You try and block 'em out forever, when things go wrong......

We once played in Croatia and the venue was supposed to supply the backline of two Peavy guitar amps and a bass amp or Ampeg rig. So we got there and you gotta understand now most of our sound comes from the amp getting overdriven and not through some effects board so we get there and there are two 1970 marshalls with no footswitch and no gain whatsoever and we're thinking how are we going to do this?!

The bass amp looks like it was something you'd get a seven year old from a catalogue back in the 70's and we couldn't believe it. We laughed and managed to hold of some distortion pedals and were looking on in disbelief as the support bands are going through the paces. Everyone is using the same gear and, on stage, something starts to smoke. When we look around the fuckin' bass amp is actually on fire and the place is billowing with smoke! But it was only one gig and we were booked there for four fuckin' days!

When we turned up they wouldn't let us in because they didn't believe we were who we said we were so we had to go through another border crossing. Oh man, when we got there they decided to treat us to a beach BBQ and there was this gas cylinder and a grill but they forgot to get a regulator to attach the lot together so were stood there for three hours starving just looking at all this raw meat wondering what the fuck was going on, so we decided why don't we just turn the gas cylinder onto its side and light the fucker and point it at all this meat - oh man, it was bizarre beyond belief. Then to cap all this surreal madness off they tried to stiff us for the money and some kid comes up and says he's ever so sorry but he didn't have the money. It was weird and we told them we were going to phone the police if we didn't get paid so in the morning he turned up with his dad and his brothers and he asked how much his son owed us so we told him and he paid up and his dad was fuckin' mortified and gave him the look like he was the most disappointed father in the world and his son was such a fuckin' disappointment ha ha ha. We did find out though that the kid did have the money but the little dick fucking spent it on God knows what.

There was one other I can remember where it was so fucking cold....by a prison somewhere?Shrewsbury! We were doing some warm up gigs and this one had been booked for a while.  There were only about 10 people there and they were all wearing coats etc. The security came up and said the heaters had broken and they had been blowing out cold air like fucking crazy and we were on and it was so cold, it was miserable. It was one of those times where you couldn't get warm - it was incredible. I can remember looking at the set list and it was one of those two hour sets so I decided to cut it down and go straight to 'Kill And Destroy' and we never normally do that but I feared for the band that we'd literally freeze stiff on stage. We cut about 8 to 10 songs that night but it was for survival ha ha ha.

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