Return of THE FEAR!

[Emphyrio]

I think since having calmed down the last coupla years, I can truly appreciate this thread more. Jesus!

[Thanatos]

I think it was 2018 when Malthusian set of for Łodz to play a headline gig there. I ain't a fan of flying but I'm usually grand. The nerves got the better of me that morning in the airport though and I had arrived a bit before Matt and Pauric. Johnny was on tour with Conan so was flying in from wherever he was to meet us at the venue that afternoon. 

I grab a pint and fairly inhale it and am on my second pint when the lads arrive.  Paudi gets a scoop in and Matt is off the sauce that weekend.  Grand job. I proceed to lash into another four or five pints before we get on the plane.  Naturally,  I'm half scuttered and a bit as we take off.  Perfecto.

When we reach cruising altitude the trolly arrives and as had become something of a routine on flights with Malthusian I order 2 Gins and 1 Tonic. Matt says,  you might as well get 4G 2T in now to save the dude coming back around.  Makes sense.  I tell the steward to double it.  He gets a bit confused in the transaction and ends up giving me the lot for half the price.  Matt has willpower but this is an opportunity too good to pass up on.  He orders the same and somehow gets it for the same price! Poor ol P in the row behind gets stung for the full whack, but so what,  the lads are officially ON IT!

I think I ended up ordering the same again but to be honest I can't really remember anything after that round and the next thing I recall is being in the venue.  There are a few hours missing in between.

Johnny lands in to the venue and the three amigos are unable to stand.  He is on tour with a professional band so has been well behaved and just sees the three lads in ribbons and thinks,  what the fuck are we going to do now.

It's all blurry but I remember we get up onstage,  my hands pretty much have stopped working so I turn around to Johnny before we begin to tell him that if I forget a riff I'll just hammer away on E minor and pretend to play stuff with my fretboard hand.  He goes,  Andy you thick cunt,  this is the sound check! We aren't on for five hours!

Happy days.  We run through some kind of a check and I fuck off back stage to crash.  Problem solved. 

I wake up three or four hours later still completely gimped.  Fuck.  We get onstage and it's a haze but I thought I was getting away with it.  At some stage I realise the music has stopped and I look around.  Johnny and Matt are slapping the heads off each other across the drum kit.  Somehow we continue but Matt fucks his guitar down and walks offstage.  In my head at least I'm still keeping the show on the road.  Fuck knows what I'm doing to the guitar at this stage but Matt reappears and unwinds his mic, falls over and starts shouting abuse at the crowd while they all start booing and giving us the finger.

We take our bow.  Łodz, there will be no encore!

The lads who put the gig on think it's the most fucking rock n roll thing they've ever seen and continue to ply us with more booze and somewhere along the way,  acting the cunt on the cobbled dance floor I break my fucking ankle!

A month later we meet up in my gaff to listen to a mix of the album and make notes when Matt and Paudi fill me in on the rest of the plane journey.  Apparently as we were disembarking I tried to bum a smoke off some giant Polish dude and somehow ended up trying you square up to him! They said he was three times my size and would have killed me instantly.  I fell on my hole and they are picking me up when they realise there are a bunch of fucking Polish soldiers standing there watching the entire fiasco.  How I wasn't either deported or murdered I don't know.

I still get the willies when I think about that weekend.

A drunk Andy story reminds me of that Hells Pleasure (2011?) where a pile of us got the train from Berlin to Poßneck. I think by the time we got the last connecting train you were well and truly gimped. Wandering though the carriage, sitting with random families on the train asking what their favourite black metal album was and the likes. I think a few of us had to pull you away several times from a series of concerned and/or bemused German people doing their best to be polite.

We get off the train and you could barely stand - I think I still have a sequence of pics of somewhere of you trying to climb out of a grass verge you fell into just after leaving the station at Poßneck.

I eventually convince you to go with Scottish Graeme and the Grave Miasma guys cos your in the same hotel as them.

About a short while later I start to get a panicked sequence of texts from Graeme. Starts with you disappearing while they go to the supermarket to get booze, only to discover you asleep in some old ladies garden nearby. They try to move you but are being belligerent and refusing to move. Old lady freaks out and calles an ambulance. Graeme then freaks out thinking you're going to wind up with a large bill for the privilege a lift to hospital. Luckily they manage to get you moving and off to the camp site.

From what I also remember you'd arsed up your flights home too and the only viable way to make it was to leave at about 21:00 on the Saturday?

Plenty of funny anecdotes from those HP/HOA trips.

[Caomhaoin]

This is more a story about 'should've had the fear but didn't' from 2003.

We were heading down to Cape Clear from Cork for New Year's Eve, which at the time (no idea now) has two boozers, a hostel or two and a handful of houses.

I got to the bus station on time, and the other two who were heading with turned up late, sending me abusive messages for not 'holding the bus' (normal Bus Éireann service like). So I went down via Skibereen and Baltimore. They had to wait three hours for the next bus, so they hit the early house, got take away cans and arrived at the island around 5 or 6 in the evening absolutely cunted. I met them at the wharf and they got off the boat still shouting about 'not holding the bus' and trying to throw me into the sea.

Later, one of them took his shoes off in the puband put his feet up on the table, knocking shit all over the place with his dirty socks, so the owner came down and asked him to get them down. Just a disaster, slobbering and talking gobbledegook. After a few more pints, he seemed to just ghost away, and after a while we got mildly worried, as cape clear had no lighting whatsoever bar from the pubs, and it'd be handy to end up in the water if you went walking at night after a few scoops. Keep in mind this lad was after a few dozen.

We spent a while outside looking for him, and decided to head back towards the pub in case he'd come back. It turned out he hadn't left. The owners son had by the arm shaking him and shouting at him outside, him just a dishevelled mess, and very unsure on his feet. After realising he was 'with us' he informed me that he had wandered in behind the bar, wandered upstairs into the living quarters and sat down beside this fellas granny who was watching the soaps, this guy 'looking for the remote'🤣.

'He's nearly given my granny a stroke, she's 88!'

Next day I was puking my ring up over the side of the boat home, this guy just laughing and drinking a can, not an ounce of remorse or shame. He was 19 or 20 though. Add fifteen years to that and the same experience would drive you to just stay on a few days in a cave, wallowing in it.

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

'looking for the remote'

[Eoin McLove]

I think it was 2018 when Malthusian set of for Łodz to play a headline gig there. I ain't a fan of flying but I'm usually grand. The nerves got the better of me that morning in the airport though and I had arrived a bit before Matt and Pauric. Johnny was on tour with Conan so was flying in from wherever he was to meet us at the venue that afternoon. 

I grab a pint and fairly inhale it and am on my second pint when the lads arrive.  Paudi gets a scoop in and Matt is off the sauce that weekend.  Grand job. I proceed to lash into another four or five pints before we get on the plane.  Naturally,  I'm half scuttered and a bit as we take off.  Perfecto.

When we reach cruising altitude the trolly arrives and as had become something of a routine on flights with Malthusian I order 2 Gins and 1 Tonic. Matt says,  you might as well get 4G 2T in now to save the dude coming back around.  Makes sense.  I tell the steward to double it.  He gets a bit confused in the transaction and ends up giving me the lot for half the price.  Matt has willpower but this is an opportunity too good to pass up on.  He orders the same and somehow gets it for the same price! Poor ol P in the row behind gets stung for the full whack, but so what,  the lads are officially ON IT!

I think I ended up ordering the same again but to be honest I can't really remember anything after that round and the next thing I recall is being in the venue.  There are a few hours missing in between.

Johnny lands in to the venue and the three amigos are unable to stand.  He is on tour with a professional band so has been well behaved and just sees the three lads in ribbons and thinks,  what the fuck are we going to do now.

It's all blurry but I remember we get up onstage,  my hands pretty much have stopped working so I turn around to Johnny before we begin to tell him that if I forget a riff I'll just hammer away on E minor and pretend to play stuff with my fretboard hand.  He goes,  Andy you thick cunt,  this is the sound check! We aren't on for five hours!

Happy days.  We run through some kind of a check and I fuck off back stage to crash.  Problem solved. 

I wake up three or four hours later still completely gimped.  Fuck.  We get onstage and it's a haze but I thought I was getting away with it.  At some stage I realise the music has stopped and I look around.  Johnny and Matt are slapping the heads off each other across the drum kit.  Somehow we continue but Matt fucks his guitar down and walks offstage.  In my head at least I'm still keeping the show on the road.  Fuck knows what I'm doing to the guitar at this stage but Matt reappears and unwinds his mic, falls over and starts shouting abuse at the crowd while they all start booing and giving us the finger.

We take our bow.  Łodz, there will be no encore!

The lads who put the gig on think it's the most fucking rock n roll thing they've ever seen and continue to ply us with more booze and somewhere along the way,  acting the cunt on the cobbled dance floor I break my fucking ankle!

A month later we meet up in my gaff to listen to a mix of the album and make notes when Matt and Paudi fill me in on the rest of the plane journey.  Apparently as we were disembarking I tried to bum a smoke off some giant Polish dude and somehow ended up trying you square up to him! They said he was three times my size and would have killed me instantly.  I fell on my hole and they are picking me up when they realise there are a bunch of fucking Polish soldiers standing there watching the entire fiasco.  How I wasn't either deported or murdered I don't know.

I still get the willies when I think about that weekend.

A drunk Andy story reminds me of that Hells Pleasure (2011?) where a pile of us got the train from Berlin to Poßneck. I think by the time we got the last connecting train you were well and truly gimped. Wandering though the carriage, sitting with random families on the train asking what their favourite black metal album was and the likes. I think a few of us had to pull you away several times from a series of concerned and/or bemused German people doing their best to be polite.

We get off the train and you could barely stand - I think I still have a sequence of pics of somewhere of you trying to climb out of a grass verge you fell into just after leaving the station at Poßneck.

I eventually convince you to go with Scottish Graeme and the Grave Miasma guys cos your in the same hotel as them.

About a short while later I start to get a panicked sequence of texts from Graeme. Starts with you disappearing while they go to the supermarket to get booze, only to discover you asleep in some old ladies garden nearby. They try to move you but are being belligerent and refusing to move. Old lady freaks out and calles an ambulance. Graeme then freaks out thinking you're going to wind up with a large bill for the privilege a lift to hospital. Luckily they manage to get you moving and off to the camp site.

From what I also remember you'd arsed up your flights home too and the only viable way to make it was to leave at about 21:00 on the Saturday?

Plenty of funny anecdotes from those HP/HOA trips.

I remember waking up in a half erected tent thinking I had missed the entire weekend.  It was around seven o'clock on the first evening  fucking hell, I'm glad those days are behind me and that I somehow came through those sessions alive.

[astfgyl]

Abbath would be proud of you

[Scáthach]

This will be a little bit non-linear butsurelookit.
It was probably between 2000 - 2002 all this happened. Hanging around Dublin City centre with some friends (about 5 or 6 of us), with not much money. We bought some homemade vodka / poteen off this guy who alleges he was ex Russian mafia. He sold it at 7 quid for a 1.5 litre mineral bottle full, so we got 3. It had little brown black specks and orange peel floating in it. Duly armed we went to a friend's place on Aston Quay who had also managed to smuggle some Amsterdam weed back home. So we start pouring out some glasses of this filth and I'm throwing them in like normal shots, meanwhile my mates are grinning and giving me lots of encouragement. It was my first time drinking it and I'm starting to get a sinking feeling as they're all just sipping.

---- Scene Missing - - - -

I wake up face down in bed at home, still drunk the next morning, trousers torn right across both legs and both knees with big gashes and caked in blood. My last memory was sitting on the floor of my mates flat singing pogues songs, and a hazy memory of a weird dream, where my older brother Dave had moved into the house a few doors down from ours.
I shambles down to the kitchen to look for water and coffee where my step father was, and he just starts laughing at me and says "are ya alright?", (fear level 1) has kicked in.
He tells me that my neighbours knocked on the door late last night saying I was banging on their door, shouting to be let in. My parents had to grab an arm each, drag me back to the house, up the stairs and throw me onto the bed. Fucking mortified! Anyway, I tidy myself up, shower off the blood have some coffee and head in to work still drunk. I'm alone there for the first 4 hours so not so bad.

Heading back home that afternoon, and as I'm walking up the main road of my estate a white van stops and the window rolls down. (Fear levels rising). "You alright?", whodafuk is this I'm thinking. "yeah I'm alright, are you?". "ya weren't fucking alright last night!" Shit, (fear levels spiralling).
"What!? Sorry, who are you?"
" I'm Dave, from number 6,you were in bits last night knocking on my door, ya kept asking me when did I move in and trying to push past me into the gaff. The lads in work think you're a hero, we're ya on drugs?" "No, no, just vodka from a bath tub"
"Yr bleeding gas, anyway, gowom!", and off he goes. I slunk back home, then the 'dream' starts to make sense. It wasn't a fucking dream, I can vaguely remember it now.

I still am somewhat concerned about what transpired from my mates flat to home (45-60 minute bus journey on a good day).
About a week later I run into another friend I thought I hadn't seen in a couple of weeks, also with that "state of you" look on his face. Turns out he saw me shambling around the bus stop in town on that night and decided to be a good samaritan. He got off at my stop (despite living another 15 minutes away). He said I insisted I was fine to walk home so he walked me some of the way. I left him at the edge of the green. He said he stayed to watch me stumble across the green and shamble straight into the nearest knee high wall and over it into the garden. So that's where the knee gashes came from. Fuck! The fear returns.

If I had let him walk me all the way home I could probably have avoided the other mess too. I never drank bath tub vodka again! 😬😵

[Emphyrio]

Actually felt the fear on that one 😂.

Not exactly fear, just stupid drunk habit. In my 20s while saving for a mortgage and staying with the parents, I used get the notion that I was Gordon Ramsay or the like. I thought it a great idea to make the most mental concoctions when I'd get home around 3 o clock. Now I'd put leftover potatoes, ham, eggs, flour and basically anything near at hand, add a hape of herbs and spices. Now depending on the consistency I'd either think it would work great as a savoury pancakes, a soup or if it was very thick maybe a version of a potato cake.

Naturally this was never once successful, I might have a bit or 2 and berate my self that it maybe lacked cumin or there was too much oregano. I'd leave this "batter" in a big bowl, also telling myself I could salvage it the next morning. Only to wake up the next day after my parents had eaten and left this bowl of congealed mess on the workshop, as if expecting me to make use of it. Occasionally , the night before, I'd even leave a note to myself with a note how to improve it.

Also in those dark days I suspect they may have caught me at myself to those shitty German sexline ads on the likes of RTL and Sat Eins at 4 in the morning.

[Emphyrio]

Once on, what we'd have considered a fairly typical night out, walking home with one of the lads who lived only around the corner. He stopped to sit down about 100 yards from either of our houses. Being a pillar of sense, I continued the last stretch. Probably in a mad fit to make savour pancakes.

Two days later, yer man texts me. I asked if he was as dying as me the day before. He said he was. After taking that break on the walk home, he fell asleep outside someone's house. Either an ambulance drove past or a neighbour called one cos he was taken to the hospital and got his stomach pumped. And this was only a typical night's drinking at the time. He must have just got up really early that day or something.

[open face surgery]

A month later we meet up in my gaff to listen to a mix of the album and make notes when Matt and Paudi fill me in on the rest of the plane journey.  Apparently as we were disembarking I tried to bum a smoke off some giant Polish dude and somehow ended up trying you square up to him! They said he was three times my size and would have killed me instantly.  I fell on my hole and they are picking me up when they realise there are a bunch of fucking Polish soldiers standing there watching the entire fiasco.  How I wasn't either deported or murdered I don't know.

3 months later and it was me and Johnny that were out in the house. Johnny, who wasn't even there, was the one that reminded us of the runway incident.

A fuckin mortifying disgrace.

Gig was 2017 so it took 2 years and a return to Poland to get over it. At the first gig the soundman looks at my beers, cracks a smile and goes 'haha. Be careful this time'.

[Eoin McLove]

No way.  We're you back in the same venue?? Memorable might not exactly be the word describe that night under the circumstances but the scar remains!

I remember getting completely paranoid the following morning.  We had crashed in the venue and just drank on once we woke up and they had opened a side door into an alleyway.  In my alcohol induced paranoia I was convinced we were going to be abducted through that door and dissapeared. Dunno if I ever mentioned it or just kept it to myself but I was freaked out. It didn't help that my ankle was swollen twice it's size and I couldn't stand up 

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

I'm sure I probably told this one on the old forum, but it's too much of a classic to pass up for anyone who may have missed it:

I'm about 24 and one of the lads - a bit older than me, and one of the guys from the group I'm least close to, but the group is the group - is getting married to an American girl so we're all invited along. Only, trying to cut down costs here and there, they've invited all of us to the church, then about half of that to the dinner at the hotel, and then all the rest of us up to join them in the evening for the shindig. Grand.

Lovely late morning mass; one of the lads on the church organ accompanies one of the American cousins as she sings, everyone straining their necks up towards the gallery to see the golden-curled source of the melodious voice. Stained-glass windows, gothic architecture, coloured light; she looks like an angel. "What's the status of this American cousin?" all the lads begin to whisper.

Mass ends and those not on the dinner list are going to hit the pub for lunch and as many pints as time will allow until the call comes for everyone to head to the hotel. But I'm broke, like flat broke, at the time; no way I can afford pub lunch plus an afternoon's worth of pints, and I don't want to ask anyone to spot me 'cos I don't know when I'll be able to get them back. So I hatch a simple plan; with what little money I have, I'll go to the offie, buy a shoulder of Jameson, go home and grab something to eat for free, and hit up the shoulder over the course of the afternoon so that by the time we can go to the hotel I'm more or less as advanced as everyone who's been drinking at the dinner or at the pub. See, the thing is, I don't have a mother who'd be grand with me sitting at home on my own knocking cans into me, so the idea is to go to the tiny music room I have, doodle away on the guitar and work away on the shoulder on the sly.

Head home, already started on the shoulder on the way. Get lunch and secrete myself away, keep sipping on the shoulder. Knock on the music room door; whiskey into the guitar case. "Are you not at a wedding today?" Explain the story with the pub, the money, and - somewhat out of character, therefore unexpected - my mother gives me some money for the pub and for drinks at the reception. Sound! So I set off down the village towards the pub and polish off the now unneeded shoulder, arrive, sit down, and instantly realize I've been drinking far too fast compared to everyone else (a shoulder of whiskey is the equivalent of how many pints??); they're grand, I'm fucking locked. Still, I have money now! "Pint there please!"

We organize a mini-bus up to the hotel (I mean, I guess we do, I don't really remember), and the reception has just kicked off when we arrive. In we go, and guess what? Free bar. Free bar! My whole initial plan for how not to end up the only dry one of my mates has been rendered unnecessary by the generosity of others! All I know about the reception is that I was messy; I wasn't alone in being messy, but even other people who were messy were looking down on my messiness. The night carries on and eventually the coach comes to take everyone back from the hotel. I'm having way too much fun for that so I strategically miss the bus having heard whispers that the bridal suite is fully occupied for an all-nighter with the American cousins, best men, groom's inner circle (which as I said at beginning, I'm not part of). Here's what I actually remember of what came next, in all its disjointed glory:

- We're all sitting round, bottles of silver label JD being passed around, and I'm still fuelling.
- I sit down beside the "angel" cousin and start trying my luck.
- Two of her enormous other cousins move in to protect; I graciously make space for them to sit down and proceed to try to talk to them while also trying to hit on her. I dunno.
- I'm staggering around corridors, not a fucking notion where I am.
- Some staggering later; a ferry, some kind of luxury cruiser, that's where I must be!
- I open a door; machinery, flashing lights and noises. I'm taken aback at first, but of course it must be the engine room.
- I'm on the exterior metal stairs of a fire escape wondering why the cruise ship is so close to land. Maybe we've docked? I should get back inside.
- I'm in a huge dining room, picking up and staring at cutlery and tugging at table cloths.
- I wake up in my bed at home (4 miles away). It's five o'clock in the evening.
- Inner voice instantly says "What the fuck?" So I go online to a forum we used to have with this group of lads to see if any of the stories have started coming in. Going by the fragments in my head, this is not going to be good for me and I'm reckoning the groom may never want to see me again. But this is the fear, I don't know anything for sure. The organ-playing mate, who'd had a room booked at the hotel, is online.
"Chap, I've only just woken up...and at home! Any idea what happened to me last night?"
"You don't know? You don't remember anything?"
"Nah, I think I was staggering about in the hotel a bit, but it's all a blank otherwise."
"Haha, fucking brace yourself! We got in the taxi this morning, driver asks us if we've had a good night, then says, 'Wait til yiz hear about the night one of yer mates had!'" Now imagine the fear as I'm watching this story unfold, line by line, with no idea what's coming next, miles from where I started and about 15 hours since my last memory:

Once I'd been asked to walk off my drunkenness (i.e. kicked out of the bridal suite for being a holy show...though I would have had to walk to Cork and back to get sober by that method!) I was picked up and moved along a couple of times by the night porter who was getting repeated calls to reception about my presence here and there in the corridors, banging walls, falling up against doors, sometimes lying down singing and laughing. The porter's just a young lad though, doesn't really know what to do with me at four in the morning so just hopes I'll fall asleep somewhere and at least be quiet. Eventually though (I presume after the dining room), I end up wandering into the kitchen. The chef in charge of breakfast, a Polish guy, has arrived and the other chef who's supposed to be with him to cater for the wedding party has called in sick. So now, this chef sees me appear in his kitchen at more or less the right time for the morning shift, fully dressed (albeit in a fucking suit!), and decides that I must be the replacement chef who's been sent to help him out. He can't get any sense out of me, but, in a bind, he reckons I must just be both a) hungover and b) foreign (gabbling incoherent anyway). Apparently I'll do, especially since I don't resist when I'm pointed towards the stove. So, brain seemingly just a sponge to suggestion in its current state, I get stuck into trying to cook some breakfast for a hundred people.

In the meantime, the shift manager has arrived and is taking a brief from the night porter who explains that everything was grand except for an AWOL guest he hadn't known what to do with but who he thinks must be asleep somewhere. Shift manager panics, starts running around the hotel just in case I've fallen or collapsed in a vomitous heap where another guest will trip over me. No such luck! He makes to the kitchen where he sees me, in a suit, teetering about, half-dead, at the stove; an enormous insurance claim just waiting to happen. He reefs me out of it, tries to find out what's going on, figures out I don't have a room, figures out I don't have any money, manages to get me to write my address on a piece of paper, then fucks me into the hotel taxi for a free ride home, considering himself lucky I haven't fried my face. Taxi driver says I was still babbling incoherently all the way home, in good spirits, but he had to walk me to the door of my gaff and help me unlock it. I don't know how, but just thank Christ I actually made it into my bedroom and shut the door, since there was just as much chance of me falling asleep on the crapper or in the bath tbh!

And the only reason I know any of this is because my mates had the same driver home later on. Haha, what a tragic waste of a yarn it almost all was!

Anyway, that's the story of how I almost became a chef in a fancy hotel/severe burn victim.

[Juggz]

 

[Paul keohane]

  haha fuckin hell! amazing!

[Ollkiller]

That's fantastic.