Amon Amarth Post Invaluable Darkness Tour Blog

Amon Amarth recently posted an extensive tour blog on their myspace page. It covers their exploits across Europe as part of Dimmu Borgir's Invaluable Darkness tour.

2007-10-19 Check Republic, Prague, Retro
A long drive on small bumpy roads and an endless search for the venue in Prague lead to us being late, very late. We finally got to the venue at 4pm. Still in time for the show though and for that we're thankful. We've never played actually in Prague before and it was a lot nicer than the usual Black Pez which is a dump. Excellent crowd, excellent food and of course STAROPRAMEN, what more can you ask for?

2007-10-20 Poland, Warsaw, Progresja
An even longer drive and though we thought it to be impossible, even bumpier roads! Not much sleep tonight... On top of that we couldn't find the venue. The bus has a GPS system but it doesn't work in the eastern parts of Europe, way to go Alfredo! After getting lost a couple of times and guided by some locals... to some sort of Polish local neighbourhood (!) a police car stopped some other car in front of us so we simply asked them for the way. And not only did they explain it, but they escorted us with the blue lights on! Turned out to be about 2 minutes from where we were by the way...We had put bets on what time we'd be parked at the venue and Olavi beat DIMMU's soundguy with one minute when we got there 4.44 pm in the afternoon, winning the 40 euros in the pot. Thanks to the crappy roads some of our gear was not working properly and we had some major technical problems during the show. However, the Polish metal heads didn't seem to care too much and we did our best to please a crowd that are spoiled with shows from death metal monsters Behemoth, Vader and Decapitated etc. And they seemed to still enjoy our show!

2007-10-21 Germany, Berlin, Columbiahalle
We've sold out the smaller Columbia club twice the last couple of years when we made our own tour and now we get to play the bigger venue. It doesn't have the same intimate feeling and playing on a Sunday can be a bit quieter than it would on a Friday or Saturday. Still an awesome response and crowd and we had a great time on stage! The catering situation at the Columiba venues is world class! Absolutely the best in Europe as we get spoiled with all different kinds of meat, fish, veggies and an extraordinary desert. Not a long drive to tomorrow's show so bus call wasn't until 9 am. Lots of time to party in Berlin and get some well needed sleep without feeling like you're just about to get thrown out from your bunk as the bus goes off road.

2007-10-22 Germany, Hamburg, Docks
We've only played the Markthalle before so we were not familiar with this venue. Docks is situated right on Reeperbahn, which we are familiar with. A nice venue, not as cramped and sauna-like as Markthalle usually gets even if it still did get very hot on stage. The Hamburg fans has to be one of the best in Germany though, maybe cause they're close to Wacken/Mecka. With 1600 people raising their hands in the air and it felt like everyone was singing along to our songs we had one of our best shows on this tour so far!

2007-10-23 Germany, Wiesbaden, Schlachthof
Wiesbaden is a nice little town, some of us went to the nearby Saturn and mall during the day. The rest of us fought over the limited amount of bandwidth internet at the venue. Winner of the day to the internet: Johan H. as no one else managed to get online.
Pretty nice venue and stage, and the crowd seemed to enjoy our show very much. We certainly enjoyed playing!

2007-10-23 Day off, still in Wiesbaden
Spent the day going bowling and had dinner at a Greek restaurant. Ted won the bowling with 144 points average out of three games.

2007-10-24 Germany, Munich, Georg-Elser-Halle
Djurgården's football team lost the Swedish champion ship tournament today so Johan H and Ted were grieving a bit. Never played this venue before, but it was very nice. And as always the Munich crowd was welcoming us and giving us a great reception, we had an awesome time on stage!

2007-10-25 Germany, Leipzig, Werk
A nice venue and excellent catering greeted us in the morning (read 1-2pm). We've always had a warm reception from the fans here since early years when we did lots of small club shows in this parts of Germany. We'll never forget stoye halle for example! Tonight was the biggest show out of the German ones, and definitely the loudest! Since's DIMMU is playing the nuclear blast festival tomorrow and we can't play on off days we have two days of no show in a row. Some of us took the opportunity to fly home from Leipzig, spending two nights off the bus. The rest of the party went to Hamburg to hang out with Gamma Ray in their rehearsal studio and later on going to the Iced Earth show at Markthalle.

2007-10-28 Denmark, Copenhagen, Store Vega
It's been 7 years since we played Denmark and that's way too long. Strange how it seems to be harder to play in neighbouring countries than on the other side of the world. The Danish vikings were loud and obnoxious and definitely didn't care about it being a Sunday, just as we had hoped. Now just let's hope it wont take another 7 years...

2007-10-29 SWEDEN, Lund, Mejeriet
Ahh... Swedish soil. Feels like coming home, even if they speak funny here, they're still countrymen :-) First time for us in Lund and it seemed like a nice town. A cool venue, but a bit small stage so we were a bit cramped up during the show. Mondays are always harder to get the crowd going crazy, and especially with such a young crowd as tonight, but after some persuasion they got the viking blood pumping!

2007-10-30 Travel day
Got to Stockholm early in the morning and we had time to go home for a couple of hours before taking the ferry at 5 pm.
The ferries between Sweden and Finland are giant floating entertainment facilities with SPA's, pools, saunas, restaurants, bars, shopping, casino etc. So after some relaxing sauna and massage, followed by a fine dinner, it was time to party... hard. And some of us were more drunk than others when we had to get off the boat at 10 in the morning Finnish time...

Read the full article at Amon Amarth's Myspace blog.