The last update of this tour

October 31, Zürich airport, 13:15

So, the tour is over. Almost, at least. Still stupid flights to Helsinki via Copenhagen, including 4 hours of waiting there. Will be home at 2 or 3 in the morning.

After Nantes it was London. We've never had a bad show in London. Our band has been fortunate to gain moderate success also in the UK. We've read and heard many times that it will be really difficult or almost impossible for bands not originally from the UK or the USA. We've been lucky.

I was looking forward the ferry trip. They've always had Strongbow cider. 24 cans for 9,99£. A bargain. I was getting ready to fill the trailer with that. Those fuckers had no Strongbow in the shop. I was pissed. I was ready to go downstairs, pull out the plug and sink the entire godforsaken boat.

The venue was originally going to be The Underworld at the heart of Camden which I really like. Not the club but the area. It was later changed to a slightly bigger one next to Highbury-Islington station called The Relentless Garage. I liked this venue more. Not the area. We arrived really late and I had four interviews to do so it was no worth really going anywhere. I am in London and I have to spend the day at the stupid venue. That is one of the downsides of the job. You actually have to work every now and then. Working was the theme for the day anyway. Eluveitie couldn't play in London. They will be playing in London and in the UK in general in a couple of weeks supporting someone, I can't remember who, but they told that Eluveitie can't play in London just so little before that. Bollocks. I thought that only festivals did that. Anyway, Ivo, guitarist for both Eluveitie and Godnr.Universe! had to leave the tour for a few days ago, so Godnr. wasn't playing either. We were asked to do a 2-hour set. We promised that we'll do our best. In the end we played 1h 55min. We did basically all the songs we've been playing during the last year or and a drum solo. And a small "Juokse sinä humma" version with just accordion and violin.

The show was quite an early one in the normal UK style. Our bus call was at 1.30. I didn't understand why, since we were heading back to the continent anyway and Highbury-Islington area is definitely not the heart of the London nightlife! The next day we found ourselves in trouble. In two different troubles. First one was that we missed one ferry and one was cancelled so we ended up losing three hours at the Dover harbour. That added to the fact that the tour book aka "The Book of Lies" proved to be just that telling us that the distance was 550km when it in fact was around 800km meant that if we had been late earlier on the tour that was still nothing like the delay we had this time. We arrived to Colmar, France around 18.30. Pretty late when the doors were supposed to open at 19.00. Yes, the other problem. Hittavainen missed all the ferries too. Even the one the others were on. He had managed to spend three hours at Burger King. Well, he took the next ferry and then a train via Paris to Colmar and arrived pretty much at the same time with us .

I needed to check my email and since the venue had no wi-fi I had to walk a few hundred metres to the closest McDonald's to use their wi-fi. Colmar is a strange place. It is really close to the German border. Looked really German. The names were German. It was really strange to see a street sign saying for example "Rue de Landwasser".

October 31, Copenhagen airport, 16:15

Yes, Colmar. The venue was sold out as so many times on this tour. It wasn't a big venue but a good sized anyway. Way too little backstage though. Not enough for one band let alone us both. We still managed. We're flexible. The audience was one of those strange ones. Just like in Japan. A huge dance party while the music's playing but a complete silence between the songs. It feels really weird on stage. I guess the show was good anyway.

Our booking agent wasn't really happy with the guy who booked all the French shows. One of the reasons was that he kept changing the cities and venues and messing up our routing. The last two shows were a perfect example of that. We flew home from Zürich, Switzerland. Colmar was like 2h away from Zürich but after Colmar we drove to Paris, 550km to completely opposite direction and after Paris back to Zürich. Over a thousand extra kilometres. Not that I was driving but it felt stupid anyway. And in the end I am definitely paying.

Same place 16:45. I just ate and had a Strongbow. And ordered another one. Blog continues.

Yes, Paris, one of my favourite cities. I know many people who disagree with that, but I like Paris. France is perhaps not my favourite country but Paris is different. It has this unexplainable beautiful decadence that no other city has. Like the contrast with Sacre Coeur cathedral on the hill and all the sex shops on Boulevard de Clichy and whores in the alleys between them. I like that.

We've played in Paris a few time and at least two of them at La Locomotive right next to Moulin Rouge which means that we were right in the middle of action. It was always cool but on the other hand the place sucked since you couldn't park a bus there so you had to take all that you needed during the day out from the bus once you arrived. Anyway, this time we were definitely not in the centre. The venue was called Trabendo and it was located next to the huge concert hall Le Zenith in the north-eastern Paris. I tried to find a record store for Matson and myself. We got on the metro and after two changes we found the address with no sign of Master of Metal shop. Damn you internet!

The venue was really strangely shaped. The architect must have been on something. The stage was basically ok, but on my side, stage left, the audience was a actually higher than the stage. Really storage to play like that. And of course this area with a better view on a stage was filled with photographers who are not the nicest audience to play for. They are only looking at you through the camera lens or otherwise just looking like you're boring the shit out of them. The show went smoothly though. The audience was pretty much like in Colmar. Bigger though. 800 capacity and sold out. Some scalper was actually trying to sell us a ticket when we were returning from the city.

Even though it was the last show there were no usual gimmicks or tricks from Eluveitie during our show. Our guys did something during theirs though. Can't remember the name of the song, something that Anna sings in the mid-show anyway. Three of our guys in sunglasses, t-shirts and underwear suddenly appear on stage with violins. Looked really cool. They were even synchronized like ZZ Top!

Not much party after the show. Tried to find a place to get some food. Found one but they threw me out because I tried to take a picture of their menu on the wall! C'mon! Why do you write names like "Ass. plate" on your menu if you don't allow people to take pictures of them and laugh at them?

Anyway, this is it for this tour. Nice tour. I enjoyed it a lot and mostly sober. No one will believe that but that is how it was.

The next thing to do is go back to the studio to record one more song to be used as a bonus track on some album versions. Then we're playing in Russia in December and probably in Switzerland too closer to Christmas. Ja niin edelleen.

Antwerpen, Paris & idiots

On the bus to Lyon at noon. Yesterday we played in La Loco, Paris. The venue is located right next to Moulin Rouge so it's right in the heart of Parisian tourism. Which is nice. The downside of that is that there are no parking places for tour buses so once we got there at 11:30 or so we had to get all our stuff that we would be needing from the bus to the backstage. Once all the stuff was in the the venue the buses left and arrived to pick up us and the gear again at 3 in the morning.

We had a really long day to spend in Paris since it was a late show and our show time was at 1. Which by the way sucked since those who live outside the metropolitan area had to leave before our show time or even Unleashed's show time to get home by last trains. We had a great audience anyway so in the end it didn't suck so much for us but I feel sad for the people who payed 30€ to see us and managed to see only the first 4 bands.

Anyway, the day was for tourism. Me and Matson spent 5 hours around the town once I managed to get us subway tickets from "French only" machine. We went to Notre Dame cathedral. Surprisingly, the lightning didn't strike a pagan so we survived. Next stop was the latin quarters where we found an Irish pub that had Strongbow on tap. Nice. Then we went to check if there's a huge waiting time to Eiffel tower. It didn't look so bad so we decided to go there. I've been there before but only at the second floor since the top was closed for some reason then. We ended up waiting for a fucking half an hour down there to get to the second floor and another fucking half an hour to the top from there. Then we spend 5 minutes at the top and another 30 minutes to get back down. What a fucking waste of time. Korpiklaani Travel Agency does not recommend. Ok, the structure is nice. Really nice. With a degree from civil engineering I can appreciate that. But in the end it's just a fucking observation tower and definitely not worth the two hour waiting.

At one point we decided to head back to the venue since we thought it would be a dinner time. There we realized that it was a buy out day and got 15€ for food. Didn't go to eat though. We sat a while at the venue and had a couple local beers. 25cl bottles, with 4,2% alcohol. You can drink a case of them and not get drunk. Doors opened and the people started getting in. Once they realized that it indeed was us we had to leave since our table turned into a signing and photo session. Matson was keen to see Pére Lachaisse cemetery. I had been there before but I can always go there again to say "hello" to Edith. Swashbuckle was already on stage when we left and travelled in a sweaty fully packed subway something like 13 or 14 stations there only to see that in France they close their cemeteries at 18:00. I didn't know they did that. So we just got back to venue and spent the long night there and at the Corcoran Irish pub next to it.

The show was pretty damn good. The audience was crazy. And just to make things more difficult to Andreas the light tech we keep changing the set every night. We've mostly been closing with Ii Lea Voibmi but yesterday we closed with Hunting Song. We have mostly been switching between Huppiaan aarre and Tuli kokko. Yesterday we did both. To keep things interesting or something.

The German merchandiser doing us, Unleashed and Reiter is an idiot. I'll get back to that later. Now we're at the venue and WE have to start counting our merch. Bollocks.

Ok, the merch is counted. And the merch guy now knows that we think that he's an idiot. Which I think is not unfair since all the other bands think the same. Including Reiter, his own band. The idiot is not keeping any track of what he's sold. And someone even bigger idiot booked him to do an international tour when he doesn't speak any real language.

Back to Antwerpen for a moment. I wached the entire Moonsorrow set again. They did the same as in Dortmund. 45 minutes, 2 songs. That's musical brilliance. I think they were even better than the day before. In Dortmund I remember telling Reiter vocalist Fuchs that Moonsorrow is the best band on the tour and he was watching them as well and seemed to enjoy that a lot. When the show was over I noticed that their guitarist had been watching the end of the show too. He came to me and asked "they are coming to do a third show as well, right" so I think he was hooked as well.

But we kicked some serious ass their as well. I guess I can clearly say that it was our night. It's been difficult to match Reiter in Germany and Antwerpen was the first that I can honestly that it was our show.