SA:Listening party in Helsinki 16-18.1.2014

The first chance to play your new music to ”outsiders” is always a bit nerve-tickling. In order to

play our album for selected reporters, we got on the train on Thursday evening (around 22:39 +

a few minutes delay, to be exact). We, meaning Tony, Tommy & I. On Friday morning we woke up just before the train arrived in Helsinki at 0900. Upon arrival we checked into our hotel and went out for breakfast. Tony had an interview lined up later on so me & Tommy went to our managements office to hang out. A bit later Pasi joined us as well, and in the afternoon we got hungry so we went to Dennis and got some excellent food. I had a massive plate of pasta in front of me and just stuffed myself with that, actually I’m starting to get hungry again just writing about it = it was goooood.

Just before 1600 we got picked up at our hotel and headed towards the legendary Finnvox studios.The event featured two albums, first we all listened to Tuomas Holopainen’s new album,

and after a short break we listened to our album as well. Drinks, pizza, great music, good people….

..despite being a bit nervous about the response of our new music, everything went really well and we had a good time together. At least I had ;-) It was a real pleasure to be able to listen to Tuomas album as well, and I’d say it could fit very well as a soundtrack somewhere….a beautiful journey indeed. Gonna pick that album up when it’s released….and no, it’s not by any means heavy metal or anything, it’s closer to NW minus the band and in most cases the vocals as well. Anyway, since I’m not a music critic, you can check it out by yourself, buy it if you like it….get something else if you don’t.

During the listening party, Tony was presented with a platinum album for the Raskasta Joulua thing.

Essentially, it’s a bunch of heavy dudes doing Christmas songs the heavy way…..in case you didn’t 

know.

Having listened to both albums it was time to head out to town, and Bar Bäkkäri as always.I think more or less everybody went there and had some additional drinks to round up the night. In my case

I figured it was time to head to bed when I’m hanging out with an un-named label excecutive at his room drinking some christmasy-flavoured jäger and smoking cigarettes in a non-smoking hotel. Which of course brings us to the fact that I overslept and missed my train by around 15 minutes. No harm done though since I only had to pay a couple of euros to change my ticket to the next train (from which I’m writing btw) and the impact of my failure to wake up in the morning is that I’ll get home a couple of hours later than was planned…..and so everyone survives and we can prepare for the rehersals next week.

For the 15th anniversary shows we’re bringing back some old stuff…old ”hits” if you will, that we haven’t played in a while…and some stuff that we’ve never performed on stage, ever. As said we start rehearsing next week and in just a tad over a week we’ll be on stage in Helsinki. Hopefully we get our shit together by then.

cheers,

Hank