. Toll both sluts: you are in this category to a lesser extent. Fine readers, don’t ever get into this line of work or I will vaporize you.
There was a huge blizzard on the way to Salt Lake City. I drove through it and listened to a bunch of black metal. When we got to Salt Lake, it was goddamn cold, and I slept ‘til we played. I think there was a show.
Tour is winding down; tomorrow we will be back on the west coast! It’s the first day off…We are driving to Vancouver all day. Rats.
Catch you all next week with the wrap up!
** Warbringer are currently on tour with Lazarus A.D., Landmine Marathon, Diamond Plate
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.
