INSOMNIUM blog: heinäkuu 2010

This summer we will be playing two big European summer festivals and the first one in the line was Slovenia’s Metalcamp. The alarm clock went on 03:15 am Friday morning and I found myself sitting in the bus to the airport already 04:00 am. This day was only about travelling as our gig was scheduled for the Saturday afternoon. After reaching to the halfway of Dimebag’s biography “Black Tooth Grin” I finally found myself at the Venice Airport in Italy. The festival had organised us a driver and we continued our travel with a van from this on. Few quick beer/liquor stops and we were ready for a few days of festival madness.

As we crossed the Slovenian border the sceneries turned just amazing: never-ending row of green mountains with meandering crystal clear rivers. Even though we were tired, we were in good moods and decided to have fun tonight. Only obstacle on our way was the outside temperature, which was over 30 °C while the relative air humidity was probably something like 80 %. This meant that we were literally melting.

After two hours drive we arrived to our accommodation, checked into our rooms and started the party. Our sound engineer (Urski) passed after one hour and we decided to go and see the city of Tolmin, eat something and get some more beverages from the store. When we got back we could not found Urski anywhere. After a while we got a phone call where he informed that he’s in the festival area already. We poured down few more drinks and decided to join him and go to see Paradise Lost. The festival area was great, the stage was huge, Paradise Lost played well and especially the older material worked brilliantly live! The rest of the evening was spent drinking some more, watching Hammerfall and swimming in the ice-cold Slovenian mountain river. Great success!

We woke up quite early, went to have some breakfast and arrived to the festival area in good time. The few hours before the show were spent by hanging out and making good use of the video camera. Good material for the possible future DVD release I tell you. We had only 20 minutes for the changeover and we tried to make best out of it. It’s always difficult to set the sounds properly when you have completely new gear. In addition the footswitch cable was only 4 meters long so you had to run 5 meters from the front of the stage to change the channels. Not the most convenient way but that’s how festivals are: full of surprises and bunch of new situations that you just have to adapt to. For my surprise, I noticed that we start to have some kind of live routine, as we were able to do the line check in no time and without any unnecessary hassle. There was nice bunch of people gathered on the front of the stage already and after grabbing a cold beer intro started to play from the PA and off we went.

The gig was pretty ok. I had lots of difficulties with the stage sound and got distracted few times pretty badly. Also the direct sunshine did not particularly help: it was impossible to see if your FX pedals were on or off and you could not see any lights in your tuner because of the brightness. After 15 minutes of head banging, you started to realize how hot it actually was on the stage and after 30 minutes, you started to hope that you don’t pass out during the last song. Utmost respect for the audience for keeping us company for the whole gig in the burning sunshine, you rule! We made it through our set alive and had really good time, thank you Slovenia!

After the show we just lied down on the grass, drank ice-cold beer and piled up some ice cubes on the top of our heads in order to desperately cool down somehow. We were in flames. The ritual also included pouring pile of ice cubes on the top of Druidi and him chasing us naked through the backstage area. Good times indeed!

After short recovery, we went to drop our gear to the hotel, had a shower and headed back to the festival area for a lunch and after party: very good food, very tasty drinks, awesome people and good live performances in the courtesy of Dark Tranquillity and Immortal. Soon it was already night, everybody were absolutely wasted and we decided to call it quits before early 5:45 am wakeup call. After few hours of sleep we got to the car and started the long haul back home. Great way to start European festivals, thank you Slovenia and Metal Camp, what an awesome festival! After 12h of sweaty travelling I finished the Dimebag’s biography and raised a toast for Darrell Abbott from my comfy home sofa: this is rock’n’roll and I like it!
Ville F./INSOMNIUM