Tour Diary

29.12-06.01.2007: Coheadliner Asia Tour 2006/2007 by Melissa!
The short version for those who don't want to read the whole thing is: IT WAS AMAZING!! I consider it the highlight of my career to date. It was that wonderful.

The long version...lets take it day by day. Oh and I don't expect anyone to read the whole thing...if you do, you have way too much time on your hands! Get a hobby!! Haha! Kidding!

27/12/2006 - Taipei, Taiwan
Twelve hours of flying and we arrive in Taipei (by way of Dubai and Hong Kong) tired, delirious from the lack of sleep and excitement at what the road ahead has in store. We wake to a new world in a large city. After breakfast and MUCH coffee, we venture into this new world for a bit of sight seeing before heading to the Armed Forces Cultural Center for the show.

It was more of a theater with seats, makeup rooms backstage, curtain and wood floors.

We performed three songs which will be released on Trinity for the first time (At the Back of Beyond, Deep Down and The Secret) and they were met with much enthusiasm in addition to all of Cast Away and The Quest and Lords of the Sea. People really got into the show and had a great time. We also tried out a new intro piece that Wops found..SUCH a good find and a great way to start the concert. A lot of firsts at this show..my favorite thing. After Edenbridge finished, we met the concert goers on their way out of the show for photos and autographs. We estimate that show at about 100 people..not too many, but that was expected.

29/12/2006 - Taichung, Taiwan
We left Taipei and headed three hours south to another metropolis (feeling like we never really left the city though as the country side was quite populated with large buildings the whole trip down) called Taichung. This city is reminiscent of, well, Mexico City. It had that same general feeling about it, yet still felt Asian.

Also saw that the Vienna Philharmonic was playing there too! Austrian Invasion!!!!

We arrived at the hotel for a quick dumping of our luggage and headed straight for the club, the Live House, which was on this tiny narrow street. Lets just say our bus driver is a miracle worker! The club was very small and there was no sound technician to be seen. Thankfully, Frankie (Edenbridge's monitor engineer) stepped up and played this role. Technically, everything was a mess. One of the four speakers worked, the guitar amp was broken, and our hard drive wasn't working.

In fact, after our first song, it quit. So in an effort to cover up and keep our audience going, Mario, Tom, Mike and Wops played "Enter Sandman" by Metallica..a typical aside in the practice room! Ha ha! Unfortunately, we cannot play without this stupid piece of equipment. Finally, after maybe 20 minutes of struggling to get it to work, they figured out the problem and we rocked back into the set with a vengeance! The audience was very forgiving of our delay and asked for an encore. We weren't planning on playing the Quest so we did that as the encore. Again, our three new songs were met with the most enthusiasm. Beyond all the technical issues, stagewise, we made up for it. I think by the time the hard disk was fixed, we all had so much nervous energy that we poured it all into the show (neck muscles were definitely strained the next day).

After the show we went to this cool BBQ place where you pick out what you want from this refrigerator unit and grill it yourself on these small table grills. We ate SOOOO much! Many animals were sacrificed for our starving bellies. And it was SO unbelievably good. My god. So. Good.

31/12/2006 - Shenzhen Hong Kong/China: Customs Craziness This city is strange..it is technically in Hong Kong, but is also technically in China. We found that out by the fact that we had to go through two customs stops. Our whole transportation after flying into Hong Kong was a mess by no fault of the promoters. So, we get into an airport shuttle and drive until about 5 minutes out of the city. We then had to get off the shuttle and get onto a public transportation bus (with 35-40 pieces of baggage/equipment) and 14 people. We then drive 2 minutes to the first customs stop, which we have to unload all the bags and walk them through. None of us have three arms so this is a problem. We get through customs only to get back on the bus and drive another 2 minutes to yet ANOTHER customs stop with the SAME procedures!! Then get onto another bus, which takes us into the city. Unbelieveable, but what can we do?? Just suck it up and laugh at the situation. J Well, that's how I looked at it.

We got to the Days Inn, quick changed and headed across the street for a meal and to ring in the New Year. I wish we could have stayed in Hong Kong though because there were no fireworks for fun chaos in Shenzhen. That was too bad. Then we headed to a dance club for a bit. Wops, Sabine, Lanvall, William (our tour manager) and I headed back to the hotel because it really wasn't our scene and just got some beer and relaxed in the lobby. The rest of the guys got home at the crack of dawn..unsure what they did the whole time! ;) I figured with having to sing the next day, it would be beneficial to go to bed early..that being 3 a.m. haha! Happy New Year!!
01/01/2007 - Showtime in Shenzhen
Before heading to the gig, Wops and I walked around the city a bit. Shenzhen really is a large and quite nice city. Actually HUGE city! There were SOOO many people..and so many shops!! I ended up finding a nice necklace and bracelet for my mom but we saw things like iPods for $10 and other crazy marked down things. Plus you can bargain as well..which I'm terrible at.

The club we are playing in is much nicer than the last..like by leaps and bounds. Communism is definitely present here as there are national guards at the show and really everywhere.

You could also feel we saw the high society side of communism by how well we were treated as well as the vibe of the club..felt more like being in a mafia movie. In fact, our backstage room was some lounge where people go to hook up..William showed us how that works.

Strange..communism in this country is sort of a lie. Communism implies all have the same wealth. YET, there are definitely two huge divides in wealth: the very rich and the very poor. It was nice to be playing a club like this but I felt really bad knowing that 90% of the country (yes, I made that figure up but that is what it felt like) suffers for the overwhelming wealth of the top 10%. It was hard realizing this. Here is the poster as well as how to write VoA in Chinese! Pretty Cool!

The show itself went well. Not as much energy as the previous two shows..might be the third show slump thing. None of us felt we performed at the best that we could have but the crowd was energetic and a lot of fun. I think they kept our energy up for us! Haha! We actually had a mosh pit going for two songs (then played content and ended that!) as well as a guy who got up on stage and tried to stage dive..the guards didn't like that too much though and pulled him down. I think this show estimated around 150-200 people.

After the show, we ate our remaining food up in this beautiful lounge only to be given more food, which was this really amazing take out! I will never be able to go back to eating American Chinese food again!! 3 a.m., tired we headed back to the hotel.

02/01/2007 - To Guangzhou
We woke up and went out for an hour in Shenzhen and ate at the first McDonalds in Mainland China, which opened in 1990 surprisingly! Not very good though..definitely worse than American McDs (how they managed that, I'll never know). Interesting..I've never felt like a minority anywhere before but here, definitely. People starred at us wherever we went! Very odd feeling..very odd.

We hopped into the bus and drove 170 km to Guangzhou. The countryside of China, or hopefully only this part was gross, sad and generally maddening. The housing was tragic looking, pollution is everywhere both in the air and on the ground/water. You could hardly see anything in the distance, yet knew there were mountains there. Places like this make New York City look like pristine forestland. It definitely shows where the global warming issues come from. Not that the Chinese people are to blame. I'm sure US and European companies do their part to exploit this country's lax laws on ecology and human rights. I guess what I imagined was something completely different. Where I envisioned exotic plants and animals and oxen pulling plows along green pastures onset on a background of purple mountains, now stands smoking landfills. Where I envisioned ornate beautiful houses, far exceeding our lack of décor, stands torn up shacks and slum buildings with broken windows and stained bricks. This is a problem here. Do they not realize the blossoms have disappeared with the blue of the sky??

We enter the city and started to see signs of cosmopolitan life again. Quite a contrast from the scenery on the journey..the city is actually less polluted. Another big city, more on the business headquarter side than tourism.

We got to the Ocean Plaza Hotel (not on the ocean though) and headed to the 26th floor where our rooms were. It has a lot of windows looking straight into smog clouds.

At night the view was much better as everything is all lit up. We went to eat at a traditional style restaurant which was okay, nothing stellar tasting. Strange though..really should have been called something like "the restaurant that serves heads".

We were supposed to have a show here, but they didn't get approval from the government in time (in order to do a show, you need approval from the government on your lyrics and content..not sure exactly what happened there). So we did a quick Q&A session with some fans.

03/01/2007 - To Shanghai
I woke up at 5:30 a.m. with major lung congestion. Not good but the voice still feels fine. We flew to Shanghai and went to the hotel which is by the club "The Ark" in the area called Xintiandi (pronounced "Zhin Tan Dee"), a very upscale and European influenced area of Shanghai. I was really excited about this actually. I ended up staying home while the group went out sightseeing in Shanghai on the Bord because the weather was really bad out and I would hate to not be healthy tomorrow. So I took a long hot shower and then went walking around a bit by the hotel just to get out.

04/01/2007 - Shanghai Show
Wops and I walked around the Xintiandi area this morning. Still feeling ill, but still have a voice surprisingly. We then went back to the hotel and then a few blocks to the club, which is also really nice.

We did a small press conference with a music magazine, ate some pizza and had much time to hang around during sound check. Fortunately, it was a nice, long sound check so we could take the rust off some of the songs by practicing them a bit. The show went VERY well! The audience needed a lot of cheerleading but after a song or two, they were jumping, cheering, chanting etc. There was a lot of energy in the band despite half of us feeling sick. There were also a lot of video cameras shooting (really at every show) so I hope people can send them to us or post them on Youtube. Hopefully not the new songs though..don't want to ruin the surprise! Speaking of that, again the new songs were received the best out of all of them. Oh and the editor of Guitarchina.com took a video of the show and will send it to us so that's great! I believe there were about 250-300 for our show. Definitely better energy in the band than the previous show.

We got off stage and had a few glasses of wine (well, I did..the guys drank beer) and went out to dinner around midnight. It was SO good!!

05/01/2007 - To Beijing
So we are off to Beijing on a delayed flight. I guess there is some hold up with air traffic that is preventing us from taking off. Ack, it is Moms birthday today..I hope I can find a computer to send her an email at least. Well, I guess tonight we have a lot of press interviews. I wanted to do some quality shopping, but maybe tomorrow or the next day. We are going to a bootleg market at some point (if this plane ever takes off!!).

So we arrive two hours late, but make it here safely..though landing was much like a roller coaster ride! We checked into the hotel and got ready really fast, then headed to the press conference with no dinner. This was held at Melody KTV, which is one of those big karaoke venues with party rooms and looks more like a hotel actually.

So we got ready then headed down to the press conference. They had a big cardboard backdrop set with our photos and well, it was just beautiful!, and about 30-40 members of the press asking questions and taking photos. After the Q&A session, they handed each band a guitar to sign! That was pretty cool! Then the promoters from Painkiller Mag and Rock Empire handed us each a silk, beautiful gift bag! Inside was a silk jewelry holder and a box with Chinese opera masks inside! The guys got a good luck tassle instead of the jewelry holder. What a divine, and unexpected surprise!! The thing that has really stood out is how well we have been treated. They really went over the top with this..what amazing people.

After the autographing, we headed to a French steakhouse restaurant. Funny, all the clientele was American/European looking. We ate around 11pm of appetizers and steak which was filling and delicious, then headed to bed.

06/01/2007 - Final Show in Beijing..Live House
We headed to the club at noon. The club is huge and decadent. The guy mixing is actually from Chicago funny enough! He was here a while ago helping a friends show, met his wife (who is beautiful! We met her afterwards.) and stayed! Great story! We had a super long sound check which was great since we were shooting a big DVD of this concert and it had to be perfect! They set up a 3 camera set actually, one of which was on a big moveable arm..not sure the exact technical name for it, but it would swoop in on us on stage and pan the audience. Very cool! We saw clips of a DVD made there previously and it looked beautiful, so I cant wait to see it!!

Even though Mario and I were both sick (yup, it got worse..ugh, hope its not SARS or Tuberculosis!), we managed to pull off a high energy show. The audience started out like zombies, but we got them going after much headbanging and cheerleading. Not sure of the final number but I would estimate it around 500-600 for our show. Anyway, so after we played Deep Down (one of the new (and really heavy) ones), the audience seemed to wake up and had a lot more excitement. The sound of the show was SO great!! Quite amazing actually! Jamie, the mixer from Chicago, definitely knows his room. The lighting also seemed to be great from what we could see on the EB show. At both the last shows, there were also a lot of small video cameras..will be interesting to see what can be found on the web.

So, we finished the show, cracked open a beer and all had large smiles reflecting on this fun, amazing and unique experience. We all feel so lucky to be given this opportunity. We sat back and watched a bit of Edenbridge, signed some autographs and took pictures, met some great people, then headed to dinner around 1am. The restaurant had one of our posters up and what seemed like an announcement that we would be eating there! Ha ha! A few fans were there so we took pics, then scarfed down some food. The restaurant had pictures up from when Lacrimosa was there a few months ago so we will probably be up on their wall. Very cool! So, with full bellies, we headed home around 3am to bed.

07/01/2007 - Goodbye Asia!!! You will be missed!!
So we woke up early to do some sight seeing at the Forbidden City. But first had the best Chinese meal so far!! It gets better and better!

Because Mario and I had to do a radio and TV interview, we had to leave the Forbidden City early (sucked..it is so beautiful and amazing there!!!) and went back to the hotel with Sabine and Lanvall. We conducted the first TV interview with Sabine and Lanvall. Anyway, after that we did an interview with an international radio show. They wanted to know about the difference between Chinese and European audiences, Trinity, the climate of pop music in general (which of course I have a strong opinion on) and an interesting one on whether we would want to ever enter mainstream music. We told him, only if we could still write what we want and not have to dumb it down or hand it over to a producer. After the interviews, we quickly ran to the Clothing Market (the big one with bargaining) for power shopping for my family! We only had an hour and I think I slayed the dragon of the market!! Haha!

Our flight left around 11pm so our friends with Rock Empire and Painkiller Mag brought us back to the airport where we said goodbyes and talked about the future.

They want us to come back in the future to promote our new album and it looks like we may be doing the festivals there! I hope so..it is definitely one place I would love to go again. The people were all so amazing..Space, William, Kenny, Mel, everyone at Rock Empire and Painkiller Mag and also GuitarChina.com..everyone was so damned generous and wonderful. I feel so privileged to have been given these amazing memories by these wonderful people. Never have I been in a band that was treated so amazingly. For all they gave us, I wish we could return the favor. Hopefully though our albums will sell very well there and so at least they see some benefit.

25.02.2006: Leoben by Melissa!
Words dont even describe how it felt to be onstage in Leoben. I know my reviews always sound like they are laced with happy pills but truly it was a good show. And what made it so good was the audience. I felt like I had a lot of friends out in the audience and the reception was more than I anticipated. Truly. This was the concert where we all connected the absolutely best which after only 4 shows previously together, I think that is pretty damn good. It was great hanging out with Toni Harkonen too...we had such a blast with him both shooting pics and just hanging out. I liked what he said...something like, it is interesting how there are people in the world that you meet and are blown away at how much they feel like you have known them for years. I thought that was pretty cool. And I got to speak with our producer as well, and it sounds like we are all on the same page as far as the next album goes. It will be so good to work with him in the future.

15-18.02.2006: Romantic Darkness Tour 2006 by Melissa!
First, before I say anything about this amazing experience and these amazing guys, I want to thank everyone for your constant support of this band. You all really mean a lot to this band, seriously. So thank you! Also, Xandria, Lyriel and Regicide are some of the most genuine spirited souls I've met. We had such an amazing time with these bands, so I highly implore you all to check them out if you haven't already. They are great musicians and great people.

The Beginning
The drive to Stuttgart was beautiful through the mountains of Austria to the open stretches of southern Germany. We were all really able to relish it more since the van we took had some troubles shortly after arriving past the border. But would it really have been a true tour had we not had transportation issues? I think not. Anyway, we arrived at Club Röhre about 15 minutes before having to jump onstage. We all had just enough time to change and take a few breaths of Zen before surging into what would be my first show with these amazing guys, which overall turned out to be a pretty good show! The audience was filled with friendly and energetic faces. We were all very happy to have made it simply because we would have missed out on meeting some great people there.

Wuppertal
YEAH! We made it with no auto troubles and in time for a sound check with felt like a luxury! Wuppertal is a very interesting city. They have this green trans system which runs down the river in the middle of the city. I've never seen anything quite like it before. The people were all very genuine spirited and though Live Club Barmen is a smaller venue, it created a really intimate atmosphere, which I think I prefer to huge faceless crowds. It gives you a chance to really connect with the audience on an individual level, which I like when telling stories through songs. I also feel like this was the best our band connected with each other out of the four concerts. What was also great is that we were able to sit down with the guys and gal in Xandria and talk more with them. It is rare to meet people with as down-to-earth, heart of gold sensibilities in this world. All bands did a fantastic job at this and every show as well.

Berlin
Germany has a LOT of windmills. Wow. Like…wow. For Berlin, I was probably the most excited for out of all the cities, simply because since I was a kid, I've wanted to go there. And I wasn't disappointed. You can feel the history there. And we got to drive by all three famous opera houses there which was WAY cool…for me anyway! If you haven't been to Berlin before, one thing I noticed first is all the sculptures on the tops of the buildings. Such an aesthetically beautiful city.

Anyway, Club Kato is literally a club under the train station. The area in general reminded me of the Village in New York City, so it had a real Bohemian, artsy feel to it. This was the first show that Lyriel joined us on and they played fantastically. They really added a different dimension to the whole experience and complimented the other three bands very well. The show went well for us, but I think next time we will skip Realm of Fantasy for Berlin. We stayed the night and drove past what remains of the Berlin Wall on the way out of the city. It is interesting how there are all these beautiful murals of world peace now decorating the structure that once stood for division. I really appreciated seeing that.

Finally…Glauchau
This was a very sad show for everyone because it was the last and we would all have to say goodbye to our new friends in Xandria, Regicide and Lyriel as well as Allan of Extratours who really made everything go so smoothly. What a professional and kind person!! I hope he comes with again next time.

We were all determined to go out with a bang, which all four bands did at Spinnerei that night. Lisa from Xandria said we did the best show she had ever seen in her life which was a huge compliment coming from a band who ALSO puts on a very high energy show. We got a chance to meet more of the people of Glauchau after playing and it was interesting hearing some of their personal stories and about living in East Germany. I really appreciate such things.

We headed back to Austria that night, exhausted yet smiling at the fun times we all had on this new path together. This new union has become a new family. We were all just so happy that it wasn't our last show together before I had to head back to the US. And I know we are all looking forward to playing in Germany again this June and August. We hope to see you all out there again!!!

13-16.05.2005: Wave Gotik Treffen 2005 by Wolfgang!

We've just arrived at home, back from the Wave Gotik Treffen, and because Mario demanded it , here's the short review

We drove to Germany at 4:00, arriving somewhat at 13:00 in Leipzig. We tried to get some sleep in the car, but Mike "Schumacher" Koren wouldn´t let us - doing a hellride at 200km/h in that tiny car, making me either yell at him or just close my eyes and say my final prayers
I Leipzig we needed another hour to find the hotel which was a very nice one, and nearly all bands of that day slept there too. We celebrated surviving the ride at the bar before we drove to the venue.

The stage was about 2km from the hotel but we needed more than an hour to get there, because the plan of the city we got was the worst we´ve ever seen. We then found the venue more by mistake, as we wanted to stop the car, discussing the way - and then saw the "sign" , surely about 20x30cm large and 15m from the street ,the tank nearly empty (Mr. Schuhmacher´s favourite quote on that day was "it will work, don´t worry, enough for another 50km..." .

Gig was scheduled for 17:50 ... then we found out that one band had cancelled the show and we should play earlier - well, OK, but there were 2 things missing - our Mixer and - Nicole She called us, telling us her car was defect, so she had to take the train. Time went by and we got really nervous and quite angry, seeing the empty fridge backstage 15:00, 16:00, 17:00 - still no sign of Nicole or Tony (Mixer), at 17:20 we started setting up the backline, tuning guitars and preparing for the show - still without Nicole, and being sure, Mario would have to sing quite a lot today Yet Nici made it, she arrived just 10 Minutes before the show started, and we went on stage...

Playing was fine, the crowd was nice but after 2 Songs the sun was shining on the whole left stage, where a guy dressed in black nearly collapsed while playing guitar Mike & Miro were perfect as usual, Tom rocksolid and the vocalists gave their best, making the crowd cheer loudly after all songs and the gig a good one. Screwed up two riffs, but... S*** happens! In whole it was a good show, saving a day that had started in such a lousy way. The only negative thing (exept the sun was a cameraman, jumping around on stage, filming at exact the moments where you needed to concentrate, stepping on cables and just making one nervous

We went offstage, packed our equipment and went down to the crowd, signing, chatting and refueling with valuable brewn liquid It also was a pleasure to meet Lyriel-Linda again who was watching the show. Drinking we watched the next band but the crowd was even more interesting ´cause there were some people really dressed in a very special way, making it like Carneval, Metalshow and Helloween in one but they all were very nice (exept the expression on the face of the boyfriend of the half-naked girl some of us watched "just by mistake" (but still curiously)

Off to the hotel (just half an hour this time , taking a shower, and reentering the hotel bar before we went to town, finishing the day with some - ok, a lot of - drinks.