We’ve just landed in New York and we’re gonna play The Madison Square Garden, let’s get ready to rumble! I simply can’t wait. Even though the venue looks like the other venues on the tour, this venue has legendary status due to past events. My master has performed here; Elvis Presley. And Johnny Cash, Muhammed Ali, Mike Tyson, George Foreman, Evander Holyfield, Lennox Lewis, Wladimir Klitschko, Vitali Klitschko and the list goes on. Just looking at the building gives me the chills and makes me say: Madison Square Garden baby! I can’t believe I’ve made it this far, even though my father has been very optimistic about it. The old man was right! And I’ve been thinking about him ever since we landed.

The show in Albany the day before went well; some Danish fans had taken the trip all the way cross the Atlantic with a Danish flag. We ended up at a bar with them and some American fans as well. This resulted in a huge headache the next day. We want to thank all the Danish fans who has travelled so far to support us and of cause also every single fan going to see our shows!

Certain Volbeat folks had a bad stomach that day and all decided to use the dressing room restroom, with no air condition at all. People outside thought that we’d hid corpses in the dressing room – please call a doctor J

Well, back to New York / Madison. I walking around seeing photos of all the legends I mentioned before, hanging on the walls of the garden. We don’t do sound checks any more, as we’re used to the stage and sound system, so we don’t need them. Thanks to Volbeat and Metallica crew – you rule, we only needed sound checks the first 3 days. Friends, family, girlfriends, various people working for us etc, has travelled to see us and it’s good to see familiar faces. We play a great show, probably the best on this tour. I check out the Metallica show afterwards, I’ve seen them all. What can I say; they kick ass every single time. Both Lamb of God and Metallica has done shout outs to us every night, and we appreciate it a lot. THANK YOU!.

MICHAEL

This arena is the biggest in this leg of the tour, with a 19.000 capacity. And yes, it’s sold out! The surroundings are not that exciting, but that’s not what we’re here to see anyways! When we got out of the bus, we met a Danish girl. She decided to spend her holiday following the tour, that’s crazy! The rest of day goes by with usual stuff, setting up gear, line check and then… show time! This night turns out to be the best on the tour so far. Excellent sound and great response from the crowd. So it’s 4 happy boys leaving the stage smiling (again!).

As you might have read from the last diary chapter, some of the Metallica guys (read James and his assistant Ray) had a joke with us using a certain Pokémon character. We decided it was payback time, so we designed a poster with a layout of a new Metallica shirt and placed it at their dressingroom door. Anders and I met James later and asked him if he had seen the new t-shirt design. He answered that he had seen it and that he didn’t intend to start a mass production yet, and he said: Do Better! So let’s see what we have up our sleeves in the future.

After that, Metallica played another massive set!

When the show was over, we went out for drinks. We met up with the Danish girl and a coulple of the folks we met on the Nightwish tour earlier this year. It was good to see them again and we had a lot of good stories to tell eachother. So the curfew was quite late. Next show is in Albany! So stay tuned for more…

Cheers!

Jon

We’re now in the United States in Grand Rapids, and it’s gonna be good to get on the road again. The venue is called VAN ANDEL ARENA and has a 11.573 capacity. It’s completely sold out. This morning we had a meeting with some folks, let’s call them business people, we might wanna work with in the future. While we were away, someone had placed a Pokemon figure on the door to our dressing room (see the interview in the video section). It’s obvious, that the person who did it had seen the interview, where I explain about the Pokemon character, which is also called Volbeat. We had a huge laugh about this and wondered who had done it. We found out that it was James Hetfield and his assistant Ray who did it, and asked us if we’ve noticed the door to our dressing room and laughed. Nice one! We talk about how we’ve spent the days off etc.

50 minutes prior to the show I bump into Lars Ulrich, who asks if I wanna go for a run with him. I think it’s a bit to close to showtime and tell him I’m up for it another day, if we can do it slightly earlier.  We’re on at 6.55 PM and play Human instrument, Radio Girl, Sad Mans tongue, Halellujah Goat, A Moment forver, Angelfuck (misfits), Pool of booze, Still counting. The crowd likes it and responds really well. We have a bit of sound problems the first 3 songs, but it works out. We have lots of energy today, but can still feel it’s been 5 days since the last gig. We have a great time on stage and really connect with the audience in the front! We leave satisfied and go to meet fans after the show. Several fans has travelled quite far to see us and we end up talking to them for a long time. Just prior to Metallica go on stage I run into James, who’s in a really good mood and ready to enter the stage, he says: What’s up little E, Yeah little Elvis haha. We laugh. Metallica plays a super show, good energy (again). And great to see how they enjoy to enter the stage mighty as they are! We wrap up the night with Lamb Of God, having a few beers. If you don’t know them, check ‘em out, cool band and killer riffs!

Time has gone by relaxing and shopping a little (among other the new Slayer).

We went to a HATEBREED, CANNIBAL CORPSE show which was super cool! Cannibal Corpse had been so nice to put us on the guest list. We ended up at a bar with some of the guys from Cannibal Corpse – they are some really nice guys by the way. I told them that I had been a fan since the beginning and I told them about how I took my bike and drove all the way from Ringsted to Næstved (approx. 30 km) to by their first record “Eaten back to life”. They thought this was very funny. The reason why I drove my bike instead of taking the bus was so I could buy one more record. I ended up buying the first record of Paradise Lost which was released around the same time as the first record of Cannibal Corpse. We had a very nice and fun night with the cannibals J We also went to THE ROCK’N’ROLL HALL OF FAME MUSEUM where we looked at some of the old legends personal belongings etc., and found time for some more shopping.

Detroit
The part of Detroit we landed in, wasn’t exactly the place to play tourist.

We clearly turned at the wrong place and we weren’t very welcome in this slum/ghetto where we landed. Therefore we went back to the hotel and relaxed with some movies, food and the internet.

When we told some from the crew of Metallica about our Detroit experience they were almost surprised that we had made it back alive ha ha ha.

A positive thing in Detroit though, was that we got to go to The Henry Ford museum where we saw the most amazing legendary cars and trains.

Michael

Volbeat’s unusual and captivating mix of heavy metal guitars, melodic vocals, ’50s-style rockabilly and modern punk has made it one of Denmark’s most popular rock bands, with the group’s shows regularly drawing upwards of 10,000 people.

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