Getting up at 6 am and having to drive more than 5 hours from Stuttgart to Cologne is no fun on the crowded Autobahn. Also it doesn't help if it's the morning after a rock show with Valient Thorr, Skew Siskin, Overkill and Motörhead and all the beer that comes with an occasion like this.

Upon arrival in Cologne, trusting the state of the art 21st century digital navigation device leading Voiden of Valient Thorr and I, we ended up going to a completely wrong address. There was an identical address with the same same zip code...It wouldn't display any other options. Thank you for nothing GPS! [Ed. - for the record, I think it was the hang over, not the GPS.]

Hurling the malfunctional sextant over the railing, we had to go back to our built in, rudimentary navigation skills, aka, just ask somebody, which actually worked and got us to the venue within 10 min.

In retrospective, that was a lot like what the Birds of Avalon and Year Long Disaster gig was like for me. Toss all that high tech digital crap overboard and play some howling and buzzing rock and roll!

The venue started to fill slowly, that very same night there were 4 more rock shows going down in Cologne, including the sold out show with Motörhead and Valient Thorr.

However, when Birds Of Avalon finally went on stage there was already a good crowd, and people were still continuing to arrive. Birds Of Avalon kicked things off with 'Bicentennial Baby', and their sound blew the crowd away on the first chord. People who had never heard them before started nodding and smiling, and by the time the band got to "Horse Called Dust' they had managed to get the entire audience going, including those in the back.

After a short break it was finally time for Year long Disaster to knock down what the Birds had set up. A real one-two rock n' roll two punch combo.

It's not often you see a three piece create such a dense atmosphere of pure rock sound.

It's definitely not something Cologne audiences witness very much. Their set was flawless, I'm not sure if Rich actually ever even looked at his bass during the entire show. Leading the trio was Daniel Davies, who I remembered from earlier in the day as a rather pale, mellow guy with a big coat, but now on stage he had completely transformed himself. There was nothing mellow about him, he howled with one rough but strangely articulate voice and made his guitar wail in a way that is hard to explain.

My best advice is to go witness it yourself.

The next day both bands persued their individual paths across europe and I had to part for Munich. Again a 6 hour drive with a hangover, but it didn't matter because this time the pounding in my head was last night's show being played over and over again.

-Arne
Photos courtesy of Micha Fluck and Lars Jansen