Chapter XI

I think I bought him 3 Guinness at least. And he bought me 3. Haha! A lovely guy! I was a bit intimidated by him when we first met but he proved to be a really cool dude. It was a cool scene for any metal fan to loom at. A bar full of people like, Dio, Slayer, Anthrax, Arch Enemy, In Flames, Backyard babies and us of course. As Dio was leaving he gave me a hug and called me "son"! Haha! Awesome!

We did so many gigs they´re all a blur in my head. Obviously we played the famous Roundhouse in London and recorded that night as well. I think the gig was OK, although we totally slayed the next day (of course) in Manchester. The recording came out fine. I´d problems with my throat and had to bring in a doctor to give me some steroids. That´s why Im so muscular these days you know...(joke!). The gig went well, my throat didn´t fail me that much and the footage came out cool too! We´re a bit nervous for the cameras of course, but after a few minutes we´re just trying to deliver as any other night. Loads of people there... I think one of our biggest headlining gig. We had maybe 2 700 people in there. Nice!

We interviewed a lot of fans both before and after the show and that footage was hilarious to watch. Some of you need to ease of the bottle a little, hehe!

For this one we toured with our good mates in Paradise Lost, and as always with these guys I end up laughing my guts out! Nick Holmes is the funniest guy I have ever met!

We did a whole bunch of tours everywhere...USA a number of times with Nevermore, Devil driver, Dark tranquillity, Devin Townsend band, Pelican etc...

In Europe we toured with Burst, Extol and Paradise Lost, however on separate occasions.

We played Australia, New Zeeland, Israel. We did the Gigantour with Megadeth, Overkill, Arch enemy, Lamb of god etc.... That was a good amount of fun. These festival tours are a bit tedious as you only play for maybe 45 minutes (if you´re lucky) and the rest of the you need to entertain yourself some other way. We´d gotten the Guitar Hero game from a friend of mine at Blizzard entertainment. I looked at those toy guitars and though, "Come on now...I'm fucking 30 years old!". Yet, I got hooked, real hooked. And Mendez got really hooked as well. We played all the time. Even right before shows, which is not recommended! As we´re blasting into the first chords of "The leper affinity" we´re like... "What buttons should I push?". It was horrible!

As I said before, Dave is a really cool guy. I first met him the day before the first gig. We´re in the bar of the hotel we´re staying at and the door is locked. There´s a knock on the door and I go up to answer it, and there´s Dave saying "Hi...Mikael...right?". I´m like "Yeah.....Dave..........................right?!" Totally intimidated and a bit scared! He bought me a beer and we chatted for a while. I´d met the Glover brother before and we´re totally down with each other... cool guys. James Lomenzo is officially the nicest man in rock! All of us really liked him. Very nice guy. I didn´t ask about White Lion although I guess I used to be somewhat of a fan back in the day.

Bobby Blitz also made a great impression on me. This guy is so full of life I feel like a old man next to him. Him and his wife has a chocolate company which he raved about! Awesome! The guys in Lamb of God are of course also good friends of ours by now and so are the Arch Enemy guys. So it was a nice tour with some old friends and we made some new ones as well.

More memories? Well, we played in Austria, Vienna at some festival...can´t remember the name right now. We´d been delayed and rushed to get to the festival site in time for the show. As we got there I saw the guys from Tool come in and all sorts of musicians.

We we´re in such a rush we had to run from the car into our dressing room and get ready for the show. As we´re walking on stage there´s 2 guys standing there... one of which is Sebastian Bach, the other one his drummer Bobby Jarzombek. I used to be a big Skid row fan so I was like "Wow"! He came up to me and introduced himself and just went totally "Bach-ish" on me. If you know who he is, you´ll know what I mean. He´s standing on the side of the stage for our entire show, headbanging and giving us the horn and all that stuff. Awesome! I dedicated a song to him as well.

Later he invited us to his bus for a beer, so myself and Mendez went there. It was one of "the" greatest moments. I laughed so hard it´s unbelievable. Baz is complelety insane and the sharpest comedian in rock! He´s hi-5´ing us every 2 minutes and just keep telling all these stories. It was a fucking party! Lovely guy! If I could have one extravagant party I´d invite Baz to be the fucking toastmaster! He also said "You guys are coming with me to see Guns n´ fucking Roses from the side of the stage". I´m like...."Yeah, right!". I didn´t really believe that was happening or was possible at all. But sure enough, come stage time for Guns, Baz comes to pick us up, walks us past the 4 guard stations (for real!) and we´re in!