USA and New York City!

After about 14 hours of travel we found our selves in the Chicago Customs line feeling less than fresh, this took about an hour or so and we meet up with our host and good friend dom from the band Urn. Its funny after all the places we had been in Europe, the USA is always the biggest culture shock, I’ve been there before and it still takes me some time to adjust.

Our first night in Chicago was a night off which was great as we had to start the 12 hour drive to New York City for the first date of the Tarja (ex-Nightwish) Tour. We had our first sample of traditional Chicago stuffed deep pan pizza, I managaged 1 and a half pieces and that was it, it is one hell of a meal and totally great! So thank you Chicago!

The next morning we all went about packing and preparing for the trip to New York, dave and my self sorted merch and Marty, Dom and Sofia went and got the Van. New York Road trip here we come! We broke this trip over few days so after about a 4pm departure we stopped around 2.30 am some where in pennsylvania and checked into a hotel for the evening…ahh a soft bed is a luxury at times:)

we hit the road at around 11am in hope we would make our 5pm load in at the legendary Filmore Irving Plaza. To dom’s credit he weaved his way through New York traffic like a wizard and we arrived 20 mintes early, driving through New Yrok city in a 15 seater van is not something I wish apon anyone..ever hahaha but New Tork, what a great city, it was nice to be back even if only briefly!

This was to be our first show in the USA ever as The Eternal and also note we were back to a 3 piece again. But I think for all of us this show will go down as a special one, I dont think we had really prepared for what was a head, a great legendary venue where anyone from U2, Red Hot Chilli Peppers and Metallica had jammed  and also to our delight a very large and attentive crowd!

After Urn prooved them selves with a nice set we took the stage just before Tarja and I was really pleased, here we where so nobodies from australia with a full room at a legendary NY venue, to good!:) We only had a 30 minute set so it was a bit of a best of, but we looked at it as our first US show case, we played: Means for an Ending, Everlasting, Without Reason, Down & the epic Blood which of course went down damn well and we had a great crowd chant, I spent most of the set in water as i spilt a bottle and feared I would die of an electric shock or that tarja her self may kill me for messing up the stage, at this point my converse have seen alot of travel and have holes in the bottom, so I spent the set with wet feet trying not to electricute myself haha, Marty and Dave played great and it was just one of those very special nights Im sure we wont forget, sometimes our hard work pays off! We made our way to the merch desk for some meet and greet and it went very well, sold loads of CD’s. lots of Autographs and pictures and generally a great response from the Audience, so thank you New York for taking the time to share you nice words with us, it really left us feeling everything we do does not go un noticed, I do hope we return some time!

it around 12am we had back to our accomodation in New Jersey and settled down for the night, I had to stay up till about 2.30 am to make a call back home to make the final booking for the studio and producer of our new album which im looking forward to telling you about, but I can tell you this, The Eternal are recording a new album in December and its going to be special:)

So now we make our way to a very beautiful part of the world, Montreal Canada, with all our paper work in check I really hope we have no problems jumping boarders and I just cant wait to get to canada! More soon!

- Mark