Saturday 6th of November @ the Packhorse in Leeds

Start of the set. Weight Of The World & Controlled. Joep (our old bassplayer) is filming.

When we arrived there was no PA and it wasn’t even sure the show was still happening. Welcome to the UK haha. Nah, Callum did great and fixed it. Luckily it went on as it was a good show. Small room, just like we love it. Ark Of The Covenant played and the place exploded. We were headbanging.

7th of November. Carry The Weight Fest @ Social Chantry Club in Canterbury.

Pictures by Ed Coleman and  Alex Leat.

New song (might change before we record it) + a cover of Leeway’s – Rise And Fall. Joep (our old bassplayer) is filming.

Awesome fest. Great atmosphere all day and great bands were playing. That and cool hang outs with people we don’t see often enough. A fest done, like everything else Carry The Weight is doing at the moment, the right way. Too bad it also meant we had to say goodbye to Never Again. That band was going places.

Wanna see more of Carry The Weight Fest? I’ve uploaded footage of Cold Snap & Never Again to my blog, Some Will Never Know. Apparently there’s a DVD to come out from the fest, keep an eye out for that!

We don’t have any footage of the show in JH Skalul in Lendelede (Belgium) on Friday the 5th of November. There’s this footage from the afterparty though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrPQbh0ip3c. Idiot alert haha.

Want to keep up to date with the footage we upload? Just subscribe to our Youtube channel. Oh and if you have any photo’s or video footage of us, please get in touch. We would love to put it in our archive!

The new 7″ will be released on our trip through the UK with Never Again (14/15/16 May), hope to see you there!

In other news: Pim put up a blog for his zine “Some Will Never Know”, check it out at www.somewillneverknow.org

That’s all for now.

2009

January 2009 started with the return of Joost. As you might know he was off to Taiwan for the last half 0f 2008. Wiser (we hope that is) and a great experience richer he returned to our small town. Quite a bit different from the hectic surroundings he was used to in Taiwan to say the least. He quickly took back his seat behind the drum kit and it was like he never left. To get fully back into gear we decided we would do all the remaining shows in January with Henri. Aside from that it gave us some time to organise a kick-ass goodbye show for Henri. Those shows in January were cool, especially the one in Hamburg at Rota Flora. An amazing venue (and old theater I think?) and Joost was enjoying the show from the crowd (something we don’t see that often haha). So in February Henri played his final show with us in his hometown Boxmeer. Just a small bar filled with friends. It was a blast to say the least. Just check the video below to see the end of the set (some covers and “Into The Distance”):

Between February and June we worked on new songs and played some cool shows like the Shield Showcase @ the Stage in Arnhem, the AZ (another amazing venue!) in Germany with No Turning Back, again @ the Stage with Bitter End and in a town nearby on our friends from Make Them Suffer their releaseshow etc.

In July we were invited by mister Alex (Remember Hoods Up?) to come play 2 dates of the 3 day weekendtour of Cold World in Germany he was organising. It brought us back to the Rota Flora in Hamburg and made us play Essen too. Two totally different places, but both were really cool. Needless to say we had a blast and so did the people visiting these shows (including the one in Rosswein) I think. It was, amongst other things, cool to talk to some people again we haven’t seen for quite some time, to see Cold World 2 nights in a row, to see Dirty Money tearing up the place and No Turning Back showing why they’re so big right now. Good times.

In August it was time for our trip through Europe. Since Joep couldn’t make it to the trip we welcomed back Henri, this time as our bassplayer (dude’s like a local Dave Grohl!). Together with Goran (from Make Them Suffer) who acted as merch-man-roadie-’the-guy-who-you-can-call-names-all-day-and-nightlong’ dude, we set out for a trip that brought us to 5 countries in 6 days. Highlights include playing 3 shows with Trash Talk (Those dudes are c-r-a-z-y. Destroying everything in their way.), playing France again (Always good to see our friends from France. Check out Wank For Peace people!), getting a great welcome in Poland (Kuba, Kasia and co, thanks once again!), visiting Vienna (most beautiful city ever? Good schnitzel too haha) etc. But that whole trip was pretty much one big highlight. You can read all about it in our trip report.

In September Korneel, a Dutch comedian (or something like that) wore one of our shirts on a Dutch improvisation program called “Badgasten“. Cool to see our shirt on national TV.

In the last months of 2009 we played the Some Hardcore Fest in Belgium, featuring an exclusive show by Guns Up! amongst others. A cool location with less people than expected but it was a good day anyway. Our friends from France (Simon and co) made it out to Belgium as well, so it was cool to talk to them again. We also made a little trip to Weisswasser in Eastern Germany together with Strike First. Something we should do more often, always cool to hook up with Emiel and co. I don’t think those Germans knew what the fuck was happening when two groups of Dutch men were screaming at the top of their lungs outside of the venue. No worries, just a small “megabombe” fight as patented by those dudes from Strike First.

To close the year off and to celebrate Joost and me making music for 10 years already we released a 7″ at the end of the year. The tape we self-released at the end of 2008, was pressed on a limited amount of 200 pieces of vinyl by German based “My Fist, Your Face” Records (Thomas is one of the friendliest Germans ever) as the “Feel It EP“. We released it during a short weekend trip in Germany, getting to play Rosswein (and seeing Greyli again who we did meet as the Trash Talk driver during the Euro trip in August, top dude) and the AZ in Aachen again. We need venues like this in the Netherlands people. Damn. We have the Innocent and that’s cool, but Germany is way ahead of us. On this trip we had Rick on bass instead of Joep (who couldn’t make it due to work commitments). He learned our songs in just a week. Dude’s a hero and you’ll be hearing more from him soon without a doubt.

Maybe less interesting, but being the little nerd I am I have to mention it; 2009 was also the year of changes on the web for S&D. In October we started to use this new website (based upon WordPress) and during the year we witnessed the growth of Twitter and Facebook (Myspace is more like a sinking ship at the moment or so it seems). We opened accounts on both and it gave us another cool way to interact with people and give them updates on what we’re up to. Check us out on those social networks if that’s your thing. Follow/join us!

2010

All in all 2009 was good to us once again, let’s hope 2010 will be good too. A short glimp into the future already shows some nice things:

This weekend we start the first day of recording the “Weight Of The World” 7″ for Carry The Weight Records from the UK. We’ll be recording with Nico van Montfort once again. We’re aiming for a release at the end of February / early March. Just in time for our Euro trip in March. This time we’re hitting Belgium, France, Spain and probably Portugal. Keep an eye on our showlist to see if we’re coming close. We can’t wait. In May we’ll do a weekendtrip to the UK and that’s just what already is in the pipelines.

Let’s get this year started. Are you doing a show? Hook us up!