+++Hey guys! It’s Angela from Arch Enemy here. Over the next few weeks I’m gonna be checking in with updates from our U.S. Tyranny and Bloodshred tour. But before that madness begins on May 9 in Philly, I thought I’d give you a little taste of what’s to come. Below is the wrap up from our April 13-16 gigs, when we played Helsinki, St. Petersburg and Moscow.+++

We arrived in the Finnish capital Saturday evening. Helsinki - in sunshine - is a beautiful and lively city, offering interesting architecture, arts, beautiful parks and lots of bars, cafes and restaurants. Saturday night it was stormy, with heavy rain and darkness prevailing through. People were getting totally hammered, screaming and fighting in the streets. The runner from Tavastia club told me that the Fins start drinking from a very early age, about 12-14 years old. It’s the long and dark winters that drive them into depression and they fight it with excessive amounts of liquor. It is tragic to see very young, pretty girls falling out of a bar at midnight, completely smashed, a cig in their mouth, barely able to walk and cursing like old sailors.

Our show was Sunday evening in front of a visibly weekend-drained audience. Our 90-minute set felt slightly exhausting, as it was hard to get the energy back from the crowd. There were some very excited kids there, but too many tired soldiers in between. It was a bit disappointing as all the shows in Finland had been absolutely mad in the past. Next time we will come in on a Friday night, when everybody is still fresh and able to mosh!

Next morning, we have a brutal wake up call at 6AM. We are moving on to St. Petersburg, Russia. Driving into the city, a towering statue of Lenin and a WWII memorial site greets the arriving visitor. The weather is still gruelling and I feel like shit, so I retreat to bed for the rest of the day with a big bag of dark chocolate–covered marzipan. I am addicted to that stuff right now. We are all offline and resembling a horde of Zombies - I believe we all hit the sack no later than 10pm that night. Just look at [guitarist] Michael [Amott]’s face below, haha.

Waking up refreshed and excited about the St. Petersburg show! The venue ‘Port’ was located right opposite an impressive cathedral.

Our Lighting designer Richard in front of the venue.

We made our way through the crowd (I very much dislike venues with no way out in the back – there is a fire and we are TOAST) and got ready with banana milk meets Vodka with Chris backstage.

They caught me with “forbidden” food that night, but to my defence: There was no cheese on that pizza. It was vegan!

The show was killer! Loud and crazy, bodies flying and fists in the air! Check Darkside.ru’s pictures here and here.

The only “glitch” in the set was when suddenly an old lady appeared onstage and, obviously confused, tried to make her way down to the crowd. Armed with a big shopping bag and a wild stare. I couldn’t help but make a few jokes Thanx to darkside.ru, we got a good shot of it:

Here’s the set list for the St. Petersburg show:
Intro
Blood On Your Hands
Ravenous
Taking Back My Soul
Dead Eyes See No Future
My Apocalypse
Chris Amott Solo
Revolution Begins
Daniel Erlandsson Solo
Burning Angel
Bury Me An Angel
Dead Buried Their Dead
Vultures
Michael Amott Solo
Enemy Within
Nemesis


–Encore–
Snowbound
We Will Rise
Fields Of Desolation (Outro)

After the show we boarded the night train to Moscow. It was a hot and tight ride and none of us slept that much to be honest. But it’s a famous trip so you gotta do it – only once in my case, haha. That’s Michael below:

Check out the inside of the train: Train Cabin, Chris & Rich.

We decided to add “The Day You Died” to the set list in Moscow. It went down surprisingly well. We kinda thought it’s more of a “Japan” track – so emotional and melancholic. I think it will stay in for the next couple of shows now.

Moscow is basically history on every street corner! You don’t know where to look first, or where to go for sightseeing. As usual, our stay there was way too short, and we didn’t have much time to look around. But at least some of us made it to the Red Square:

Chris Amott! Again!
Our front-of-house guy Clem
Eddie, our drum tech
And our video director, the infamous Mr. Paul Smith

The venue DK Gorbunova is big and well equipped. The 1500 people in there filled it up nicely and got a good sweat going! I had a close encounter with security that night. A kid who crawled up onstage was trying to get back into the crowd—it was very tight up front and people were getting pressed into the stage rim. Well, the security obviously felt it was necessary to jump at him and get quite physical, pushing him all over the stage. I got in there and they actually let him go back into the crowd. Its not easy doing the security job, but there is a definite difference between being firm and getting violent. And violence against our fans is NOT something I like to see!

See for yourself:

Check out some more pix of the Crowd, Me with Flag and Me Onstage.

To see some more cool pictures from the show go HERE or HERE.

At the end of the show I did my little “shake hands with the front row” round…and almost got torn to pieces! All my wristbands were gone within seconds and my arm still looks a little mangled:

And here a few backstage impressions:

The paparazzi Angela at work!
Chris is awake at last.
Taking pictures with the promoters.
Catching the Three Musketeers in action!

Our exquisite video director Paul Smith came out to Moscow and filmed the show professionally. We will use it for a little clip and maybe as bonus material on the next DVD, which is already in the works!

The Russian promoters Andre & Igor and their assistant Sasha took great care of us – but it blew their mind that Michael and I are vegetarians. They made fun of it until the last day, when we met at noon in the lobby. Andre looked absolutely destroyed and I had the last laugh - strongly advising him to maybe try some fruit or vegetables at some point. He looked like a ghost and definitely was in desperate need of some vitamins – and not just lard. That’s me and Andre below.

When it was time to say goodbye, we laughed, we cried and then made our way to the infamous airport there, anticipating two shitty flights via Helsinki to Amsterdam. We got to the city of sin and weed in the evening. All about the red lights, sweet waffles and expensive supercharged chocolate in my next update then! I am getting ready to rock these Dutch stoners now!

Piece Angela