On Thursday 4th October my band Sümer played a show at the Camden Underworld in London, supporting an amazing French band called Lazuli. We had to leave straight away to get home around midnight and in time to have a little bit of sleep before waking up at 3:45am to pack the van and set off for Dover to catch our 7am ferry over to Calais, France, followed by a long drive to Cologne as we were due to play at Euroblast Festival at 6pm! On top of this, I was ill with a heavy cold and sore tonsils! It was hard work but luckily I was with 7 of my mates and we managed to have a laugh along the way.
Despite the feedback issues during our set we played well and got a good reception. We had so much fun meeting new people at the festival and exploring some of the city. Three of us found ourselves a lock-in at a local pub somewhere in the city – I have no idea how we made it back to our hostel, it involved trains and it was 6am, so I had not really slept for approximately 26 hours, all whilst not being well to start with! Saturday, for me, started at 3pm in the afternoon. I met with the rest of the guys outside a restaurant – it was a beautiful 26 degrees! I attempted to order coffee, was told they don’t do hot drinks, so resigned myself to a stein (1 litre) of beer instead, much to the delight of the waitress. I received a stein, with a shot of Jagermeister on the side. This was the first liquid to pass my lips all day, and very much set the tone for what was to come.
As the old adage says, what goes on tour stays on tour, so I won’t go into any further details, ha. What I will say is that I had an awesome weekend with my band, who I shall be leaving at the end of the year. We have been together for 8 years so it’s certainly the end of an era and it was lovely to travel to Germany and have a final big blowout with them! Euroblast is an awesome festival – if you like your metal progressive then please do go check it out!
The point of all this is that I took my sketchbook with me for the trip but I was nowhere near sober enough or free enough to get any sketching done. However, I took some snaps and did some sketches as soon as I got home, which you can see below.
