Meltface Holiday Sale! Free U.S. Shipping Till Dec 9th!

Hey there, Lovely Meltface Supporters! We've just made all the new Ascent of Everest European Fall Tour stuff availible on the meltstore! We also have some special holiday deals in the spirt of commercemas we're trying to unload some stuff to pay our bills from tour. soooo here we go!

FREE U.S. SHIPPING Till DEC 9th!

 First 15 Orders Gets a Free Copy of Ascent of Everest\Crippled Black Conartists Limited Edition Tour Poster!

First 5 LP Orders Come with a Free Ascent of Everest Tote Bag!

 
All Kinds of NEW Ascent of Everest Gear Including Hoodies, 2 New Shirts, BagsBagsbags and of course all our fine recordings!

thanks again for listening and for your support!

Full Route of Fall 2011 European Tour

Here is the route we took on the tour that included nearly 8,000 km!  Notice the bit of zig-zag-ing we did.  Obviously some of the drives were BRUTALZZZ, however, we got to see plenty of beautiful country-side, big cities, small cities, Fargo-esque villages, stray dogs, and of course the sexy Alps! (*See previous posts for mountain n00ds!1!!11)  Shows were played, fun was had, acquaintances were established, and The Ascent of Everest successfully toured "the shit out of" Europe! Congrats team.

Serbia, Belgrade @ KC Grad

why are we in serbia jon asks?

well i'll tell you, it's to play a very fine show at a great venue and make some of that fabulous monopoly money!

serbia has a vibe i really can't put my finger on. the city seems very self sufficient in a way. there culture is vibrant and they don't need or want anyone to help them sustain it which is so cool, there's very little american influence on anything. and it's not dirty, which is great for a change... but then again we were there for a very short while as i wish i could have taken in more with the exception of the serbian border patrol...

Bucharest Romania - Kulturehaus

some things about romania:

there is no highway from cluj to bucharest you have to drive on pretty miserable roads through 3rd world towns that try to extort money out of you with constantly changing speeds. it's enough to drive you INSANE... it also takes forever

house colors popular in romania - fusha, aztec, flesh, sandy khaki, sherbert green, puke, even more fusha. apparently the population is colorblind or has no gay people or something...

aparently romanian women are the most beautiful in europe BUT at age 40 they all magically transform into ageless babushcas, it's like draculas curse or something

32 stray dogs to every person per capita. i can't overstate the amount of roving dogs enough

the romanians love us so much they named the water after devin.i think i ate about 16 peice of pizza, staaaaarving.

UK solo performer TEN opens up with badass set featuring ambient washes, tasteful looping and tape machines.

mental architects from bulgaria playing thier first show in romania. kinda slayed, really good with the looping thing.

Cluj-Napoca Romania

how does one get to romania? thru hungry namely by taking the AU TO BAUN

the sunrises on solar fields in hungry after a brutal all night drive.

early morning we get a brief tour of budapest

so now we know what the 50 euro cents pays for everytime we use the bathroom. water that doesn't kill you, toliets not covered in filth, no fear of highway robbery....

we're not in kansas anymore

though this could have been from any point in tour i believe it happen on this trek

and so we chilled by this bombed out church (lots of stuff in romania looks bombed out) waiting to figure out where we could crash for a bit. right as we were entering cluj we were informed that the show was no longer happening. quite disappointing as i was expecting to be greeted like kings by legions of beautiful fans after our harrowing drive.

wrong turn not a good idea as the one peice of advice we got was to NOT go into the suburbs.

finally we ended up splitting up between the promoters brother and his friends house. they put us up and fed us awesome fries and we watched the weird al movie UHF and tried not to feel to sorry for ourselves. some kind of metaphore in there... what's in the romanian box... absolutley nothing STUPID! you so STUPID!

there's a hilarious story about corey and jeff almost freezing to death on the street... jean saves the day again.

Austria, Innsbruck - Sunday Smile Festival

i guess after every super long drive the first thing i do is use the bathroom and take pictures of it, hopefully this is the end of that trend... but seriously how adorable are these WC signs?

Audiocaeneati was pretty amazing, cool drums, original songs and really progressive guitar tones. and you know i love my out there guitar tones.

codes in the clouds were rad i wish we could have stuck around for their whole set yet we had to start driving to romania on a grueling overnight drive and that's where our story gets really interesting... and in typical aoe fashion it'll also be really tragic.... so stay tuned.

Slovenia, Ljubljana

we stayed at quite the interesting hostel in dornbirn DE the night before and in addition to having like 5 oddly laidout levels there was this.....

on the way to ljubljana thru the swiss alps was pretty much like a mountain photoshoot... there was also a castle. work it mountains, work that epicness. woooo!

nice of Geeeeeummm to take this swell picture of us at the rest stop...

no YOU'RE loosing it (caption contest #whatevs)

thru the mountain!

more mountains!!!! majesty awe and horror. the view really never got old.

arrival at the venue, totally punk bathroom. punk is not dead in europe btw. and these some of these folk make our crusts look like frat boys.

the promoters beard dread was at least as long as this dudes hair.

the sound restriction in switzerland was 100db average over an hour... so this was funny. also why are all the sound boards in europe awesome.. allen and heath, midas, vintage yamahas the works everytime. american take note, sell your crap powered mixer and put one of these babys on layaway.

St. Gallen, Switzerland with ENVY

on the way to switzerland from germany and the weather is looking bad, then even worse

then worse, photoshoot during the yellow snow break...

corey's slice of home at the BK in the form of an extra long chili cheese burger... gwahhhh

and the show of course was amazing. great venue, great promoter, great crowd... lots of swiss chocolates and meeting up with our awesome swiss friends. can't say enough awesome things about it. it's also on this leg of our journey that where Guillaume Oz enters the story. A audio engineer from France who is traveling all thru europe on foot going to see awesome shows on what loosely translates as a "post-rock pilgramage" though it includes such amazing bands as sunn, aun, and haushka just to name a few of the 50ish bands he was planning on seeing including us. upon a little bit of convincing of band mates we decide to take him with us to innsbruck by way of slovania. photocredits for all the good photos go to him for the next little bit till we part ways. someone other then me should follow up and put a picture of us all together here....

Cologne, DE DAY OFFFFFFFFF

weeeeee only day off of tour, lets go to church!

SUPERWHOLESOME YAH!

jeff in his josh stephens pose next to... well just look at it that creepy priest in same come hither pose with littleboy statue. sadly right as we're getting the settings right to get a truely fantastic picture...

this lady busts in on the scene and commenses lecturing jeff (in front of large group of young students trying very hard to contain thier laughter) on how the bishop in the statue was martyred and how he this and that and blah and blah.

metal devin decries it's time for shopping! or at least window shopping because we have no money. let's go!

just a stones throw from church of christ the alter of commerce is ready for your worship!

at the lego store we rediscover our inner legomaniacs!

wo ist die bahnhof? oh right here.... good times, meeting up with friends gonna get some R&R in

goodnight!

Update on Monday, November 7, 2011 at 12:54AM by devin

we also learned about these and so many other euro dance classics

Oberhausen DE @ Druckluft

au - to - baun (fun fun fun auf der autobaun)

(explicit language warning for those of you that are at work, your parents house, or old\sheltered)

backstage entrance at the druckluft, it's a huge squat in a pretty industrial part of town. the whole thing is covered in epic graffiti murals and there are multiple rooms and bars and performance areas thruout the compound. pretty intense but super cool all the same.

soundcheckin

tonight is the only night where we don't have a long drive and another show waiting for us at 8 am the next morning so as far as we're concerned tonight  getting Oberhausen = getting Super Housed! We're really needing some R&R for sure at this point

i think this band went to my high schoolthis drink is roughly translated as "the oil spill" and it looks like an oil slick on water. i think it's like jagermeister and a clear licorice schnappes like thing... corey learned how to make them and made this one for devin

our new german friends were very insistant that we all try these little does devin know that it supposed to be done in a shot glass not a juice cup and it's about to feel like pouring sweet sticky oil all down your throat and chest...

prost!

tetris masters expertly fitting all the gear in the van with maximum efficiency!

staying quiet and respectful at the still night hostel....