Hannes Grossmann of Obscura Tour Blog for Sick Drummer Magazine – Hannes will be sending short blogs throughout the current American Defloration Tour with The Black Dahlia Murder, Augury and HateSphere.
March 2nd – Dallas/TX, Granada Theater
Texas is cool! Reminds me a lot of Bavaria. The people definately speak Bavarian here…Bavarian English, every word is very long and soft. The place we payed looked like an old theater inside, from the outside is looked very 1960’s American, with a lot of lights and stuff. We tried to get a good coffee next door, which means a coffee that doesn’t taste like water, which is hard to get in the US. The coffee tasted a little stronger than usuall but I miss my expresso at home. But the ice cream I ate was very tasty. Some guy told me we should be more catchy so at least I try this in this blog, watch out…
…Speaking about food, we got the best food on this tour so far from the venue. Chicken with noodle salad. Very good. I also got some footage of Shannon playing Black Valor. Very good. And we got our own backstage room which is quite a new experience for us, haha. Very good.
Here is a video of a drum solo I played, and the song "Universe Momentum"
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March 3rd – San Antonio/TX, The White Rabbit
Late again! Somehow the drive was much longer than expected. We ate at some Brazillian cafe and finally I got my expresso. And I spoke to my girlfriend via skype. What an awesome invention! You can be far away from home but talk to the person you love and even see her through the camera. The club is pretty cool. Right during line check I recognised that my left bass drum didn’t work which is odd. I use triggers on this tour (usually for bass drums I mix the trigger with microphone sound. I would never trigger snare or toms) and if something doesn’t work it’s usually both kicks since they are connected to the same module. But only channel 2 didn’t work, so I plugged the cable into 3, which had a lot of wrong triggers. We were already five minutes late, so we decided to skip the song "Infinite Rotation". I solved the wrong trigger problem by plugging into channel 4. Of course that really bothered us, but I think we did a good job.
After our show I met Lyle of The Faceless and we talked a little about drums. I already did two tours with them so it was very cool to meet him again. Kick ass musicians! And it was very exciting to meet Jon Jarzombek, who played a guest solo on our latest album. If you don’t know who that guy is…he played guitar for Watchtower and is the mastermind behind Blotted Science and Spastic Ink. If you don’t know them eighter, you should just quit listening to metal and sell your drums or guitars on Ebay! We had a very funny talk about music and stuff. He told me about the concept of a new thing he’s working on right now. I won’t tell you anything here, but you’ll be amazed!!
March 4th – Travel Day
March 5th – Tucson/AZ, The Rock
No backstage, which means "hang out" time. Nevertheless the venue was kinda fancy and there’s a very good sub store right across the street. Right before our show Jeroen and I wnated to have coffee really bad, so we walked almost a mile to get to the next starbucks. I had a chai tea which actually helped a lot getting energy for the show (remember-the black tea of vengeance).
The show was great, I had a lot of fun. Though it was an emo-scene night, so a lot of kids with weird haircuts and taste of music were in the audience. At the side there were some girls just standing and watching their cellphones. Why the fuck would you go to a metal concert without paying attention? I hate that, it’s very a disrespectful kind of behaviour. During the last 5 years I got the impression that metal became dumb and dumber. Bands with stupid names like "The cockroach I just ate had breast cancer" (TCJAHBC) or "The blue dog arpeggio" (BDA) no one needs are really pissing me off. Good to have some Agent Steel on my MP3 player – actually I’m even too old school for that. An MP2 player would totally fit my musical taste at the moment.
March 6th – Hollywood/CA, The Roxy
Today we had a very long drive again and I listend to the Ron Jarzombek solo album a couple of times. Just wanted to proove myself that I’m still open minded for crazy music 😉 But it’s a really awesome record. No Agent Steel for me today. I also listened to the new Ihsahn album, and it’s a really amazing record as well. You can count on these guys to make good quality.
The show…well, people liked us but it’s LA. In these clubs the owners and managers don’t really care about the bands playing, which sucks. Whatever…everybody said that I played the best drum solo so far on this tour, but I don’t agree. I didn’t have a single idea of what to play, so I just played some double kick stuff with some metal fills. The more exciting thing was that Slash was partying in the club next door. But you had to pay 10 $ to get in, so I’m way to German to pay 10 bucks for watching some guy to get hammered.
March 7th – San Francisco/CA, Slim’s
What an awesome day! First, Frisco is a great city, it just has a very nice vibe and look. Second, we got catering and it tasted delicious. Third, there was coffee backstage which actually deserved its name. Fourth, the crowd was crazy for us and qwe had so much fun on stage. Fifth, Steve Di Giogio, who is good friends with our bass player Jeroen visited the show and we had the opportunity to talk. Such a cool guy and an amazing musician. We also met Derek of The Faceless, KC of Decrepit Birth, actually all guys in Decrepit Bith, Paul of Origin, and a lot of other musicians.
A lot of people say that San Francisco is a snob village. I thought that people were really kind and very open minded. But maybe I’m a snob…;-)
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