Chapter XI

Since you've last read this space here, there´s been so much stuff happening. Good stuff, bad stuff, horrible stuff and some absolutely fantastic stuff. We spent something like 19 months touring for the "Ghost reveries" album, which is more than we´v«e ever worked to promote an album before. I think it's actually quite insane. We deserve some kind of medal for that. Or a diploma for "Serving the metal community"? To be honest with you, there have been many rough times, many times where you´v«e felt like you just don´t want to do this anymore, but overall it´s been an amazing journey! I try to stray away from the pretentious way of describing our career, but there really is no other way to describe it other than a "journey" and with all that that would include.

I think what made the biggest impression of me (in my musical life) overall as unfortunately the downer events, like the whole Lopez thing and the Peter departure. Martin Lopez did the last show with us in Sauget/IL just outside the "Pop´s" club. I remember it as a good show for us, although the day before had probably been one of the worst ever. He went back to Sweden soon after that and unfortunately he never seemed to find the power to get everything back together. An era of great music was coming to an end right before my eyes and it was horrible. Lopez and myself are friends, but first and foremost we enjoyed playing together as we never really hung out as friends that much.

He remains a really important part of the band and I hope he´ll start a new band and just crush everything when he is ready!

With Lopez unavailable we´re desperate to find someone who could take his place. I´d known about Axe for some time because of the Bloodbath record he did, but I didn´t know his real skills as a drummer and I didn´t know him as a person. We met at the Sweden Rock festival since he´d been recommended to me by Patrik Jensen of the Haunted, who also plays with Axe in Witchery. I asked Axe about his influences and he said something like Ian Paice and Billy Cobham, and I said "You´re in"!

He reminded me a little of Gene Hoglan in that sense that he has an amazing ability to memorize music. Gene instantly knew how to play our songs and so does Axe. Our very first rehearsal with him was pretty fucking inspiring as we played "Deliverance" the whole way through without any major fuck ups. I was gobsmacked! And so were the other guys. There´s no time to loose really. We started rehearsing the setlist and everything went real smooth. However much we might have missed Lopez we certainly didn´t have any problems anymore with the health of the band.

Axe is like a Duracell bunny in many ways. He´s so energetic I have never seen anything like it! His first gig with us was at the Sziget festival in Hungary. We´d been told we had a 45 minute set to play before, but once we got down there it said we should play an hour and a half. A disaster... we only knew the 45 minute set. I must have talked so much bullshit that night to try and cover up the fact that we couldn´t play more songs. Somebody had a made a terrible mistake and we had to smooth it over. Axe played great however and I think the show went down really well over all.

That night we got smashed on booze. I was sharing a room with Axe and as I got back to the room I was so drunk I couldn´t find the toilet. I needed to go real bad, but I simply couldn´t find it. I went out in the hallway but found nothing. It got to a point where I couldn´t wait anymore and simply took a piss in the bathtub, only to find a door next to it which was the actual toilet. Well, well... The next morning I find Axe sleeping in the tub, in my piss! Apparently he´s got some crazy idea when he´s drunk he wants to take a bath (bad combo). Thinking back at that it´s like territorial pissings in a way, haha! He´s ours!! He´s shared a room with Mendez since then. I don't blame him.

Favourite memories? Very hard to say, but one is certainly our first gig in Japan. We played the Loud Park festival in 2006 together with some bands we already knew and some we´d never met. I really, really wanted us to go down a storm there and do a great gig...make« a good first impression. I remember my right hand felt a bit numb 10 minutes before the show which freaked me out. Like fucking Tommy Bolin, although I don´t do drugs. But the gig went great, I think we played flawlessly to be honest. There were 12000 people in this big hangar looking venue and I think we made an impression, a good one hopefully. I can´t wait to come back there. I also met Ronnie James Dio for the first time. Me, Peter and Mendez and our soundman Oyvind went down to the hotel bar for a drink. A real smooth looking place. Like a scene out of "The shining" with 60´s interior. My taste really! And the first fucking guy I see in there is Ronnie Fucking James Fucking Dio Fucking God! On top of that he stands up to greet us! He must have mistaken us for somebody else? Anyways, there´s just the 4 of us + Dio, Simon Wright and 2 of his techs there. Were sipping drinks and chatting away. I asked him about Ritchie Blackmore...Rainbow, all that stuff and he seemed happy to talk about it. I have to say he seemed to be a very genuine guy. He stayed with us the entire evening as the bar got more and more crowded with the metal elite. Dave Mustaine came down and had a beer as well.