therion

† Therion - Poughkeepsie

Oct 5th 2005

Not the biggest crowd of the

tour, but some great pix by

Semyon - thanks.

MOSCOW2005

PixbyDarkside

MOSCOW2007

PixDarkside&HeavyMusic

TILBURG2007

Pix by Cristel Browner

To Mega Therion...

Johan and I played with Monsters Of Metal in 2003, at that time I was asked to do some vocals on their Therion album. A year later I also joined them on tour. Now, over 100 shows later, we’ve played in 30 countries since the start at Grasspop the summer of 2004.

Recording my vocals on "Lemuria/Sirius B" took about 4 hours, I did more or less what CJ told me to - I hadn’t heard the songs before, but that’s pretty normal. On "Gothic Kabbalah" I was obviously more involved since I wrote/co-wrote six of the songs.

Listening to old songs to choose from for the first tour, one song made me think ”no way...”. I told the guys ”eeeh, this song To Mega Therion, it really sucks...” I didn’t know, the song was the encore of every show since way back...In retrospect, I can only agree that it worked great live and the fans loved it.

Touring with Therion was different, 8-10 people on stage + 4-5 in the crew. Having our own bus is a good thing and having females around also kills some of the macho vibes. There are downsides too (like having nowhere to bloody sit in the overcrowded backstage room), but overall it was cool.

One of the greatest things was experiencing new places and meeting fanatic fans in Europe, South & North America. La Paz/Bolivia is one of the better memories, hope to go there again. House Of Blues in Chicago was maybe the best of them all, the local crew, the venue, the food, the city itself...

A lot of other cool places as well during all those shows and travelling, too many to mention. Groningen is remembered because of Karin throwing up during the show in 2004 and Snowy's paper hat in 2007.

Finally, a couple of things I learned during the Therion tours:

- don’t play Gibson Stage at Hellfest

- don’t trust mexican airlines

- don’t rent a van that’s not allowed on the ferry to Gdansk (CJ)

- don’t do sightseeing in Bogota on your own (RH)

- don’t jump in the pool with camera and passport (RH)

- don’t trust the local promoter in Zadar

- don’t use in-ear monitors without proper rehearsals