TRISTANIA's male vocalist Østen Bergøy has checked in from the band's South American tour with the following diary updates:

May 14:

"Hi again, everybody.

After several long flights: Leipzig-Frankfurt, Frankfurt-Mexico city, Mexico city-Sao-Paulo, Sao Paulo-Buenos Aires, we are finally able to write you some words. At the moment, we are preparing for our first ever show in Argentina. Needless to say, we are all exited about the show tonight. I love the city and wish we had more time to explore it, but that is one of the sides of being on tour that there is nothing to do about as we are off again tomorrow morning. Soundcheck is in 90 minutes, and tonight there will be an impressive 5 (!) local support bands. Most likely, we will not get to see much of their shows, as our own scheduel is quite tight. But I can mention their names: EVA, ANGEL TEARS, LUZABRIL, ENCHAINED SOULS and BLOODPARADE.

We met our tour manager AC in Mexico city - he also tour-managed the tour we did with KREATOR three years ago. He was just finishing a long Latin American tour with HELLOWEEN. And a few of us went to see the last part of their concert. Some of us met them after the show, and they turned out to be brilliant guys.

Anyway, now we have to leave for soundcheck. Thank you for your time, and as soon as we can, we will be back with our experiences from tonight's show.

All the best for you."

May 16:

"Gracias, Buenos Aires!

We have finally started the musical part of our tour here in South America, and our first show in Buenos Aires was one of our best ever. The crowd definatly knew how to have a good time at a concert. This kind of shows is what it is all about, it makes the travelling and the hard work worth the effort. We did 'Sacrilege' live for the first time ever - one of the most challenging live songs we have played.

It is nice to notice the the new songs work well live, (the old ones too, of course) and that the audience Wednesday night seemed to enjoy listening to them as much as we did playing them. It is also a pleasure to play a long set as a headlining band, to give our fans the full treatment. Thank you again, wonderful people of Buenos Aires. We really hope we can come back soon.

Setlist: 'Libre', 'Sacrilege', 'Circus', 'The Ravens', 'Angina', 'World Of Glass', 'Shadowman', 'Lotus', 'Down', 'Tender Trip On Earth', 'Mercyside', 'Beyond The Veil', 'The Shining Path .. The Wretched', 'Angellore'.

After the show, we were invited to a WHITESNAKE aftershow party (they were playing that night as well), and most of us went.

Yesterday was a travelday, and now we are back in Curitiba, Brazil. We did a show with Kreator here a few years back. Can't wait to play for our Brazilian fans again! Brazilians like their metal.

Now we have to leave for soundcheck. We'll be back with more updates as soon as we are able to.

Take care."

Tristania's schedule is now as follows:

May

17 - AVR Festival - São Paulo, Brazil
19 - El Huevo - Valparaiso, Chile
20 - Novedades - Santiago, Chile
21 - Sala 2 - Concepcion, Chile
23 - Ibex - Monterrey, Mexico
25 - Hard Rock Live - Mexico City, Mexico

July

12 - Masters Of Rock - Vizovice, Czech Republic