In April, I came to Europe for 5 weeks as part of the Metal Chainsaw Massacre tour with Obituary, Grave, and Pathology.
Apparently, the guys in Grave had the impression that I as going to be the serious musician guy on the tour: sit in the dressing room all day, practice guitar ,and don't talk to anybody. Well, the tour bus picked them up at the airport, everybody introduced themselves, and we started away from the airport. I went upstairs, put on a furry, tiger-striped hat (complete with tail), came downstairs and said " let's have fun bitches"!!! Well, to say we had fun is a massive understatement. I've been on a lot of tours, I know a lot of funny people, but there was something special about that tour. The chemistry between the 19 people on that bus was amazing. 19 comedic geniuses rolling through Europe. Literally every day, my face and stomach would hurt from laughing so much. It was amazing.
Pathology had never been to Europe before, so they were a little naive about certain things. When we were in Prague, the Pathology guys were going to take a walk to see the city. I said to them " make sure you are back at the venue before sundown". They asked me why, and I said " because werewolfism is rampant in Bohemia". From that one sarcastic comment a movie, and hopefully a future career was born. I carry a small, 100 dollar flip video cam with me when I travel. We were already making a funny tour movie at this point. When we got to Slovakia, the vampire jokes started.
So we decided our tour movie would have a vampire theme, and thus was born " OSCAR RAMIREZ' COUNT CHOKULA"!! Oscar is the 21 year old bassist for Pathology. He's funny as hell, and everybody absolutely adores him. So we decided the storyline of our movie would be this : the tour arrives in Slovakia, and we hear that Count Chokula has returned ( I have no idea where he is returning from). We don't tolerate vampirism in any form, so we assemble a team of guys on the bus who hate vampirism for reasons that are personal, religious, and sexual.
Ola Lindgren from Grave is the brave guy that will actually put the stake in Chokula's heart. Ronnie Bergerstal is half vampire, but he switches sides to help us. Terry Butler is the strong guy that will hold Chokula while Ola kills him. Trevor Peres from Obituary will cater the whole affair with his famous bbq ribs. I am the logistical commander of the whole thing, but when it all happens, I'll be in a barrel of garlic with a priest next to me, vampires are dangerous and I'm scared of those fucking things.
Since everybody knows that vampires love Mexican food, Ola and I drug Oscar( who is Mexican) and tie him to a tree to lure Count Chokula out into the open, but it goes horribly wrong, partly because of Terry Butler's love of Gary Moore, and collectingvinyl. It's one long Mexican/drinking joke. I'm editing it right now. This is the first time I've done something like this, and I seem to have a talent for it. I never thought I would enjoy something as much as music, but this is really fun. I can sit there for hours editing, adding music, etc., and be perfectly content. So we had so much fun doing this, and on the tour in general, that Ola and I, somewhat inevitabley, decided to form a new band. We are calling it RedScream. It's Ola, me, Ronnie and Tobi from Grave, Mika Lagreen from Facebreaker, and a singer to be announced soon.
I just finished the Deicide tour, and came to Stockholm so we could start writing songs. It won't be extreme metal, other than that, we will have to wait to see the style. And that, children, is how I came to be in Stockholm!!!
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