Christian "Chrism" Pulkkinen, Eden's Curse keyboard player reports from the band's tour in the UK, where they are supporting Michael Schenker. These stories are shared with INFERNO, where you can read them in Finnish.
PART 4: Chro
SATURDAY 10.11.2018
Longest drive of the tour underway, since the trip from Newcastle to London takes about 5 hours. The last two shows still ahead of us and even though the tour life is starting to wear me down (mostly because of sleep deprivation, a shit diet and over consumption of alcohol), I am going to try and enjoy the last two shows to the max! The trip was mostly a quiet one with us all sleeping in the back of the van with an exception of a couple of coffee breaks.
The last half an hour of the drive I was awake and I observed the London urban scenery out of the window, while we navigated towards Kentish Town and the O2 Forum which was our venue for tonight. The concert hall was the coolest up to now. An old and decorative venue, that has a capacity of 2300 people and I'm sure suits musicals great as well.
A little before the soundcheck someone came to tell us that London's Kentish Town is having electricity problems and the front of house PA system is without power. They had an electrician looking into it, but the whole show was in danger of being cancelled. In the end they got the power fixed and we managed to do a quick soundcheck, but they had to push the doors forward with half an hour so that ment we had to drop a few songs from our setlist. The actual show went splendid though. A nice crowd had gathered to listen to quality hard rock and they really seemed to dig our songs. It is just a pity we had to drop out the songs that have some interesting stuff happening on the keyboards like solos and more intricate keyboard lines, but I will get the chance to perform them once more tomorrow in Manchester! We will also be returning to London in April with a longer headline set at the club Underworld.
For those who don't know the fact, I am half English from my mother's side, so my uncle came to see the show. I don't get to meet him very often, so it was nice to have a chat with a couple of cold ones while mr. Schenker played in the background. I have to say once more that mr. Schenker is in excellent playing condition. Perfect hard rock solo improvisation. I have understood he has had ups and downs during his carreer, but at least now he is playing excellently! So if he is near you for a show, you should definetily go and check them out. The rest of the evening was all laughs and giggles and in the next video our singer Nicola Mijic shows some backstage magic!
SUNDAY 11.11.2018
The last gig of the tour tonight. Feel a little sad, but it is always nice to return home at the end of a great trip. In two weeks I will fly back to Scotland to perform at the Winterstorm festival and next April we have a headline tour in the UK, so it isn't a long wait to get to have new adventures with these guys. Even though we are all over Europe, we are starting to form deep bonds of friendship between us. We have done enough touring together and the chemistry between the band members works really well. So next April we have our own tour supporting the new Testament best of album and our special guests for the tour are Mob Rules from Germany and Degreed from Sweden.
The last load-in and soundcheck happened in a really relaxed atmosphere. A very friendly crew at the Manchester venue, Academy 1. The hall has a capacity of 2600 people, so it is one of the bigger venues on this tour. I would guess that in the end there were around 2000 people present in the audience and it was probably the most relaxed and fun show we did and I definitely took everything out of the experience!
A lot of people came to buy merchandise after the gig and I got to take photos and sign autographs with the fans. I also managed to secure my friend and long time bass player Marko Pukkila (Altaria) both the Schenker band's autographs and then also our autographs. A big thanks goes to Doogie White who went around asking for the guys to sign.
After the last show it is always a pleasent and relaxed atmosphere, so it was nice to kick back with the guys backstage and reflect together on the previous week of shows we did. This was the best tour I have done regarding the actual shows and every evening was memorable. Compared to the 2017 German tour (Freedom Call – Master Of Light -tour), the actual gigs were more fun this time around, but everything else was much heavier because we didn't have a nightliner buss. In 2017 we had a giant bus that 18 people could sleep on in the upstairs bunkbeds. The benefit of the nightliner is the luxury of being able to sleep whenever you want in your own private space and usually the bus is on the road in the night, so you wake up fresh at the next venue. This time we criss crossed along Great Britain in a 7 man van and slept at hotels. Mostly we went to bed late and got up early to head out to the next venue, so after a week you really feel it in your body. Tuesday when I get home in the night I though I would sleep the whole day and when I am not sleaping I am definetily not doing any music work that's for sure! The blog is coming to an end, so I could end it with a picture gallery from the last weeks shows. Thank you to all of you who have been reading and if somebody is interested and can read Finnish, Inferno Magazine is going to be printing a big article about me in their next issue. CHRISM OUT!!
Related links:
www.instagram.com/chrismofficial