A rough tour diary with some phone-camera pics.

Thursday night
Defamer gather for a final run through the set at the practice room in preparation for our first live shows since the January launches. The set consisted of six songs:
Chasm
Chorus of Whispers
The Inverse Dominion
The Black Obscene
The End is His
Abysmal Misery

Which only takes about 30 minutes to run through, and our plan was to pack up the gear and get back home for a relaxed night in along with the other dudes who were coming on tour (mothhop (lukas), Dale, Bastion (jimmy) and Matty (who replaced Lochlan, who dropped out like the night before tour)) with a few beers. As always with Defamer, we got distracted by making beer bongs and drinking slabs of beer. Could've happened to anyone, but it always happens to us:


We went back to our place and continued drinking a mixture of Coopers, Old, Carlton Black and Rum and Sam began pissing in strange places because he has the bladder of a female infant. The toilet to our house is literally 5 steps from where this photo was taken, but when Sam's gotta go, Sam's gotta go:


Geeks discovered (later) that making sandwiches for tour should not be done drunk because strange concoctions like peanut butter, mushrooms, avocado, tomato and chickens sound like a great idea.
After destroying just about all the booze we had, everyone fell asleep in random places around the house until our bus driver Deano (possibly one of the most amazing dudes in the world, every band everywhere should tour with that guy) showed up at 5am to get us on our merry way.

Friday
In the early grey light of the dawn we transferred our gear from the ute to Deano's gear storage section, rubbing bleary eyes and lamenting that we'd drank all our morning beers the night before, thus meaning that it would be a couple of hours until an open bottle-o could replenish our supply.
Away down the highway we went, some choosing to pass back out into oblivion, some choosing to chat quietly (still slurring) and others watched a horrible animated Wonder Woman movie on Deano's in-bus entertainment system. The movie had so much opportunity for animated porn, but chose instead to be all righteous and shit.

The entertainment level picked up when Family Guy and Black Books episodes were chosen for viewing purposes, and spirits rose as we came near to Ballina, and more importantly, the first open Bottle-O's of the day.
Piling out of the bus and running for either the nearest tree for relief or the closest door to the bottle-O came the tour-parti...but getting off the bus was also a relief to escape Dale Williams anus emissions. The stench that clogged the nasal passages every 20 minutes on Friday due that blokes consumption of chicken nuggets, bacon, beef and dark ale beers the night before was truly horrifying. It smelt like decaying meat mixed with a dash of baby vomit and caused the entire bus to hang their heads out the windows like dogs on several occasions.

Restocked on Tooheys Old tallies and Jack Daniel cans, the tour took off once again....and so did Sam's bladder:

Who was forced to make repeated use of Ice Coffee and Gatorade bottles so that we weren't stopping every twenty minutes.
Smashing through the beers and Jacks we tried to make up some lost time due to all the roadworks, although we did send a quick text to Gamaliel attempting to organise a pub-lunch-show in Coffs harbour for Defamer/Oracle of the Void but unfortunately work commitments got in the way.
We continued on our merry way, with Deano's hat capturing the mood with its gaiety:


Pulling into the Lewisham about two hours later than desired we rushed to get the gear inside and then get over to the hotel to check in, causing most of us to only catch a couple of songs from Sword Towards Self set (sorry guys!), but were in the venue to watch Infinitum bring their crushing tones to the slowly building Sydney crowd.
Daemon Foetal Harvest were next and played an awesome set, haven't seen them since they were in Brisbane last and they played very tight.."Abducted and Compacted' is such a sick song.
Defamer played next, debuting a new song along with five songs from the recent album...had a ball as usual.
Rookwood played next and simply owned the night (as they do every live show!). A good strong crowd witnessed their first Sydney show and definitely seemed very appreciative.
Many thanks to Dan for doing his best to work with an obviously under-powered PA, I think he did a great job.

After all the bands were done it was time to get serious about drinking once again, we were aided by Lukas winning some good cash on the Pokies, thus meaning we could drink the venue out of Tooheys Old and Jack Daniel cans. Once the venue kicked us out the tour-party made its way back to the hotel along with Aaron of Bane of Isildur and the always charming Razakel (byron of OoTV/the internet) to drink until the early hours:


Cheers to all the Sydney folk who made it out to the show, hope to see you again soon.

Saturday
Affording to sleep in, we jumped on the bus around lunchtime for the Sydney-Canberra leg of the tour. After stopping in to the closest bottle-o for resupplies we headed off and made good time down to the nations capital.
Getting pretty drunk we decided to christen Deano's bus, and even made a sign using a stolen towel from the hotel:


Matt (pictured above) had an unfortunate need to defecate on a stretch of road that seemed to be void of truck/rest stops with toilets. After holding on as long as possible, the lil' trooper decided to hell with it, and relieved himself in a field with a bus full of hooligans snapping shots and shouting many witticisms.
Relieved and vowing to party-on, Matt made it back on the bus and we headed off again......only to see this literally right around the corner:

....a nice pit stop complete with toilet and running water in the middle of nowhere.

Arriving in Canberra we did what everyone does when in that part of Australia....went looking for fireworks and porn. Being that we like loud things, fireworks was first on the agenda...but alas due to some bullshit legislation or something the fireworks stores are shut till June. So porn it was to be, as demonstrated by Sam, who spent an enjoyable half hour showing random butt plug/dildo shots to many unfortunate Canberrarian motorists:


After checking into the backpackers we headed to The Basement, which is a great little venue...would look even better with more people in it. Huge PA, great lights and a sensational green room makes for a very comfortable gigging experience. The bands all combined with the 40-ish Canberra punters to make sure theres a decent crowd for all the bands who (imo) played better than the night before...Infinitum/DFH were simply crushing this night!
As with all final nights of tours, epic alcohol consumption took place in the venue, then in the carpark behind the venue and then back at the hotel. A late night stop at the only open McDonalds in Canberra nearly resulted in a punch-on with a peroxided-metro-bogan fuckwit, but thats to be expected from such people.

As with Sydney, thanks to the Canberra people who made it out....there's hopefully already some talk of returning sometime in the near future.

Sunday

Nothing really to report from this day. Jimmy made an early escape to the airport for a quick flight home as opposed to the 18 hour trip ahead of the rest of us, except Byron who was let out in Newcastle. Many movies and many more beers saw us not suffer to greatly from cabin fever to make it back to Brisbane safely around 1am.

Cheers to the punters, the sound dudes, the amazing other bands on the tour with us and Deano, the most fun bus driver ever to live.