"String theory. You wouldn't understand."

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Imagine a classic Italian village and you’ll get an idea of where today’s show was. Our driver Tide (pronounced TEE-day) had to maneuver our bus through the incredibly narrow streets and steep hills to find the Mephisto Rock Cafe, where Cynic was supposed to play. After the technical nightmare that was the night before, we were a little worried about going to a tiny venue in a small town, but we were met with a very helpful local crew at what ended up being a pretty cool, club They even found us a new power supply for our lighting controller.

This wine-cellar-turned-metal-club looked more like a cave than a venue, but in a good way. After taking a look around, it was time to load in our gear, which ended up being pretty complicated. After several attempts at getting the bus and trailer through the streets and around the tight corners, we decided to just park at the bottom of the hill and have the local crew shuttle the gear to the club. Continue reading →

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When I stepped out of the bus and saw the Swiss countryside, I thought we must have stopped somewhere for gas or for our driver to rest. Then I realized the little cafe next to our bus was actually the Bad Bonn.

Before I even had a chance to sit down, the bartender offered me a drink and said that food was on the way. Bad Bonn was quickly becoming my favorite stop on the tour.
Continue reading →

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I woke up in Paris to Markus, our tour manager, telling me it was time to load in. Once I stepped outside and saw how nice the weather was in Paris, I forgot about how tired I was and was happy to load in gear first thing in the morning.

The venue, smaller than the one in Lyon, was a pretty cool club–imagine a French version of the Troubadour in L.A. with chandeliers a la the El Rey (where Cynic will be starting their headlining US tour on July 22nd). The techs there were pretty cool and we got everything set up quickly and easily, a first for this tour. During sound check the lighting tech showed me some cool stuff on the three boards I had to work with tonight. Continue reading →

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Today marks the first show of the tour, the Toulouse Metalfest at Le Phare. Alongside Cynic were Gorod, Paradise Lost, Soulfly, and Loudblast, who Sean and Paul toured with in 1994 while still members of Death. This was my first time running lights for the band outside of rehearsal, as well as my first time running lights for a concert, ever. Needless to say, I was a little bit nervous.

Because of the restrictions of the venue, I had to do the lights from the side of the stage, hence the camera angles. It wasn’t too bad, though; that was the view I had at the first few rehearsals, anyway. It was a little hard to hear the band over Sean from
back there, however.

After the initial panic and the communication disaster with the venue’s lighting engineer, we got the show started smoothly. Because it was a festival, the guys only played 40 minutes of their full 90 minute set.

It’s now several hours after the show and we’re back in the bus on our way to gig #2 at the Lyon Metalfest, where Cynic will share the stage with Loudblast again.

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We landed in Paris after an entire day of travel. Waiting at the baggage claim, we joked that the bass had been lost, but after a few more minutes we started to see the same bags again and we realized the bass was, in fact, missing.

We spoke to a very helpful Air France employee named Olivier who told us that the bass never made it to Paris from our connection in Amsterdam and that it would come on the next flight.

So I stayed behind to pick up the bass while Paul, Sean, and Tymon took the luggage to the hotel. Robin was flying in a couple of hours later, so I waited for him too. Eventually we made our way to the hotel where we all tried to avoid jet lag with some combination of over/under-sleeping.

So now we’re in France with all our gear intact with one more day before the first show.