The States

Less than 80% peanuts. Hmm...so there is 79 % peanuts then... four out of five nuts is a peanut.

Second special dinner: Chicken balls.

They have some really awfull sodas here. Dr Pepper is one. Rootbeer and Cream soda are two other ones.

Wrigley Fields. Seen the movie "The Blues Brothers"?

Guitar player from Powerglove. Nintendo-metal...what on earth will they come up with next?!

A collector (Cristopher?). He now has his complete Rising Force set. It will go for about 15 000 dollars on the collectors market, but he will not sell. Note how everyone has signed with a different colored marker. I got pink:-)

A typical sight. A three quarter working toilet.
Oscar has a small ass so he didn't mind.

Now they made them bigger...Third pounders. I got one + a double cheese burger just now for breakfast.

Fish (Portugese backline tech) with "our" drum kit. It is actually In Flames' Tama-drums we have borrowed which they always use in The States. Fish says I hit three times harder than their drummer. But I guess I'm three times bigger and heavier. I'm a super heavy weight according to olympic boxing rules.

Tonight only. Live web broadcast from "The Rave club". It's the smallest gig place so far. A bit typical that we will broadcast from there.

Oscar wrote this...
It sum things up sometimes. :-)

Pro-Mark, the best drumsticks in the world.

http://www.promark.com/community/profile/4446/

The HammerFall-guitar player in the mood.

USA/Canada

On top of the Rocky stairs. It was easy to run up. Please check www.hammerfall.net for a movie of Oscar running up the stairs.

Potbelly café. You'll get a Potbelly for sure!

230V is hard to get on this continent. We have amps and the like running on 230V so our toothbrushes get to borrow some of the voltage from the transformers.

Typically. Dessert is religion. Who cares if you get fat?

I'm over 6.3 for sure...

Our litte monitoring packs. See how they socialize.

Our home for five weeks.

C-up, a 7-up rip off (my mother thinks it's called zup). C-up in Swedish means: Look up (as Oscar demonstrates).

Canadian beer with 10.1%. The more north, the worse the alcoholics.

Ketchup chips, a Canadian favourite.

A typical backstage sight.

Soundman Tom Kubic.

Healthy. Green tea and V8.

Fish, backline-tech from Portugal.

Jez, tourmanager.

USA

Little cars to take oversized people around the stores (shops) when they do their shopping.
If you are fat you should be walking instead one might think.

Flu-shot anyone?

Supersized margarita. Must have been 75 cl. Pontus and I hade one eache...cpouldn't even finish them. The were strong as well.

Reese's eggs...never seen them in Europe.
Huge as everything else here.

A shop's sallad-dressing section...oversized.

Oversized onions.

Undersized snow-vehicle.
About a quarter the size we use in Sweden. Then again, we are closer to the pole and have more snow accordingly.

You can get this snow-t-shirt in XXXL. Oversized.
They had some snow lately and this t-shirt was after this.

Good idea: A little coffee set to go.

Last couple of days

The cold continues. Minus 16. It's unusually cold winter this year.

Snow covered house. Looks like someone sprayed fake snow on the windows, but it's real.

Changing water in the aquarium. Must be done regularly.

Taking the dog for a walk. Streets almost un-walkable due to the snow.

This old bag told me to be silent on the train. I told her: Hey Bag-lady, wait! I have something for you...and I gave her the middle finger, rigid and stiff. Childish of me: Yes! But I'm sure she sat in this part of the train just to tell people off.

The Swedish way. Be silent and don't get out of line. "No Strong odors" it says as well on this train-sign.

Party at Joacims in Mora. He had his 40:th birthday. We had a great time. Outdoors in a hot tub in minus 16 with strong winds. I stuck my shoulders up and it became covered with ice. Rolled around in the snow afterwards. What an awful feeling that was. Penises went smaller than ever, left and right. I don't put the pics here since people might be embarrassed being under-dimentioned. We went snow-mobiling. Great fun. Fast and really powerful machines. 140 bhp.

Joacim had arranged hot dogs and beers at the lake where we were driving. I think Oscar took the speed record. 123 Km/h. It was a too short lake to go faster. I took it a little easier going only 100. It felt unsafe in the strong wind and big snow drifts. Later in the evening we partied and ate great. The chef was "the real Swedish chef" The one they used for inspiration in the muppet show.

On the way home there were severe problems with the trains. Some freight train had derailed in the snow and it made everything late.

These were the tracks in Mjölby. They worked. You should have seen the ones that didn't.

Jennys car broke down. It was an electrical wire. It took them one hour to fix and it costed SEK 8000:- (€ 800:-). If you like to get screwed and pay 1000% too high prices, please get a Smart car! SEK 4000:- for an oil change...what a bargain.

Met Pontus in Stockholm yesterday. We hade some "semlas" at Tösses bakery. The best I ever had. Pontus went to town on the semlas...
This is our manager/arrranger-guy Joakim Tjelta. We found these speakers that use the glass in the shop window as a resonator (no speaker cones). Never seen that before.

Cat shit

House pets (pests) can be annoying. This was William's cat (scat) that went to the bathroom (may I go to the bathroom...in your mouth?) on a hat. It took the trouble jumping up on top of the table. Note: William is a training freak. If you take a picture anywhere at anytime in the apartment you will see a power shake-shaker at all times somewhere.

William had some serious dry heaves!

More snow

Yesterday it started again. This is getting a bit annoying now. Where I live we have a lot of growing fields (Kotipelto) and it makes the snow blow in over the roads right a way. This is the road to our village. We have had sub freezing temperatures for like two months straight now and it will continue for quite some time.

Stratovarius - tonight only.

Went to a Strato-show yesterday in Lund, Sweden.
The show was really great. The musicianship in this band is fantastic. Solos from Jens (my brother), Lauri and Mathias were mindboggeling. A bach duet with Jens and Lauri. They call it Airbag! It's unusually high quality of the solos in general. The guys play with such ease. They don't even look at their instruments while playing extremely complex and fast runs. Drummer-Jörg and singer-Timo in great condition. Being a drummer myself and been seeing Jörg 100 times I think he plays better than ever. Consistant and steady.
Sound was unbelievably good. Clear, powerful and you could hear every little detail. Every part of the drumkit equally loud and massive. Every bass tone, every background vocals as loud as everything else.
Lights were great. They had seven moving lights assigned for Jörg, mostly as color changers. Generally you could see everyone perfectly at all times.

If you have the possibillity you should go check them out tonight at Brew house in Gothenburg.
Bring earplugs, it was loud.

Rehearsing with In Flames

I have been playing a lot lately.
I use my Ipod with headphones and play along. I have a lot of different music in it. I usually take one band and learn almost all their songs. Today I'm playing with In flames. They have good sounding stuff and quite a few songs are fast which is good practice.

Maybe I take Meshuggah tomorrow. It's a bit more demanding mentally, but also quite interesting and fun.