Photo by Carl Begai

 

Canadian legends Helix recently wrapped up a European tour - their first since 1989 - in celebration of the band's 40th Anniversary. Frontman Brian Vollmer has posted a recap of the tour here. An excerpt is available below:

"Initially the tour went from Nuremburg on the Sunday to Hamburg on the Wednesday to Sandviken, Sweden on the Friday. This left the Monday & Tuesday to get to Hamburg, and the Thursday to get to Sweden. So, on Monday, we headed off to Hamburg, getting there that evening. The club we were to play was right down by the Reaperbahm, which, for those of you who don't know, is the strip where they have all the prostitutes, sex shows, and drug dealers. We passed by the club and it was obvious there was no place to stop with our monster bus. Somehow we ended up on a little dinky side street where we couldn't make any turns and where we were barely missing the parked cars on either side of the road by inches. The day before in Nuremburg our bus driver had hit a steel post with the bus, leaving a foot long gash in the front quarter panel, so our antennae was up concerning doing more damage to our already damaged bus. We were traveling at about 5MPH, trying to avoid hitting anything, with drug dealers chasing the bus trying to sell us their wares. Finally we ran into a dead end and couldn't move, at which point we had to ge the cops to get us out. We ended up sitting in the parking lot of a gas station with no power or lights, our bus driver (Rolf) explaining that he couldn't drive any more that day."
"At every gig would be fans who hadn't seen us in years, all loaded down with every CD, album, and picture of the band they could carry. That's one thing about European fans. When they are fans they have EVERYTHING. We met some fantastic people at every gig. We also had a lot of press out throughout the tour and without exception they gave us great write-ups."

Footage of the band performing on the Rockbäten in Helsingborg, Sweden is available below:

Helix's live schedule is currently as follows:

November

15 – Cannisbustock – Vancouver, BC
22 – The Deerfoot Inn – Calgary, AB (with Greg Goddovitz)
28 – The Army & Navy Club – Brantford, ON