8.10.2010 Lyon, France

I woke up about at the precise moment that the tour bus arrived to the venue. No rough seas last night. We were already familiar with this one (CCO), we had been here before in 2006 with Satyricon. Then we didn’t have a backstage, but now we did. We set up an “assembly” for an hour or so waiting for the locals to get the catering done. The venue itself was great but catering was more like English standards. There was a huge amount of local staff, but they didn’t seem to get anything done in time. …Well, enough of complaining.

I went for a stroll at the city with Usrki, and we found a very convenient coin-operated 7/7 laundry just around the corner. That set the pace for further actions. Seven Finns (Insomnium accompanied with sound, light and merchandise crew) made their pilgrimage with huge sacks of dirty laundry. 7kg machine, long 65 centigrade program and a shitload of detergent was my solution to rid the smell on my stage clothes. We got our clothes dry just before our sound check.

The rest of the afternoon was just waiting. Dinner was served ninety minutes late, but it was okay. We had plenty of time to digest that French cuisine before hitting the stage. Besides the pleasure of wearing clean stage clothes we had another special pleasure – Overload supporting us once again. They supported us in Montpellier a week ago, and I had just got enough time to become familiar with their newest album. Excellent musicianship and good songwriting, so it was really a pleasure have them with us on this one!

The French failed to show any superiority with catering, but when it came to the audience, it was a totally different story. Playing-wise we did quite well, but the audience made this the craziest show this far. It was a riot all over during the whole show. Mosh-pits, circle-pits, crowd-surfing, singing along, you name it. They were almost more on stage than us! Well, it was a blast, thank you!

Naturally we were on a good mood after the show. Quick showers, cooling down in warm Lyon night and variety of different drinks took us from Mars to Sirius in no time. DT boys enjoyed themselves as well and Martin H. took special care to provide us with a variety of drinks that normally one could only dream of. Bus call 2 am felt to come all too soon, but naturally the party went on at the bus as we hit the road for Switzerland. Thank you Lyon, see you soon again!

Ville Vänni