New Zealand

It was our first trip to New Zealand, home of our bass player Dave Langlands. Ryan & myself had not been to New Zealand before so it was a bit more exciting for us. We landed in beautiful Wellington on Wednesday night and as we had no show we hit a bar and had a few quite ones...until about 5am, enjoyable night and everyone was in a good mood.

First show was in Wellington at Bodega bar, we met the band we would be touring with for the rest of the trip 'Heathen Eyes', some lads and a lady from Auckland that were just lovely people and great muso's so it was a pleasure to be sharing the trip with them. We followed Wellington with shows in Auckland and Daves stomping ground of his youth, Hamilton. In the end great fun and we look forward to seeing NZ again sometime in the future.

It was great to have a chance to expose our music to a new audience in this very pretty country, we had a few hard moments along the way, but we ended as a team which is always good. These were Ryans last shows with us, and we are more than grateful that he stepped in at such short notice and did such a great job, its nice to know that after all these years apart as Ryan left after the 'Sombre Light of Isolation' Tour in 2004 that there was still some on stage chemistry and good vibes.

After a long and difficult tour we are now back at home and ready to regroup with Marty and get things back on track again, first up we have a Melbourne show with local rock heavy weights Jericco followed by five dates with Jeff Martin on his 'Ground Cries out' Aussie tour & with any luck we can get our Japanese dates rescheduled shortly. So on that note, we thank everyone that came out and supported us on the 'Under A New Sun' Australian/New Zealand tour and we look forward to it all starting again very soon! Cheers!

Brisbane & Lismore

So this was our last run of Australian shows on the 'Under A New Sun' Australian tour, Ryan had been doing a great job settling in behind the kit and this weekend with no acception. Lismore is always fun, and close to one of the places we love the most, Byron Bay, so we stopped in had a few beers and relaxed before heading to lismore. With great support coming from Tanamera and Gust Of Gravity it was a great night. Its always a bonus to play with some cool bands.

Next we made our way to the step in to have our last aussie show with a great line up. Echotide and Silver Ocean storm were stand outs and it was great to see some of our brisbane fans again, you guys are very supportive and we appreciate it. We played a very strong and energetic set on this night and it was a great day to wind down the aussie tour, now off to NZ to show them what we have got!

Frankston / Southern FM wrap up!

Last weekend we made our way up to Frankston for a show with the boys from Tread, was an enjoyable night and the vibe between Mark, Ryan & Dave onstage is really working well, feeling good about how it will all shape up for the NZ/Japanese tour in a few weeks. We pounded out a good solid hour of Rock to an enthusiastic crew, we opened with Control off 'Under A New Sun' and made our way through a pretty thumping set. It was also cool to see Marty show up to watch, its not often you get to watch your own band play or yell random abuse at them as they play! haha

On Sunday we made ourselves down to Southern FM, a local melbourne community station and played 7-8 songs with the full live band, it was amazing how we managed to fit the band / amps drums etc.. all into the main control room at Southern FM.The set went really well and we had a really great time also, so thanks to the crew at Southen FM's sunday live sessions!

Only two dates left of the Aussie tour, next stop Lismore and Brisbane!

Adelaide gets rocked

On Thursday 24th we made the drive up to Adelaide, South Australia for an Acoustic & full band show. dave and myself made it there by car and Ryan flew in from Sydney on the friday. It was quite a nice drive up except for the locust swarm we found our selves in around the Horsham area. We had to clean loads of these little critters off the front of the car!

Weather in Adelaide was great and as it was fringe festival time there was a lot of nice energy in the air, shortly after our arrival in Adelaide we made our way to 'The Cranker' to prepare for our acoustic show. This was the first time we had performed any of our material acoustically so Dave & myself were a little nervous. It was an intimate but attentive audience and we found our selves pretty comfortable with the new format of the material. We played: Means For An Ending, Delirium & Desire. Collapse, The Sleeper, Blood, Walk Beside You, Crimson Sacrifice & Cast In Stone.

Friday night was a night off, another warm night with plenty of booze and good friends, was really nice to take this time out and catch up with everyone!

Saturdays show at Enigma was a powerful one, Ryan is really settling in behind that drum stool and is breezing through the set with power and confidence which makes mine and Dave's job very easy. From the get go we ment business and delivered, it was our most energetic and powerful performance since the launch at The East Brunswick club with Marty behind the skins. We played a nice long set including; Control, Means For An Ending, Down, Blood, Silence and a whole lot more.

Overall Adelaide was a very nice weekend and we look forward to returning! This weekend seeing a Melbourne show in Frankston and also a live to air radio performance on sunday! Should be fun! - Mark

Sydney @ The Valve Bar

So after doing our best to rock Canberra we drove overnight to Sydney and got some rest and slept in as late as we could. We had a lovely late lunch with our friend Sabine and her friend Jess before heading to Valve Bar to set up for the show. Valve Bar is run by some friends of Dave's who is also from NZ, so it was all good vibes.

Vangate once again put on a nice show for some young lads. Next up we had Sydney old school doomers Rituals of the Oak, very good at what they do! Very doomy with just epic vocals, easy to see why these guys are doing well in Europe.

This was Ryans second show with us and things are starting to gel well on stage, we kicking in again with Control off 'Under A New Sun' and it really rocked, very tight considering Ryan had only joined us a few days before! We played a good selection off 'Under A New Sun' with a few classics from 'Kartika' and 'Sombre Light'. Overall the show went well, had some great response to the new martial. So with that in the bag we wrapped up the night with a nice party with some good friends. Perfect.

Newcastle followed with nothing to exciting to report, then we made our way through the night straight back to Melbourne to get some rest before we pick it all up again this week.

On the Road, first stop Canberra

After 7-8 hours on the road we hit Canberra, we caught up with former bass player James Hunt who lives there with his family, it is always great to see him. So after some mix ups and tense moments with crew at the venue everything settled down, we managed a sound check and things were looking. It was Ryans first show last night, and we are happy to say he did well. As the crowd was not so big it was a fairly relaxed vibe, which I think was good for his show, those that were there were loyal to the cause which always leaves us wanting to put on a good show, which I think we did. It was a bit of a hit an' run as we decided to push on another three hours to Sydney after the show. After some sleep, we are ready for round 2.

'Under A New Sun' touring begins!

After a fantastic album launch at the East Brunswick club in Melbourne, we were looking forward to the rest of the tour to say the least. Great energy, great crowd, we were playing well. But it was not to be that simple, later that night Marty was loading his drums into his van and his drum rack fell on his hand, he broke a bone in his hand. Unfortunately it is bad enough that he cannot play for 2 months and he requires surgery. This left all three of us in a difficult situation to say the least!

So with the tour underway what would we do? Cancel the rest of our first tour of Australia to support 'Under A New Sun' and focus on getting ourselves in shape for the Japanese tour or do we continue on, get a session drummer and get on with the job at hand?

After much debate and soul searching we decided to keep the show on the road! Next was the job to find a drummer at short notice that could do the job and do it quickly. We called a few people but everyone was booked up or to expensive at such sort notice, then it occurred to us to contact original The Eternal drummer Ryan Buesnel and see if he was interested in filling our empty drum stool.

Lucky for us Ryan was keen and threw himself into the big job of learning our set at one weeks notice, getting his head around some of the technical elements of running our backing keyboard tracks and various other things that Marty takes care of.

Moving forward to right now, Ryan arrived yesterday, spent the night going through everything with Marty and we threw ourselves into rehearsal today. We are happy and relieved to say Ryan is doing a fantastic job and the show can go on. With one more rehearsal tomorrow and 3 shows this week this has been a difficult few weeks to say the least but with a Japanese tour in sight and our first trip to NZ we think its worth pushing forward and using this chance to throw Ryan in the deep end to say the least!

Its not every day you get to see your current drummer teaching your previous drummer how to play the songs for your current tour so its been an interesting few days. Also not seeing Ryan for 6 years, it has been an interesting chance to reflect on some of the things the band have done, we enjoying going through some old video and getting the vibe for the whole thing again. I think keeping it all in the family is a great thing for fans of the band and a rare chance to see us play with an important person from our past, the original drummer of the band!

Of course Marty being out for two months is heart breaking, he is a huge part of this band, but we can keep in sight that its only a few months in the bigger scheme of things and that we will be rocking together again before we know it. So at the end of the day, the three of us are very grateful to Ryan for stepping in and Dave and myself are very happy to get the band back on the road & share some new music that we have been working so hard on.

So on that note, it all begins again. Australia, New Zealand & Japan, here we come, we are ready to give you all we have. First up is Canberra, Sydney & Newcastle this weekend! Lets do it!!!!!