Moloken's European tour 2009

Here is the tour dairy of our European tour october 17 to 21:th October (part I):



First day and gig: 17 October, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Söderhanm, Sweden

On the late evening we embarked on a smooth and relaxing trip southwards. Before we left Umeå there was the typical matter of packing everything smart, since we brought all of our gear, except the PA-speakers. Luckily we didn’t have to resolve to Tetris.

After hours in the van exploiting toilet humour and bizarre remarks about trivial matters, we arrived at Söderhamn, our first venue, and started unloading all of our equipment on stage, and asked the club where the sound technician was. As it turned out, there was no technician around and no one there had a clue about sound engineering (!), which is why Kristoffer took upon himself to do two jobs at a time: live engineering and playing. Luckily he didn’t have to grow four arms or mutate into Mr Fantastic to manage this task, since it was a small stage and we could place everything as if we we’re rehearsing. We did a good gig, had great live sound, the food the club served was awesome, and not only the drunkards in the front of the stage were enjoying themselves. And as it turned out, our sleeping quarters were two rooms in the hotel above the club. Sweet!


Second day and gig: 18 October, Oden, Karlskrona, Sweden

We woke around 8 o’clock, loaded all our stuff in the van and drove off towards Karlskrona, 800 km south of Söderhamn.

After we’ve been driving several hours on the E4 motorway along the east coast and through the Stockholm area we began to think that we would be at our designation in no time. Sadly, when we got through Linköping we only found smaller roads towards Karlskrona, going zigzags through places no one’s ever heard of. It took us over two hours of long monologues why Gehenna’s last three albums is the crème de la crème, cursing, and human errors regarding the GPS due to above mentioned factors, plus low sugar level, to reach the venue, Oden, in Karlskrona.

The people at the venue were very friendly, efficient and knew what they were doing, plus they made a tasty vegan soup, although some of them looked like they had woken up in a dumpster. After the first band had done their show (a surprisingly good crust band by the way, given that I normally never listen to crust) we got up on stage and delivered an awesome gig. Even our bed benefactor for the evening, who has a keen (or shall I say picky) eye (and ear) for musical errors, couldn’t find anything special to complain about. The last band was a hardcore band, Trophies, and they delivered some pretty good tunes that night. That night we ate Brie cheese and tasted some exotic, dark beer from a small brewery in the US before we went to sleep in a cosy house in Malmö. Sounds like luxury, doesn’t it?


Third day and gig: 19 October, Martha, Kiel, Germany

With our bellies filled with sandwiches, yoghurt and off-course the compulsory morning coffee (well, at least I’m obliged to do so, everyone else is into that whole oh-we’re-so-aware-of-what-we-eat-thing, except when they stuff themselves with candy), we headed south towards our home country’s old enemy, Denmark. Apart from my weak mimics of the Danish language and the usual jokes about Danes, nothing special occurred. We drove through Denmark within an hour or so – it went so fucking fast that we barely saw anything of the country.

On the autobahn, all we saw was the road, landmarks, fields after fields with barley and wheat, and occasionally the outskirts of some small town or shithole. It was a bit dismal. It took us about two hours to reach Kiel.

When you’re going to a place, and have sent advertising stuff to the arranger, like the whole layout for a poster, you could assume they just print it and place it on boards, right? Wrong. Many times, you can be sure these so-called “arrangers” haven’t done jackshit to let the people know you’re coming to town. No posters, no advertisers in magazines, no nothing…fucking hacks. Not this time though, no sir. Whoever put up all these posters for the gig did a helluva job, as the streets were littered with them all over Kiel.

Although we had a somewhat hazy conception on how we’re supposed to get to the venue we reached the place after a phone call with the mysterious arranger for the evening gig, whom we only have had a brief contact through e-mail before. For all we knew he could actually be a she. We parked our car outside the designated street number, but something was very wrong with this picture. There we stood, with our parked van right in front of an old car shop, at the end of a small street intersecting a bigger one. Neighbouring the car shop stood some poor remains of what seemed to have been old work shops and garages with gates nearly falling down from its hinges, and all the buildings in the vicinity had lost their paint a long time ago. Seemed like a nice place, right? In like five minutes the enigmatic arranger arrived. He had all the visual qualities resembling an old biker, but he was a really nice guy.

Now, this isn’t a joke, but the venue was actually below the car shop, and you could enter the club by walking down a ramp inside the car shop! That was the most bizarre thing I’ve ever come across. Imagine playing in like a bomb-shelter below a car shop. We became most anxious to see if this club would live up to our growing fantasies about a REAL underground gig.

Some confusion arose however when the badass-look-alike arranger informed us that the venue was being cancelled due to some sketchy reasons, and by that time all the bands had already arrived at the car shop. He promised us however to try and arrange something else the very same night. Yeah right! So we waited and hanged out with the other bands at the spot, among them the dudes from Geisha for a half-hour or so before Mr. Arranger phoned us that he’d gotten us and Geisha another gig. If it were in Sweden, getting us inside another venue the same date would never have happened for sure, so we were very grateful for that turn of events.

Thanks to a lying and confused GPS we drove wrong for some time and had started asking the locals before we reached the right club, and since this venue looked nice, was above ground and didn’t have somewhat dubious neighbours we felt more secure. Now, originally the venue was only supposed to have one band playing that night, and now there were three bands the same night. The first band didn’t seem very happy with this, which is maybe why they sat in the backstage with sulky faces and drank beer for themselves. As usual there’s a tiresome wait before going up on stage, which is why some alcoholic beverages and small-talk is the best way to kill some time. When Geisha got up on stage we became witnesses to the controlled chaos they manifested. With every inch of the stage packed with pedals and effects, they certainly created an interesting atmosphere of sounds. When it was our time to play we noticed how small the stage actually was, and once again I felt like being packed inside a sardine jar. The gig itself went really good and the response was indeed positive, and we finished off with an extra number. Our main contact in Germany, Thomas, took us after the gig to his friend’s flat to eat some veggie food (what else?) before going to his own apartment. That night we slept on the floor. Not so comfortable, but at least my head was lying on the belly of a huge teddy bear, hence why I felt like a prince when I awoke the day after.


Fourth day: 20 October, Kiel, Germany

If there’s anything we might take for granted, coming from a pretty high standard of living in Sweden, then it’s hot water and electricity. In lack of both those luxuries we searched for a public bath and got to this swimming hall, but the whole place were booked for some swimming school or some kind of shit and the freaking cashier had closed for the day, so we said fuck that shit and committed our first crime in Germany, non-paid public showering. When we left the swimming hall we must’ve looked like five hooligans, ‘cause some retired folks passed us by and murmured that the swimming hall must’ve been robbed.

If there’s anything else you might take for granted in Sweden, then there are high prices on alternative food, and if the prices are actually low on an alternative restaurant, then the place is usually pretty filthy and worn-down. That’s why at least I got surprised when we found this nice place in Kiel which was fresh, served really good stuff and had pretty low prices.

Since we didn’t have a gig for the evening we just hanged out the remaining of the day with our host, inspected some pubs and the local beverages before getting some shut-eye.


Fifth and Sixth day and fourth gig: 21 – 22 October, De Rots, Antwerp, Belgium

First: If there’s anything you’d expect from arrangers and the personnel at a venue then it’s the simple gestures of social competence, you know, greeting you when you arrive, recognizing you’re here to do a job, maybe lend a helping hand in-case you might need it, and afterwards bid you farewell and so forth. You know, freaking normal manners.

When we arrived we barely were noticed by the club. It was as if we weren’t there, or maybe we were something tiresome, something the personnel had to endure for the time being. Or maybe the club people could only see things in a five-dimensional way and we had to wear special masks in order to be recognized, who knows? I’ve never seen this level of indifference towards a band before, like they didn’t care at all if we’d play or not. Okay, since I come from Uppsala I do know another place which has the same low social quality towards bands, but that’s a story to cry about some other time.

Second: If there’s anything you’d expect from the audience then it’s that they actually watch the show, and not sit at the bar with their back against us. It was as if we were the same old boring house band, playing the same old tunes for the five hundredth time, and the morons sipping their beers at the bar just want to be left alone in their own misery, now that the wife has left them and taken the kids along with the house and the car, but left them the mortgage, the insurances and the kids’ welfare to pay. I’m exaggerating, but you get the general picture of the whole scenario.

This was the worst gig we’ve ever done. We could have more fun playing at a coal power plant for Mr Whoever’s retirement party as far as I’m concerned. Playing in front of robots (or more like playing behind them) isn’t so exciting and talking to robots is not so funny in the long run. But what a heck, you can only try and do the best out of the whole mess. To outweigh this debacle we left the venue after the gig to spend the night inspecting Antwerp’s pubs and found some good Trappist beer and nice company along the way.

When we were about to leave the venue and their hostel the day after it took us three hello and good morning before Mr Record guy, with the shop inside the venue, to greet us. Maybe this place was uniquely packed with real misanthropes, but I doubt that since he jumped from whatever he was doing when I shouted at him. Anyway, our mood was boosted by the last night, plus we had time to walk around in Antwerp like hello-I’m-a-tourist-poster stamped on our foreheads. While Patrick and I cultivated our sophisticated taste for the fine arts, the brothers and John did their best to equal that in the somewhat trashy cultural sphere.

Oh, I nearly forgot: When we entered Antwerp we saw lots of these orthodox Jews bicycling around the streets with their big beards, Mormon clothes and Babylonian haircuts, so we assumed there had to be a temple nearby, but then we started seeing them everywhere, for only that day. The day after no one was around. Funny, since you never see them in Sweden, only on TV and usually it’s something about the settlements in Israel and fanatic Zionists.