Dear noble fiends and fiendesses, sons and daughters of Lilith and
all-round decent, slightly morbid folk; Dani here writing from our
elongated big blue tour-bus on the fourth from last date of the second
leg of the Filthfest out here in Europe with Moonspell, Turisas and
Dead Shape Figure in support.



"Gape and pillage - Dani with Turisas"

Firstly I must apologise for the substantial delay in posting a blog
here on the website, but we have been so busy of late that a sabbatical
was in order for a few weeks at least, culminating in a snowboarding
holiday in Slovenia and a booze and bowling fuelled family Easter
weekend shortly before embarking on our present campaign. Don't ask.

Those of you who might have seen us in the past few weeks (and in the
coming days at least) will be aware that due to aforementioned teaching
commitments, both Rosie Smith and Charles Hedger have been temporarily
replaced by Ashley Ellyllon (formerly of US band Abigail Williams) and
James Mcilroy (formerly of the Nymphetamine Cradle line-up) for this
tour and possibly further. I can't really say much more than they are
integrating brilliantly and the band is going from strength to strength
because of them.


"Steve's job is hell"

"James on a swing."

Indeed we've had a good spat of shows on this tour and the weather has
been stunning, inspiring us to visit the older parts of Ljubljana,
Zagreb, Clermont-Ferrand, and Madrid to view the sights. There have
been some ups and downs as you can probably imagine, the cancellation
in Minsk being one of the greater disappointments, as well as several
badly advertised shows and long Eastern European drives, but all in all
I think everyone has had a really good time on this tour.



"Terminal Fatheads for Finland."

I was joking with Fernando from Moonspell that we might as well get married seeing the amount of times we've played together over the years. Thankfully he
didn't agree, though he is a nice-looking tall, dark mediterranean
sexpot and all that.



"Look out! The lads are about!"

Both Dead Shape Figure and Turisas have been fantastic supports on this
tour (as I've been enjoying watching all of the bands playing, skulking
in the shadowy wings of the stage like the phantom), the latter
sounding like a fuelled up Slayer or The Haunted and Turisas coming
across like a full on Viking raiding party, with the emphasis on '
'king party'! And Moonspell, along with a 'best of' set list, have been
playing better than I think I've ever seen them, and I've seen them
quite a few bloody times by now!



"We certainly pick them!"

We have also been filmed for the last week for a possible forthcoming
documentary, which has actually been rather pleasant, seeing as the
good weather and subsequent lightheartedness have warmed our cockles to
the intrusive nature of a rogue cameraman with often probing questions.
Still it didn't stop us flinging a few 'fuck-off-out-of-it's' in his
general direction when filmed getting in or out of bed or the shower.


Also the 'Crewdle Of Filth' have been exemplary throughout as per and
it has come with a sullen heart to hear that G (real name Jean-Francois
Labrecque) our drum tech for the last five years, will be retiring
after the Australian leg due to family commitments and quite possibly a
need to escape.



"Jamal and the Moppettes."

As for the Mexican/US/Canadian tour recently undertaken, well, again
that was a runaway success with a lot of very memorable shows and some
very interesting moments had to boot. As you can imagine, much of the
first part of the tour was steeped in huge amounts of snowfall
(especially in Wisconsin and Canada, though Mexico was sultry), right
up until the tour was divided by a Finnish festival cancellation, which
meant I could luckily fly home for Luna's tenth birthday whilst the
rest of the troop spent their five days off in the warmer spell of San
Francisco.



"Luna and Avril Lavigne."

Subsequent to some misguided belief that we canceled the show for our
own benefit, I can tell you that both this concert and the one in
Germany several weeks ago were pulled by the promoter when contracts
and guarantees were not upheld. Both shows we were raring to play and
in the case of the Tomahawk festival, all the band and crew were packed
and rehearsed and all waiting to be flown from their respective haunts.

The same goes for the Belarus show of last Monday. Unfortunately the
border guards held us up for so long that we had to turn back from the
show as we weren't even going to arrive at the venue until at least
eleven at night! An impossible situation all round and to all the fans
that suffered the cancellation, we humbly and dutifully apologise. A
lot of time had been spent organising visas and documentation for our
visit to your country and it was extremely frustrating for the whole
package of bands to be left hanging on the flagrant and often paltry
whims of immigration.



"Marooned buses on route to Belarus"

Anyhoo, back to the US tour.

It was excellent! The line up of ourselves, Satyricon and Septic Flesh
complimented each other very well and bar one shortened set in Houston
due to illness, the rest of the shows were a triumph of twisted metal.
My favourites shows would have to have been those in Arizona, Texas,
Norfolk, Toronto and New York (despite succumbing to the customary
end-of-tour Bronchitis spell and having to see yet another specialist
doctor, the first being to have my ear drum drained by having it cut
open!). I even got the chance to go snow-boarding on a few occasions in
Canada with Scottish Steve (our dungeon Master) and Daniel Paine (our
sound engineer but also known as Doctor Paine), which was very
therapeutic during the course of a lengthy tour (obviously it wouldn't
have been had I gone and broken my bloody neck, which seemed on the
cards at one point when the lights on the mountain inadvertently went
out).



"Band signing in Vegas"

After the US tour we had a few weeks off but this was obviously
punctuated with a lot of preparation for the next few outings, press,
holidays, catching up on bills, rehearsing and even indulging in the
odd bout of writing. I had to pop up to Andy Sneap's studio in
Derbyshire to re-edit The Death Of Love for a future video release
(this is now finished and looking very cinematic)) and used the time to
finish a track off from the 'Godspeed' sessions, the working title of
which remains Beast Of Extermination, with engineer Doug Cook, but I
also managed to indulge in another of my great loves with my wife and
daughter... theme parks with stupidly dangerous rides, though I
dare-say a night on our European tour bus hammering through the
Romanian countryside would scare the living be-jesus out of most folks!


"Gilles De Rais, director Will and Dani."
Godspeed On The Devil's Thunder...
Dani Filth


"A twat. Yesterday."