Picture by Audrey Dujardin

TURISAS "rebel violinist" Olli Vänskä is keeping an ongoing tour diary for www.shutterblast.net founder (and reliable BW&BK; source) Audrey Dujardin during the band's current road trip with DRAGONFORCE. Following is Vänskä's latest entry:

October 2 - Hemel Hempstead, London

"Sitting in a hotel room again. Another off-day. Relaxing but frustrating - these days are OK for writing delayed festival reports, watching LOST and whatnot, but they're fucking expensive.

Surprisingly, I'm tired and hungover again. Today is our accordion player Netta's 18th birthday, but as we knew we'd be lazying our asses off in a hotel somewhere behind God's eyes, we did all the partying a day in advance. Convenient. Of course we got the crowd singing a greeting song for her just before having a feast In The Court of Jarisleif. Then, after the show, we continued with vodka and beer, listened to Morbid Angel and talked shit with DragonForce and their crew till the early morning. Tude was very emotional, as he got to talk about Bal-Sagoth with Dave MacIntosh (how the fuck do you spell that name - don't even have Internet atm to check this shit).

So, after crashing into my bed at 6 a.m. I AGAIN finally woke up when our bus driver kicked me out of the bus. I really can't bother moving into a hotel room to sleep when in a middle of badly needed beauty sleep. Anyway, after that I've again spent the day in a usual off-day way (referring to my report from Cardiff). This is a kind of London suburb, I suppose. Ate a 'Special Breakfast' in a decent bar along the shopping street, wandered around in a mall trying to find sneakers and got some shit food from a shit store. Got a phone call from Netta who had returned from her nightly adventures.

Fuck this shit.

OK, anyway, I quite enjoy this tour and I'm looking forward to the US leg as well. It's a good package band-wise and I really think we'll reach some new audience. And of course I think our performance is pretty strong. We probably wouldn't have toured the UK on our own again until the release of our 3rd Album™ as it wouldn't have made sense (because we've already been around here so much that the Brits would probably deep fry us and feed to their cats if we harassed them one more time). So, this tour makes sense then. At least we had a good excuse to come and eat those shitty triangular sandwiches again.

Tomorrow is the first one of the two shows in London Astoria. Cool. This is our first 'double show', although it's obviously more about DragonForce's fame than ours. We've done very well, too, nothing to shame about. I hope I won't break a string again - that happened in Cardiff a couple of days back. Also yesterday we finally got our 'Fuck The Guitar Solos' spectacle/extravaganza on its tracks properly, and the audience kinda was into it. And - HAH! - I persuaded Herman Li to join me on stage and take a proper duel in one of the shows. Won't tell you the exact date, though, just bite your tongue and curse if you're not gonna attend to any of the coming shows.

I'm out now."

Olli

Go to this location for updates. Click here for Turisas' complete tour schedule.