Dani Filth’s Tour Blog - Part 2 (1 of 2)
23rd Jan 2018e.h @ Kwadrat, Kraków, Poland This venue has lost a lot of it's surprise this morning as we've been ruining the toilet and shower for the last twenty four hours, but the club is good despite the back stage being essentially a corridor for changing, catering, eating and living, with a single room adjacent to the stage we've commandeered for the Cradle. The food is really good once again and abundant, but that's the only excuse tying me to the venue with everyone packed into it, so after a hefty bout at the trough, I trundle my stuff back to the upstairs front lounge of the bus, choose a mood-setting cyan glow, stick a soundtrack playlist on and sink into some writing. The time flies by, and when I emerge in time for soundcheck at around half three, the bus has been miraculously tidied back up to perfection. So much so, I end up using the 'bus bathroom/ confessional booth for the Big Brother household' to make up in later, thus avoiding the overstretched bathroom.
Dinner is awesome once again, the corpse paint is applied (by a slight error of judgment I'm ready two hours before we're due for stage and thus find two hours to kill watching Moonspell, nibbling at the catering and annoying people) and then it's time for the slay-ride once again in this compact, sweaty club.
It's a really punk rock gig which starts like a baited dog, hits a slight lull briefly mindset for a brief moment before powering back up again to Mach 10 for the end of the set and encore. There are a surprising amount of stage divers this evening, eighty percent of which are girls. We once again add 'From The Cradle To Enslave' in to close the show and the place follows en suite by going properly nuts with a whirlpool of a mosh pit foaming in the middle. Another great show, the end of which sees another onstage photo and then showers and beers and shower-beers in close confinement backstage. Derrick the band horse makes an appearance, though he is always about, whinnying away in his Stable Of Filth. We return to the bus to the welcome of some seriously cold fans, whom we sign and then, on entering our travelling circus wagon, we swap our day clothes for smoking jackets and velvet slippers and enjoy the fiery warmth of our fellow touring company.
24th Jan 2018e.h @Progresja, Warsaw, Poland A bloody massive venue this with suitably long flights of stairs to reach the backstage area, yet the climb is worth the catering table, the shower and toilets and the substantial backstage room. One of the toilet cubicles just rests against a massive window from which one can be seen squatting, from the outside. Much of my morning is spent attempting to dye my hair and not my face, with sufficient results, as the crew get to building the stage for a relatively early soundcheck (there is a third band on the bill tonight and tomorrow night called Sacrilegium). The rest of the day, if I'm to be honest, is spent bumming about; watching Netflix, writing emails and listening to music. Dinner is Thai stir fry, so the pounds are piling back on this manatee suit I wrap myself in, which then leaves plenty of time to get ready for the show.
It is such a big stage tonight and a few inherent sound issues bug the shit out of me for the first half of the main set, such as a really sharp vocal tone that makes any hard syllables come across like razorblades in my monitors, but the problem is eventually overcome by meandering Matt and his IPad -and the end of set and encore are simply blistering. Sometimes it does feel a little empty on such a big stage, but it just means we have to run about that little bit more. And the 1000 plus crowd seem to love it, so everyone's a winner.
We finish with 'Born In A Burial Gown', thank the crowd and then retreat to our traveling bomb site to muse and booze. Not much more to really say about today other than it has been tranquil (aside from following Ashok on the toilet, which was simply painful) and organised. Bed back onboard the bus is preceded by a stiff drink and a few tour stories courtesy of Moonspell.
25th Jan 2018e.h @B90, Gdansk, Poland Today is Gdansk and the venue, which is the coldest building live I've ever played in bar The Eagles Ballroom in Milwaukee in the dead of winter, is right next to a dockyards. It is a huge warehouse with a great empty beast of a live room, lots of interesting corners but all of it freezing bloody cold. Between the Cradle dressing room and catering is a matter of a stairwell and two doors, but it does involve the temperature plummeting to the minuses as one runs the gauntlet. There is also a fresco of classic albums adorning the walls, everything from Led Zeppelin to Dead Kennedys, Kraftwerk, Seal and Slayer. First things first though. A poo, a coffee then a shower. Then food. Then about two hours looking for my hat that I put down for barely a second. Still didn't find it, consigning its disappearance to the tour black hole. The rest of the afternoon is spent exercising (to keep warm), making tea (to keep warm) and hugging the radiator in catering whilst watching 'The End Of F**king Everything' on Netflix and catching up on emails (to keep warm).
Luckily, dinner serves to add a little heat to our bodies and by the time we're back in the dressing room, it seems to have grown tolerable and thus we're able to get prepared for the show to a backdrop of Napalm Death and Morbid Angel without too much discomfort. Other than to our ears. The dockland lights up at night and looks almost inviting from the vantage point of our room. The show begin with us dancing along to our intro music, 'Ave Satani' out of public view. There is a massive audience here tonight and the sound is very sharp, causing me a few earaches along the way, but overall the gig passes phantasmagorically and the audience are brash and lively. And it is such an awesome venue.
The gig seems to have wrung all the cold out of me and it's to another bomb site that we return to elated and craving pizza having dropped in the mandatory 'FTCTE'. It's a day off again tomorrow in the proverbial arse-end of Leipzig, parked outside the club, so I'm expecting nothing less than a day of recuperation, hunting out dinner, walking a considerable distance, watching a film or two, catching up on sleep and other less savoury pastimes. 27th January 2018e.h @Hellraiser, Leipzig, Germany
There is history at this Hell Raiser club for sure. We last played here with Napalm Death and Krisiun nigh on twenty years ago. Framed posters of shows cover the walls along with images of demons, dragons and heavy metal women, catering is already laid, the showers are communal and for the best part of the day the backstage rooms and corridors are freezing. Once again. Today is almost nocturnal as the club is practically windowless and quite dark, but that does little to dent our mood. Rich has someone from a guitar company pay him a visit at some point, but aside from a little work, keeping an eye on the football results in the Championship and harassing Matt the tour manager, my day is simple and routine. Other than some fresh clothes from the embedded suitcase, a shower and a wander around the deserted buildings outside the club.
Dinner is okay, not brilliant. Martin has to change his drum heads today as well so soundcheck is a bit later than usual, but the crew still take the time to iron out any niggling onstage issues. The show is loud and sweaty, with a full capacity bunch of nutters here in Leipzig, but it actually turns out to be one of the best shows of the tour thus far, from a playing perspective. The crowd , as can be expected, are pretty riotous and a few mosh pits and crowd surfers form to the backbone of 'Dusk.. And Her Embrace' and 'The Promise Of Fever'. The noise levels increase with the encore and once again we're tempted into playing a six song encore. The shows finishes on a insalubrious high and no sooner have the lights come up than we're back in the dressing room celebrating the fact. The pack-up is almost as long as the initial explosion of suitcases and clothes when we arrive at a venue, so it's maybe two hours later that the club finally kicks us out into a moonlit wintry night and to a bus replete with fresh bed linen. No need to even attempt to change the sheets myself, which is fine for me seeing as last time tried it on a bus I practically eviscerated myself.
I decide on an early night as this is day one of a four gig stint, but sometime in the dead of night stomach cramps come on with the constant rocking of the bus and I'm forced to take an emergency poo in the bus toilet utilising a plastic bag. Suddenly I am very wary of the last minute food the venue made for us and the funny tasting ham roll I had to throw away mid-munch. There's further cramps and another hasty emergency toilet visit and I almost fall foul of the best comedy moment ever, as I pelt out of the bus at a truck stop to throw my 'filled' bag into a bin (rather than having it festering somewhere on the bus) and then almost get left behind in nothing but my Stars Wars underpants as the bus starts to pull away. That said I had a somewhat crappy night's sleep.
Click HERE for part two.
