Wow, had the time of my f-ing life! :)
Played two shows, one in Tampere and the other in Helsinki. 15 minutes only, so just the 3 first tracks off our new EP each night. Since we played soon after the doors opened, there wasn't that much people around, a couple of hundred people each night, a bit more in Helsinki.
Got to play my first gig both with the new J-custom and the Engl Invader. Sounded great on stage, had some positive comments about my clean tone from an audience member at least! No effects, just the guitar straight to the Invader into my Framus Dragon 4x12. Bought a Tech21 Midi Moose for the gig, and it worked great.
The tour crew gave us a superb treatment: full soundcheck, perfect monitoring (the best I've ever had!) They had some basic rules for us (no beer on stage, no feet on monitors) which made sense since some of the opening bands on this tour had trashed a 4000 USD monitor by playing the big rock star -role ;)
The local organizing wasn't as good. At the first show, we had a small dressing room, but in the second one in Helsinki, we didn't have anything! Nice to tune the guitars in a breezy hallway when it's +3c outside... But hey, who are we to complain :)
They actually promised us a small meet'n'greet with Slayer, but it didn't happen. I only saw Kerry King do a soundcheck from a distance on the second night, but didn't run into any of the Slayer guys apart from that. I did see Matt Heafy twice, exchanged a friendly 'hey' (sorry no punches, preferred playing the shows to getting kicked out ;) but that's about it. There was this one cool moment when I came off the stage on the first night and proceeded to pack my shitee up behind the stage. The other guitarist from Amon Amarth was warmin up by playing the opening riff to "Twilight of Thunder God" next to me. I told him it was a great riff, and that I had learned it myself the other day. He seemed like a jolly fellow, kinda quiet though.
Oh, and the other guitarist in our band struck a conversation with the guitar(?) tech from Mastodon before one of the shows. They talked about guitars and stuff for a while and then the guy asked tips for any strip joints in Helsinki, since this was the last day of the tour for them :P Also, during the last song in our set, when there's a clean guitar / clean vocal -> big chorus with growls -type of transition, our singer noticed that Brent from Mastodon was on the side of stage, with a kind of an approving / surprised look on his face ;) Anyways, since we had the same backstage passes as the roadies, and we were positioned on the opposite side of the venue from the big guys on both of the nights, our options on meeting the other bands on our own were kinda limited.
All in all, two nights to remember :) We have both the shows on video, have to try and put them on YouTube at some point.
More pics :
http://plaza.fi/kaista/musiikki/keikalla/slayer-the-unholy-alliance-helsingin-jaahallissa-27112008,0
