DAY ONE

i went to pick up the rental van from usave at around 9:00am on saturday july 10th, worrying all the while that they were gonna fuck me over and not give me the van (as 3 previous places already had) but surprisingly i got it with no major hassles (other than having to purchase insurance), and i drove it home while my girlfriend drove my minivan (with the crappy transmission) and then i chilled till the next day

DAY TWO

i went to pete's to load the shit up and git going. tristan showed up, we packed all our shit up and rigged a backseat from pete's old minivan's seat (his minivan got totaled) and were amazed at how much fucking room we had. then we took off for new york to see emperor and peccatum and divine empire at tramps in manhatten, after a surprisingly not so bad 5 hour drive to nyc we busted out the directions, got lost a couple times, and eventually found tramps and there was already a line forming. we tried to communicate with the totally non english speaking parking lot attendant as to whether we could get our van out at 3:00 in the morning and he told us it would be $10 to park. then we were hungry and wanted to check out new york, it was fucking beutifull, amazing graffiti everywhere, huge buildings, all famous looking shit. manhatten is nice, i wouldn't mind living there, we walked around 5th avenue and found an excellent chinese place to eat. then we headed back and waited in line for an hour or two, during which time ihsahn from emperor walked by us a couple times (looking like a skinhead?) and we heard their amazing soundcheck, knowing what would be in store for us later. finnally we got to go inside and i was amazed at how nice this place was, they don't book metal shows at venues this nice in boston, it just doesn't happen. the place was pretty big. first on was divine empire, this was my first time hearing them and i was blown away, amazing floridian death metal with ex members of malevolent creation, then peccatum went on and were fucking amazing, i'd been seriously into this band since their cd came out and it was mindblowing to see it live. then witchery played and they suck ass and then borkaggar played and they suck too and then the almighty emperor went on and oh my god this was one of the most amazing performances i've ever seen. i'd even call it the best show i've ever seen. they are fucking amazing. there were like 500-700 people shoulder to shoulder all the way to the walls in there, emperor played for an hour and a half and then it finnally got over at around 2:00am and we all met up outside and pete was trying to haggle with the new attendant guy who was trying (successfully) to charge us twice as much as was quoted for parking, we were sick of the bullshit and sick of standing up for the past 8 hours straight and wanted to go crash so we finnally paid for the thing and got in the van and took off for brooklyn, we followed the directions to this chicks house who i'd just written to days earlier to ask if we could crash there that night, and whom i'd never met, after getting lost for quite sometime, and being amazed at how much easier it is to drive in new york than boston, we finnaly found the place and she let us in and gave us some water and we talked for a couple hours and then we crashed.

DAY THREE

we woke up in brooklyn (a place i'd always wanted to go for some reason) and i just sat around marveling at the fact that i was there, in this weird "apartment" (more like a converted warehouse with 6 people living there, all building their own rooms, with drywall and construction shit everywhere and cats and what have you). then the chick made coffee and pete drank some and they got all chatty and it took forever to get out of there, but finnally we did and were on the open road, destination: bethesda maryland, to stay with pete's friends sister and her mom and dad. typical drive there, listened to lots of monstrosity. had some awefull fries at a rest stop in new jersy. then made it to her house at around 3:00 or 4:00 in the afternoon i think, she was outside gardening or some shit. i didn't realize this chick was young and lived with her parrents untill we got there. anyway, this chick was one of those "i'm normal because i haven't been exposed to anything not-mainstream but i'm an art chick so i'm weird" types and her family is a little too college minded for me, you don't strike up a conversation with a complete stranger by saying "where do you go to school"? especially when that person is like, a high school dropout, like me, who never liked school in the first place, and especially not talking about school. it turns out this chicks mom was friends with the gratefull dead back in the 60's. and she hated their music. well then they broke out the fetal pig. i was like "what the fuck?" me and tristan just looked back at eachother in disbelife, the had a fetal pig, on an aluminum tray and they busted out an exacto knife and fucking disected it right infront of us. now, i'm a vegetarian, and tristan is vegan, so we were just like nervously laughing, hoping this chick doesn't go psycho and kill us all in our sleep or something, so she disected the pig and then took it to her room and garnished it with pork dumplings and began taking pictures of it, whatever. then she took us to a diner, assuring us that "yea i'm sure they have vegan stuff (a fucking diner?)" proving to me that she really had no idea what vegan meant at all and had probably never even heard the phrase before in her life. after that we decided to jaunt over to d.c. (which was only like 15 minutes away) and i totally didn't expect that, i also didn't expect this chick to be making out with pete in the seat next to me when i turned to ask for directions, but that happened too. apparently tristan didn't expect it either. whatever, we got to dc and did a big loop around it several times and finnaly found a parking space and walked around. we went to the white house and pete asked a cop there what would happen if he hopped the gate and ran at the white house with a knife, to which the cop replied "yea, they'd be on you pretty quick" (refering to the guards hiding in the bushes). then we got all sticky from the humidity and went back to the chicks house to crash. we were al crammed into this little tiny room, on cots, well, 2 cots and one bed, all 3 were touching eachother, whatever.

DAY FOUR (first show)

we woke up and had cinnimon buns and (really shitty) coffee and then it was time to hit the road, we hauled ass to greenville north carolina to hook up with godstomper and daybreak and play our first show. now, incase you've never driven through north carolina (or virginia for that matter), it's boring as fuck, there's nothing to see, and there's like $19 a night motels and crap, finnally we got to the town where the show was, but our directions to the show were all fucked up and nobody seemed to know about any damn skatepark, never the less we found it and we were a mere 7 hours late, even though we didn't end up playing for another 10 hours, about an hour after we got there godstomper showed up and i was psyched to finnally meet them face to face, this is thee nicest band in the world for those of you who don't know yet, and we chilled for a while and decided to do something constructive with our 8 some odd hours of free time so we went to a local builders square and bought like $12 worth of pvc piping, pipe insulator, and duct tape, and made like 15 padded swords for kids to beat eachother with while we played, then we headed back and still had quite a bit of time on our hands and went and had pizza and the first band didn't go on till like 10:30 or 11:00pm, with 6 more bands to go, and us on 3rd to last. i can't remember the name of the first band but they were pretty good, or the 2nd band for that matter, the mk ultra played, their music was good but the bulk of their performance was spent ranting about typical hardcore rhetoric, then finnally he'd shut up and they'd play but all in all i would have skipped it for the sermon, then we played (first live show since the previous halloween) and it wasn't too bad. some people sword fought for like 2 minutes. then daybreak played and i was glad they wern't a shitty new school hardcore band, as i was afraid they would be from their name, then godstomper went on and just fucking destroyed everything, they played for like 5 minutes litterally, and then just threw the drums and everything fell to pieces, i would realize in the comming days that this is how they do live shows. period. wegot out of there at like 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and headed for the cheap motels we saw on the way there, but almost fell asleep at the wheel so we crashed at some motel in north carolina near virginia.

DAY FIVE (2nd show)

we woke up in the motel, i took a shower, we watched some tv, and then took off, destination: fairfax virginia, to play a chick we all happened to kind of know's house, it this chick emeyle, who had talked about putting out an id./prophetic disclosure split, then an id./prophetic disclosure/godstomper/agoraphobic nosebleed 4 way split and all this other crap that never happened, so we all thought she was a flake, she turned out to be really cool, anyway, i have to mention the rediculous frustration that is trying to drive long distances with 3 bands in one cargo van, one minivan, one sportscar, and one pickup truck, especially when all 4 cars want to drive at different speeds and nobody knows where the fuck they're going, so it took us a while to get to this mall where we were supposed to wait for keeve from daybreak to get directions to emeyles house, we got some coffee, and then drove on to fairfax, finnaly getting to her house around 6:00pm, pleasantly surprised that there were actually people there, and surprised to see rich from enemy soil there, i hadn't seen him since like a year and a half before when we played with them in providence rhode island, so we go inside and mess around, then finnally emeyle's band akuma played, and they were fucking awesome, emeyle growls lower than me and she's this little girl, i was stoked, then daybreak played, then we played (while everybody was outside) and then godstomper played another ripping set. it was in a nice house, they'd soundproofed a room in the basement, which is where we played, and it was like a party going on and it was fun so we decided to stay there for the night, we watched south park and went to thee best ihop i've ever eaten at and then got back around 3:00am and crashed.

DAY SIX (3rd show)

we woke up in this nice house with all these friendly grindcore record collector/band member kids and everybody gossiped about the usual grindcore crap (who's in what band now, what records they found where and so on) and then emeyle went to the bagel shop where she works and brought us all back this huge ass bag filled with all types of deliscious bagels, we ate heartily then wanted to get going to baltimore maryland to hook up with keeve and go to this famed store there that has this insane collection of 80's metal shirts and patches and so on, so we bid farewell to the nice virginians and made our way to baltimore, like an hours drive, baltimore is like, thee cleanest nicest city in the u.s. hands down, and i was amazed at it, we found keeves house and he wasn't there yet, so we went and did something, i forget what, and then came back and he was there and he took us to the worlds largest slice of pizza, down the street from his house, seriously, i didn't belive it till i saw it, it took me and pete to finnish off one slice. then we went back to keeves house and waited for godstomper, who never showed up cos unbeknownst to us had just gone straight to the show, then we went to the show at a place called ottobar, to play with fucking dying fetus (yes indeed). it was a bar show with a soundman but the sound sucked and we couldn't hear anything so we played like shit, then godstomper went on and fucked shit up, then pig destroyer (who we hooked up with there for the rest of tour) blew me away at how much better they'd gotten since i saw them last, then daybreak played, it was keeves birthday party, then dying fetus played a ripping half an hour set and then it was over. we actually sold some records and people actually liked us despite how bad we sucked. and we talked to dying fetus for a while, who were actually really cool, then we went to stay with the drummer from daybreak, but not before going to one of the most awesome resteraunts i've ever been to, the blue moon, it's this crazy place that's open 24 hours a day and it's all fucked up and artsy like pee wee's playhouse on crack, and there's these awesome toys everywhere, and i mean EVERYWHERE, all over the ledge that surrounds the interior, hanging from fans, wherever you can put them, and it was very surreal at like 3:00 in the morning after driving all day and playing grindcore, and the spaghetti we had was fucking amazing. so then we went to the kids house and crashed.

DAY SEVEN (4th show)

we woke up got our shit together, checked our e-mail, i took a shower, and we went to dunkin donuts, got gassed up on coffee and took off, destination: phillidelphia pennsylvania. it took longer than we expected to get there, first impressions of philly: "wow, this city is neat, it's like a cross between boston and new york" next impression "wow, this place is really old, and there's all kinds of monuments i guess from when it was the nations capital" final impression "wow, this place is a dump, this is the dirtiest city i've ever been in in my life" we found stalag 13 and parked wicked fucking far from it (only parking space) and then made our way down to check out the scene, there was a 2 day festival going on at stalag 13 (grindcore fest) and at the place next door (emo fest) and a ton of records on the street and a ton of homeless people. we went and had some pizza with godstomper and i ran into stan from krema one from boston, who we'd played with a couple times, he moved to maryland a year or two earlier and i was psyched to have run into him, then we waited and waited for all the bands to play and some drug dealer guy tried to start shit with me cos i wouldn't give him $5 or a ride anywhere (he's a fucking drug dealer, sell some fucking drugs if you want $5), anyway, i'll cut to the chase, we finnally went on and people dug the swords, the fighting was in full effect and we got a good response and played well (finnally), then daybreak went on and killed shit as did godstomper and then pig destroyer closed out the show with their ass ripping grindcore and some homeless guy bugged out. i met up with rob from loudnet at the show, who was putting the lot of us up for the night at his place, about 45 minutes away, we went to some all nighter resteraunt and had some food and made the usual conversation till the sun came up and then headed back to robs and crashed

DAY EIGHT (5th and final show)

we chilled at robs in the morning and dubbed some videos of the previos nights performance and i listened to anal blast for the first time and checked my e-mail and had some coffee and donuts and then we were off again, gravely underestimating how long it would take to get to connecticut for our next show. so we were the first ones there and we got there around 8:00-8:30 pm, the kid then informs us that the show has to be over by 10:00pm for noise ordinence reasons, there's like 10 people there including his band, who chooses not to go on untill 9:00pm and play from 9:00pm untill 9:30 pm, giving the other 4 bands half an hour to play. and you know what? we did it. we played like 4 songs i think and it was thee most ripping, quickest, most pissed off set we ever played. magnificent. then pig destroyer belted out some premium grind and then godstomper jumped on and blasted out like a 5 minute set and then daybreak did like 2 songs and we were done. it was thee crapiest organized show i ever played i think. i don't think we got any money and we played for like 5 people. but it was our last night on tour and i was sad to go, we traded merchandice with all the bands and promised to stay in contact and then we wished them well on their way and we took off for home. we got to pete's and tristan said his goodbyes and took off or his homeland of maine and we unloaded the stuff into pete's shed and then just on the way out of his driveway to go to my house i hit his fence, scratching the van, i drive all over the fucking east coast for a week and nothing happens, then the last 5 minutes i scratch the van driving somewhere i drive every day? so now i owe them like $1000 in repairs. but all in all it was one of the top 3 most memorable experiences in my life. and i have to thank godstomper for hooking us up with the tour and daybreak for being cool guys and for putting us up, and rob for putting us up, and emeyle for letting us play and putting us up and that chick from brooklyn for letting us stay there and pete's friend in maryland for putting us up and showing us around d.c. (and to the place where they filmed the exorcist, tristans highlight) and to all the people that came out to see us play and bought records and shit. hopefully we can do it again next summer.