Just checkin'...

...that this is still up and running...

Toronto, Canada..

After many days of nights of trying to figure out what to post next on the blog we
finally decided to make one of the most important informational updates ever..

Here ya go;)

Dimebags family tree:

------------------------------

The middle eastern father of 'em all: Bagdad

The homeless dude: Trash bag

The homeless grandma: Bag lady

The english fag: Tea bag

The rapper: Rhyme bag

The asshole: Douchebag

The gay flight attendant: Carry on bag

The chinese guy: Rice bag

The shoppaholic sister: Shopping bag

The N.Y italian car mechanic: Grease bag

The nasty dude: Slime bag

The junkie: Crack bag

The Obituary composer: Body bag

The black rapper who never finishes his meal at restaurants: Snoop Doggy bag

The weed smoking dude who was in Pantera: Dimebag

The guy who wrote songs for James Brown: Papa's got a brand new bag

The tired guy in ZZ Top: Sleeping bag

The coroner dude on Csi: Toe tag Body bag

The bulimic: Barf bag

The homo: Fag bag

The toilet cleaner: Shit bag

The ignorant brother: Scum bag

The polish cousin: Potato bag

The prostitute: Cum bag

The one that costs you money: Whore bag 

The future wife: Slut bag

The african american cousins: Crime bag

The bum on the corner: Paper bag

The mexican cousin: Taco Bell bag

The black second cousin: KFC bag

The colombian drug lord uncle: Cocaine bag

The guy at the check-in router: Bag tag

The stay at home mom on Walmart: Grocery bag

!.......

Oooooh say can you seeeee...

First gig on the US tour in Tampa, Florida. We started the day by going to Lettuce Lake Park where we walked around on a boardwalk looking at different animals and cool vegetation. We saw turtles, birds and two baby alligators, it was hot as hell there.

Baby Gator in Lettuce Lake Park

4 Very cool dudes in da swamp..

At the venue we met up with our friends in Pathology who we toured in europe with in April and who will follow us on this tour as well. 

After a while Trevor Peres from Obituary came as well, he will be our tour manager on this tour, so we´re pretty sure we will have a good time.

Mr. Peres

Terry Butler (Obituary, Denial Fiend, Massacre, ex. Six Feet Under, ex, Death) will be our bus driver so we feel very secure with him behind the wheel. The gig at the Brass Mug went just fine, the Swedish death metal seems to be working fine even in Florida. We had a few friends coming to the gig such as John Tardy and Ralph Santolla from Obituary, Punchy (tour manager for Morbid Angel, Nile etc.) After the gig we had a few hours to party before we had to leave because we had a long drive up to Raleigh the next day.

Our fantastic ride and left to right: Dimebag, The Colonel and Timmy

Raleigh, North Carolina. We had a few people who bought the so called VIP ticket that we hanged out with for a while, took some pics, signed some posters. If you have this ticket you´re allowed to get in to the venue early, hang out with the bands watch the sound checks etc. Tanja Schoor from Century Media came before the gig, we hung out for a while then we went with her for dinner at a restaurant. Nice to get away from the tour bus and venue for a while. The gig went great, the people were really energetic and enthusiastic. After the gig we where really tired and there was not much partying going on. This night we had a hotel so we went there to get some well deserved sleep.

Stay tuned y'all..

Land of the free, Home of the brave...

When we arrived at the Tampa airport we were picked up by Ralph Santolla and Jack Owen. We went to our hotel and then for a nice dinner at Hooters, we wanna enjoy as much of the American culture as we can while we´re here.

Yesterday we went for some shoping at Walmart and Best Buy, Ronnie bought a video camera so hopefully we will be able to get some cool video clips up on the blog during the tour. Yesterday evening we were invited home to Ralph Santollas mother for a BBQ party, it was really great, we were treated like royalties and we dont think any of us has ever eaten that much in our lifes before. We ate and drank constantly for about eight ours, we took breaks swiming in the pool while getting ready to be served the next meal. After the food bonanza we were more then ready to head back to the hotel for some sleep. 

We can also recoment that you all read Ola Lindgrens Health Blog, he will share his tips and tricks to stay in shape while on tour, it will be very edjucating indeed;)

Testa

Just tryin' out the feed..

Scheissen heissen weissen

It might seem that we're slow with our updates but the truth is that we've just been so "fucking busy" (as a good friend of ours would say) by doing absolutely nothing! Plus as usual the router station issues...

*No comment*

The show at the Majestic Music Club in Bratislava, Slovakia was really cool. 113 735 screaming and headbanging fans came out and rocked their socks of.

Bologna, Italy and like the last time we were in Italy... not that many people did show up. Actually, we think it was the same dog with it's owner that was at this show as at the show in Padova on the last tour. The catering was much better this time though and that's always a plus! Where do all metalheads go to in Italy when there's a gig? Well, not on the gigs, that's for sure... Making pizza maybe? 

Anyway, better luck next time and for you who wasn't there... Your loss!

The turn up in Bologna

On a day off in Austra, Toby had to go to the hospital to get his severly bad back fixed, he got an infusion in his arm and some prescripted medicine.

Montpellier in France. The venue was like the size of our rehearsel room and the show became one hell of a hot and darn sexy one.. One of the best ones of the tour! We really rocked the fans in Montpellier's cock of!

Toby rippin' it up while getting some medicin in the hospital

Mr Santolla's getting his medicin at Lidl in Arnoldsville

What about Spain then... well.

There were of corpse some major fuck up with an ass promoter which wanted to cancel all the shows that he booked. Granada, which later was moved to Sevilla BUT ended up being in a small city called Almeria.. He also were supposed to book the show in Madrid.. Anyway, the first show in Spain was in Valencia and that one is THE best show so far of the tour.. completely insane crowd but in a good way! Tons of crowd surfing going on and lots of stagediving. We even got police escort to the venue from outside the town!

Valencia "river hela haket"

Lets go back to the ass that wanted to cancel the shows then, A friend of Obituary, Juan was contacted and he mananged to re-arrange the shows that this mother fucker fucked up just in 3 days.

The show in Almeria was ok, about the same amount people showed up as when we played the same place with Nile a couple of years ago... The Madrid show was also ok considering the short notice and change of venue... That show for us ended up in a really bad way though as some drunken fucking jerk got up on stage and of corpse stepped on Ola's pedal board, so one of the cables broke and guitar died, then he pushed away Ola from the mic and started to growl. We were not able to fix the the guitar so we had to cut the set short, for the third time Grave did not play Into The Grave

These guys did a smashing version of Into the Grave instead

People...listen up... IF you for some unknown reason have to get up on stage, don't just stand there and make a fucken mess for the bands.. Get the fuck off the stage ASAP!!! 

The chance/risk that you'll get a foot up your ass is really big and we're not gonna play Mr Nice Guy anymore. If you come up, you can be just as sure as the Pope is Polish that you'll be thrown or kicked of very very very fast!!! Just so you know what you're getting yourselves into! 

The stage = Band area... 

The floor infront of the stage = Audience area... Capiche!!?

If not, these two bad ass mother fuckers will kick you sorry ass!!!

...And you'll end up looking like this!

Tonite we ripped Lahr in Germania apart!!

Extremely Rocking Flesh

A train robber apparently managed the router station in Poland

After 3 really good shows, Krakow, Warzaw and Berlin, we finally got to the heart of Germany.. Leipzig!!!

We had some days off in Warzaw and Krakow so we grabbed our back-packs and went to a 4 Star Hotel in Krakow... 4 Stars in "Polish standards" there is...
None of us have slept that bad so far on this tour and remember, we're 18 dudes living close to each other in a bus...

One of the guys from the infamous "Kurwa-crew".. drum-tech Vacek came out to see us and we had quite a few beers together.

We think it's safe to say that we all felt the downside of beer drinking and Hellraising the day after in Warzaw, but it was worth it!

The show in Warzaw was great and that day, Oscar from Pathology had his 21th birthday so we arranged a stripper in his honour. 

She really stripped it up and he really ripped it up, hahaha... ;-) And so did the rest of us...

Unfortunatelly we were not aloud to take any photos of the show.

Oscar's birthday cake

Birthday boy, happy after the strip-show

K17 in Berlin, awesome show! One of the better ones on this tour so far with 112 000's of screaming fans!

The show in Leipzig was also a kick ass one... We had grandma front row, headbanging her grey hair more then anyone else in the crowd.. it was freaking scary but still bad ass!!!

Some of the guys went to a apparently really weird gothic/freakshow-bar after and Ola and Trevor ripped it up as usual in the bus until early noon.

Mic Mac at the monster party in Leipzig

The Lods, rippin' it up

James Hetfield..?

Mic Mac doing a Head and Shoulder promo pic

Idiot

Tobi reaching for the apples

Last night Prague got the leathel dose of death metal played the right way = Old-School!!!

Packed club and scheisse... that was really an Epic ass-sweating show... mmm, yummy!

Tonite we'll destroy Majestic Music Club in Bratislava, Slovakia!!! 

Prague

Warsaw

Berlin

Leipzig

A true story

Router station d'lux in Riga

Ok, we'll just set the record straight right away here:


When we do our normal tours and shows like we're used to, you know... Travelling with our own private jet, HUGE packed, sold out arena shows, like Madison Square Garden, The Ericsson Globe, Olympic Stadium in Moscow and such...
The internet actually works, but not this time...
Oh well...

Our extremely fancy private jets

Hotel room for true METAL KINGS

After 3 absolutely majestic and legendery shows in Helsinki, Riga and Villnius we've had 2

days off (again...*yawn*) in the glorius and very very colourful country of Poland.

Petri, our PRO-merch-guy from the Misery Index tour last Nov came by, plus some other friends. We did like the Motörhead song says; "Rocked out, with our cocks out" at Perkele metal bar after the show.

Just a normal evening on the bus

At the ferry ride to Riga, Ronnie, Mika and Tobias annoyed the other passengers at the boat by singing classic Swedish schlager-hits from the 80's. Some examples would be "Rytmen av ett regn" with Millas Mirakel and "Det finns bara en av oss" with Efva Attling.

The band that played on the ferry to Finland. Apparently they have Chris Reifert from Autopsy in the band, or is it Szandor LaVey? Or maybe Vincent Crowley from Acheron...

Of the 3 shows, especially the Villnius show was bad ass!!! We totally ripped it up Santolla/Peres way, during

our set but even more during the after-party! Free beer and booze all fucken' night.

We can assure you that all of us felt like real winners the following day!

The kids in Pathology also managed with a little help from a few old-timers to empty every drop of fine expensive liquor in the bus at the first day off, in Warsaw!

Today we're gonna show the metalheads in Krakow what we're made of!!

A male cougar..?

*Call me*

SERIOUSLY!!?

... the Madness continues

Router station-owner

What a crazy party it was yesterday in Demark, Copenhagen! Since we´ll have a few days off pretty much everybody decided to go all in on this party. Ola got a nice birthday cake from the Obituary's - a pigs head with the Danish flag stuffed in its nose and some black candles around the whole creation.

Birthday cake - redneck style

Ching ching my n****z

Two Swedish friends from Finspång also came to hang out with us in Copenhagen. Dennis, who's Mika's personal driver and Robert Karlsson (Facebreaker, Scar Symmetry, Tormented ex. Edge of Sanity) who made a stage dive that nearly cost him his life during our set. 

After our gig at The Rock there was an afterparty for the Dansish tattoo convention and apparently all the best tattoo artists in the world were there. It was fun to just sit and drink beer and watch all the freaks rockin on the dancefloor. 

Find 3 faults

Last friday we ripped up Oldenburg, Germany and on saturday we did the same in Aarhus, Demark. It was a festival in Aarhus, also playing were Hail of Bullets, Artillery etc. 

During the day Trevor from Obituary brought out the grill he had bought the other day, he had also got stakes and meat for everybody on the tour. Terry spiced it up with his own barbaque sauce, "T-Bone’s Famous." It was awesome and delicious, he masters the grill just as he masters heavy riffs. We already looking forward to the next time the grill will be brought out.

Pork chopped in half

Obituary rippin' it up Florida style

The night in Aarhus ended in total debauchery, the festival provided us with too much Jägermeister for our own good. We all woke up the next day with a total hangover. 

Now we will have a couple of days off that we will spend at home in Sweden before the next gig in Helsinki, Finland. It will be nice to sleep in your own bed before its time to hit the road again..

Timmy, Timmy, Timmy

Ralph gets some guitar lessons from the main shredder of this tour

Scheisse fressen

Outside the airport in Stuttgart, waiting for the other lods to pick us up

Right... As you've noticed we have had some problems again with the router-stations, it's still not up to the Grave standards as we're used to in good old Sweden!!!

The internet shouldn't be fucking around before the morning-grogg

The tour with Obituary and Pathology has been going for eight days already, but we have only been doing four gigs so far. Tonight will be the fifth gig in Haarlem, Holland. The gigs in Ludwigsburg, Cologne, Munich and Bochum were great with good respons from the crowd. Unfortunately the venue in Paris burned down just a day before we went on tour so that gig had to be cancelled, so we got one extra day off. So what do you do when you have a day off? Recover and take it easy? Nah, you can say that alcohol were a big part of the days off we had so far. We were at a crazy headbanging disco in Ludwigsburg, the kind of things that only can happen in Germany it seems. Hundreds of people going insane to Rammstein and other German friendly music. But it was nice to just hang out there and get to know the guys in Pathology and Obituary better, and they are all great people so we think this will be one hell of a tour!

The legendary Ralph Santolla from Obituary, Deicide, Sebastian Bach, Death, Millenium, Iced Earth, Tardy Brothers, Hollow, Eyewitness and Stare etc...

Tobi and Trevor from Obituary discussing some delicious bbq-recipes

The tour bus we have is very nice with large enough bunks for the tall vikings in Grave and we have nice lounge downstairs with stereo and tv`s, video games, fridge, microwawe etc. Tonight we´re looking forward to rip Haarlem up real bad! We actually are pretty sure that we will rock the socks of the Dutch people tonight.

The lounge in our tourbus

The bus is apparently sponsored by Fonzie and Potsie

It's time to hit the road again, follow the madness here!

Thursday March 24th we kick off the "Metal Chainsaw Massacre" European tour in Ludwigsburg, Germany at Rockfabrik. Stay tuned for updates on what the hell's goin' on.

OBITUARY
GRAVE
PATHOLOGY

Grave goes Mexiko anno 2010

Mexican router station

Oh, where to start. This weekend trip to Mexico has brought us so many stories for the future so it´s enough to write a novel about it... Alright, lets take it from the beginning shall we.
Attempt No.1!
Grave was booked for two shows in Mexico last weekend, on the 3rd of December in Monterrey and on the 4th in Mexico City.
We were booked on a flight together with our fellow Swedes in General Surgery who we were suppose to do these two gigs with.
Our flight was at 6 am on Thursday the 2nd, we all stayed up all night because we had to be at the airport at 4 am.
Just before we left for the airport Ola had got a mail that said that we our booking had been changed and that
we had a flight at 10 am instead, but since we got that information so late we went out to the airport anyway.
The General Surgery guys went as planned with the flight that left at 6 am, so we just hanged out at the only café that were open at that early hour.
When it was time to go and check in we were informed by the staff that our tickets were not payed for. What the hell to do! We asked the staff if they could help us but all they said was that since the tickets were not payed they could not do anything about it. Ola tried to phone up the guys who booked us down in Mexico, it was in the middle of the night there so it took a few phone calls before he answered.
Ola explained the situation for him. After a few phone calls back and forth we understood that something had gone wrong when he was booking our tickets and somehow
the money had not been transfered, so there was nothing we could do.
We saw our flight leave from Arlanda airport and we could do nothing about it. We did not know what the hell to do but we hung around to try to sort it out and book new tickets but there were no more flights that day. After 7 horrible hours at the airport and without any sleep that night you feel kinda mushy in your brain so we decided to just go back home again, the situation was totally surreal.
So we went home again to get some much needed sleep.

Tobias having a really massive breakfast for a TRVE winner at Arlanda

Attempt No.2!
Late Thursday evening Ola got the news that new tickets had been booked for us on Friday morning 6 am, so once again we stayed up all night, took a taxi to the airport at the same hour as the day before, it was just like living the same day for a second time. This time we were lucky and the tickets were payed for. Though this time we would have a very tight schedule to get to the gig in Monterrey gig in time, since we left from Sweden on the same day as the gig were suppose to be.

Get a room!!!

Well, we flew to Frankfurt, Germany, stayed there for 5 hours and then took a flight to Mexico City, there we had to transfer and fly to Monterrey. We should be in Monterrey at 10.30 pm and we had no idea about when we were suppose to be on stage that evening. When we got to Mexico City we had to go through the immigration and that took a hell of a long time and the connecting flight was at another terminal. Luckily we had some Mexican metal dudes that came to meet us and they drove us to the other terminal, but we were very, very late, we ran to the check-in desk with our instruments, but we were so late that we could not check in our equipment. So what to do? All we could do was to run to the gate and leave our gear to our Mexican friends, they were working for the festival we should do the day after so they took care of our stuff for us. We ran to the gate and luckily we made it on to the plane. We were the last persons to board it, and we were the only gringos on the whole plane. It was a short flight of 1 and a half hour. Ola and Tobias decided to have a beer and a shot of tequila on the plane. Well, this was not the same small shots we were used to, the steward poured up two big glasses filled with tequila to the max, so after drinking those big glasses they ended up kinda drunk, not really planned but what the hell.

Ola and Tobias ones again partying like hell at Arlanda

Gott D!

Once in Monterrey we were picked up by some guys working at the Ibex Club were we should play, the guys at tons of cassette tapes and Tobias ordered them to put on Judas Priest "Unleashed in the east" very nice album indeed. We went straight to the club and when we got there General Surgery was midway through their set and we were supposed to go on after them. We were so happy that we finally made it after all the shit we had to through to get there. We had a beer and then General Surgery was done with their set so it was just for us to, well not really plug in and play because all was already set up since we had to borrow their equipment. So we just did a qick linecheck and then we started to play. The gig went really good, as usual in Mexico you get a great crazy crowd. After the gig we had an equal great crazy afterparty at the club that ended very late. We went to the hotel and had like 1 hour of sleep before it was time to leave for the airport again.

Ronnie is having a shot of vodka/grape juice

Once again it was something wrong with the booking of the tickets, but luckily this time we got on the planned flight but this time General Surgery had to wait at the airport to take the next flight to Mexico City a few hours after us. Once in Mexico City we went straight to the hotel to get some sleep. We slept until Friday evening and then it was apparently time to go to the festival area with the shuttle bus. This was from what we heard the first outdoor metal festival ever in Mexico City. Also on the bill was Monstrosity, Vader, Evil Dead, Impaled, General Surgery etc. The festival was called Metal In The Forest, and this was completely true. It was located in the middle of nowhere deep in a forest a bit outside of Mexico City, we had to drive in pitch black darkness on small "roads" not build for cars. Then suddenly there was a festival there, it was very weird sight. When we got out of the bus it was freezing cold, we went behind the stage and found Joakim and Adde from G.S sitting there and we asked; where is the backstage? And they said; "it´s here, outdoors." There were no place what so ever for the bands to go and get some heat or even a roof over your head, we just had to stay out in the cold and wait, and wait is just what we did. For hours and hours. The festival was delayed with 3 hours. We found our gear that we had left in Mexico City the day before, they were in the grass behind the stage. We should also mention that there were no security so the crowd could easily walk behind the stage were the bands had their gear and bags. When we got there Monstrosity had just started their set, and after them it was time for General Surgery. We thought that we could go on after GS, but apparently then it was time for some local bands to play. We didn't get any information about a running order for the evening so we did not know when we were supposed to play. Tobias went to the stage manager (a cool guy called Adrian) and asked when we should play, and he said that there was another 4 local bands before Grave. No way!, Tobias replied, we shall go on after this band, end of discussion! We had at that point been waiting out in the cold (circa 2 minus degrees) for over 3 hours, after some talking back and forth they gave in and let us go on. The festival was running so late so we went on stage at 3am, dressed in long sleeve shirts and leather jackets (Ronnie had to wear gloves on his hands the whole gig plus a hoodie during the first 3 songs) to try to stay warm, our finger were numb for the first 3-4 songs. It was easily the coldest gig we have ever done. Much respect to the people in the crowd who stayed there the whole night out in the cold. After we got a bit warm the gig was really fun, the crowd was really great, with lots of crazy Mexicans running up on stage to headbang. It felt great that the actual gig was so good since we had to go through so much to do it. After the gig we stayed around for an hour or so to take photos with fans and write autographs,(while the rest of the local bands started to play) everybody was so happy even though it was freezing cold. Then we took the shuttle bus back into the dark forest to go back to our hotel. We didn´t get any food at the festival so we were really hungry at that time, luckily our favorite restaurant at the corner of the hotel was open, and this was at 5am. So we went there for some well deserved Alambre pollio con queso, the best food ever. At the hotel we crashed into bed. Ronnie slept for 3 hour and Tobias for 4 hours, guess it was the jet lag that made them sleep so short amount of hours.

Ola,, Tobias, Adde and Jocke rippin' it up in the "backstage room"

Adde from General Surgery blasting in the cold

Mexican die hard death metal fans

The day after Tobias and Ronnie went together with the General Surgery guys to downtown Mexico City for some sightseeing, we went to an old church, saw dancing indians on the streets and a belly-dancing girl. The streets were crowded with people selling all kinds of different stuff. After a few hours in town we headed back to the hotel, then we were picked up to go to the airport. It was time to go home to good old Sweden again. Even though our stay in Mexico was short the story became really long, but this was one of the most crazy trips ever in our lives. Well, of course we would love to come back to Mexico to play, 'cause the crowd there is fukken awesome! But next time we would hope for a journey less adventurous, at least not adventurous in the way it was this time. This was all for now! Rip it up Mexican style!

Belly dancing senorita

Tobias getting interviewed like the trve rock star he is... just look at his choice of sun-glasses, Yngwie-style

Dimmu Borgir's organ, or is it another Mexican router station..?

Jocke from General Surgey thinking of getting a new back-pack. Size, X-small

Some of the lod's gathered for the last supper