Ghoul are well known for their wild stage shows and insane lyrical content – think a heavy metal version of The Muppet Show meets The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs. In asking the band to chronicle their Brainsqueeze Tour, which featured fellow ragers Municipal Waste, death metal denizens Necrot, and relative neophytes Dead Heat, we at Invisible Oranges knew what we were getting into. Little did we know, however, that it would actually be worse than we expected.
Drummer Digestor provides a vivid retelling of specific events that either happened on the road or at the actual shows themselves. The antics and observations around this massive country of ours really makes you want to traverse the land experience the same highs (and lows) of this epic and self-proclaimed “Tour of the Century”. There were rat filled parking lots, potential career changes involving Peking Duck in Philly, ice cold loadout after ice cold load out, Annie Taylor impersonations at Niagra Falls and a particular breakfast restaurant chain that was met with the same ire as the stomachs of the band members. Digestor was even kind enough to provide a few photos of the tour and shows; the ones that they can remember that is. I attended the Brooklyn date and can confirm everything from that date, the rest of it you’ll need to chime in about. Read on and see below for the harrowing ordeal that was the Brainsqueeze Tour from the eyes and mind of Ghoul.
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What can be said about the 2024 Brainsqueeze Tour that hasn’t been said a hundred times in a hundred TikToks? Plenty, as it turns out. TikToks are generally pretty short, or so I’m told by the 16-year-olds who steal our records. Suffice it to say that a tour with Municipal Waste, Ghoul, Necrot, and Dead Heat was always going to be a banger, but no one could have predicted that it would end up being the TOUR OF THE CENTURY
©*. The following account will skip some shows, but every show was great, and the bands and crew were all awesome on and off the stage.
Start Digestor:
The tour kicked off at Black Cat in Washington, DC, a club known for its impeccable flooring and ironic, rat-filled parking lot. The crowd went nuts, the freaks were flying**, and we spotted Speaker of the House Mike Johnson crowd surfing during the Waste ‘Em All chunk.
In Philadelphia, Dissector and I walked through Chinatown on our way to do an errand and briefly considered quitting music and dedicating our lives to eating Peking Duck. Still considering it, and if we so choose, I promise to give Invisible Oranges the scoop.
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There were lots of notable backstage guests in Brooklyn, which is a borough of New York City. There was a guy from Sick of It All, Parris Mayhew, guys from Black Anvil, the Organ Dealer chaps, Matt Bacon from Instagram and his plus one***. A veritable who’s-that of metal and hardcore. There was also a literal hole-in-the-wall restaurant around the corner that sold Ukrainian sandwiches and other delicacies so good they would make Vladimir Putin plotz. Only in New York (a city near New Jersey)!
All I remember from Boston is Dave Witte kicking two interlopers out of the backstage area in the calmest and most polite manner I have ever witnessed. Protect that man, America. He is one of your best.
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After Boston we took a detour with the Necrot boys and played a show in Portland, Maine, sans Waste and Dead Heat. As it turns out (no doubt lured by the siren song of lobster rolls and crab cakes) the Waste guys and crew came to the show. A wonderful time was had by all, the check cleared, and we enjoyed the coldest loadout ever, because that place is COLD AS FUCK. In fact, I’d like to suggest they use that as their slogan. They can put it on the sign on the way into town. “Now entering Portland. Population 70,000 COLD AS FUCK people. Bring a sweater.”
Did I say Portland was the coldest loadout? HAHAHA, JK ROFL. Next stop was Montreal fucking Canada. After a shockingly easy border crossing we arrived at Foufounes Electriques, one of the premier venues north of the border. Foufs has a crazy stage that’s slightly too small, a little too high, and you have to have the knees of a 25-year-old to climb onto. Luckily I happened to have the knees (and head) of a 25-year-old in my luggage, so the show went off without a hitch. We had the honor of meeting Luc Lemay at the show, a very nice man who has a handshake like an Edwards model HAT4020 40 ton hydraulic press.
London and Buffalo were great, and in between we got to watch our fabulous merch person, Hoops, go over Niagara Falls in a wooden barrel. She survived.
The Detroit show was at the Magic Stick, a really cool venue that I’d never been to before. The ground floor is a bowling alley and pizza joint/bar and the second floor is a music venue. The audience was completely bonkers. Non-stop crowd surfing and a giant insane pit. At one point during our set, a woman fell and was knocked unconscious. We stopped the set and told the staff what was going on, and staff and audience members helped her up and out of the club to get medical attention. While ALL OF THAT was happening, a man dressed as a hot dog had hopped up onstage and was jumping up and down in triumph, pumping his fists in the air. Great timing, hot dog man. Friends John and Ron from Negative Approach and Brian from Black Dahlia Murder came out, and we got to meet two members of Cybertronic Spree, albeit in their flesh-slug disguises. I think this was also the show where Sonny from Necrot said he blew a transformer, but I’m pretty sure that was just a coincidence and unrelated. Also, the place was next door to where Houdini died, but I skipped that because that motherfucker owed me money.
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We hit the outskirts of Denver on a day off and headed to The Archive, a shop run by Vinegar Syndrome. The staff were great, and they had an incredible selection of weirdo movies and records. I bought an LP of Bert and Ernie singing Murder Junkies songs. Wild stuff. But darkness was on the horizon.
“There’s a storm coming,” Cremator said to me, a steady and increasing wind whipping his loose peasant shirt around his meager frame. I gazed into the distance, narrowing my eye.
“I know”.
We rolled into Grand Junction with the news that I-80 in the Sierras was completely closed down because of a blizzard. Hundreds of cars were stranded in the snow. Semi trucks were plunging into icy ravines. Families were resorting to cannibalism. Worst of all, our headliner in Salt Lake City was looking unlikely. We consulted with Luca from Necrot about what we should do. The answer came with a somewhat obscene hand gesture: “Fanculo!” I turned to my Frommer’s Guide, a reference book that had become dogeared from use in the previous two weeks. It was no help at all, being a travel guide and
not a translation dictionary, but I did learn about some nice castles in Alsace Lorraine that I’d like to visit at some point. We ended up canceling SLC so we could make the long, snowy drive south to Las Vegas and then back up through Bakersfield and Fresno to make the Berkeley show. Dissector took the wheel, pointed us south, and drove straight into a tree. After that, we decided to just follow roads instead of cardinal directions.
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We arrived in Berkeley 20 hours later, half crazed from lack of sleep, and half crazed from malnutrition. So fully crazed. The next day, feeling slightly less crazed, we played the UC Theater for about 1500 screaming lunatics at a sold out show that featured not only said lunatics but many of the glitterati from the Bay Area metal/hardcore scene, past, present, and future (I assume. I mean it only makes sense). There was famed photographer Rob Coons! And over there, Chris and Craig from Forbidden! Harald O from Murder in the Front Row and DRI! Lori from Acid King! Someone from Rancid, apparently! Laurie Sue from Ludicra! Zardax 7, the AI powered vocal program from Yahoo: The Search Engine: The Band! (one of those bands from the future I mentioned before.) Romper, stomper, bomper, boo. Tell me, tell me, tell me, do. Magic Mirror, tell me today, did all my friends have fun at play?
LA was amazing, as to be expected. Lots of friends came out, and it was great to be back in the city of dreams; where anything you can imagine is possible, but what’s actually probable is a movie about Pac-Man where Pac-Man says swears and kills people.
We burned through the southwestern US like a very burny, hot thing. Like a wildfire in the southwestern US, I guess. We hit Tucson (the best parking in the country, hands down) and San Antonio, where we found a great little store called The Monster Shop. It appears to have no online presence and doesn’t show up on online maps, so it’s possible I dreamed it. But if I dreamed it, where did I get this King Kong ’76 tapestry? We also had the honor of meeting John Araya and Brittany Elliott and seeing some of John’s incredible Slayer memorabilia. Handwritten lyrics, primitive Slayer logos, band doodles. Amazing stuff. I’m proud to say that for once we completely resisted the urge to steal any of it. Growth! After that was Dallas, where I visited Dealey Plaza for the first time since ’63. Great town! We also got to visit with our buddy and King Diamond drummer/honorary Fermentor/all around mensch, Matt Thompson.
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I had some truly decent sausage and grits in New Orleans. After the show, Cremator took the wheel and headed into the darkness. On the long road between New Orleans and Daytona Beach there are many hazards. Alligators, police, roving bands of irritable moonshiners, but none more terrifying than what we encountered that night in the inky blackness of the, uh, night. As we were speeding down the highway at a pace that is frowned upon by both the Cruise America corporation and AAA, a shape appeared in the middle distance. As we closed in on it, we realized it was a deer carcass in the middle of the road. Cremator swerved to avoid it but it was no use, his reaction timing having suffered a fatal blow during a particularly painful stage diving incident years ago. A loud “CLUNK” was heard and then the ominous and continuous sound of something scraping along the blacktop. We pulled over and Cremator got out. The festering deer corpse had knocked loose a piece of plastic skirting under the RV and it was hanging down onto the road. This was truly the last time I would ever trust a festering deer corpse again. We needed something to reattach the skirting, but what? Gum? No. Stolen Necrot stickers? Not enough tensile strength. Shoelaces from our complementary pairs of Diadora high-top sneakers? Those things are worth a fortune; are you fucking joking? Suddenly, in a rare flash of brilliance, Cremator found the perfect thing. He broke open a pack of guitar strings, climbed under the RV and got to work. Moments later we were humming down the road, skirting in place. Please don’t tell Cruise America that their RV is held together with guitar strings.
This was the home stretch, and by the time we got to Ft. Lauderdale nerves were frayed, dressing rooms were tiny, and costumes were putrid. The stench from Fermentor alone gave new, horrible meaning to the phrase “green room.” Municipal Waste did their level best to have a sense of humor about the whole revolting situation, but they’re only human. In the end we had to set fire to Fermentor’s clothing. Should we have taken the clothing off of his body before setting them alight? Perhaps, but we wanted to send a clear message. Donations can be sent to Fermentor’s GoFundMe whenever we get around to setting one up.
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Dateline: Columbia, South Carolina. We arrive at The Senate, and I immediately see that there’s an IHOP next door. Being a man of the world and hungry, I enter. “One quesadilla, please!” I bellow, a single finger raised in the air in a commanding yet mutually respectful gesture. The food comes and I wolf down the slop and hightail it out of there just in time for sound check.
Now, I don’t want to besmirch the good name of the International House of Pancakes. They make wonderful breakfasts and their work with the UN and International Criminal Court are unimpeachable, but a few hours after I ate there, I felt weird, like I had to burp but couldn’t. I decided to ignore it and went to dinner with Dissector at a Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse a block away. After dinner, which I only ate half of, I felt worse. 10 minutes before our set, I went outside and threw up outside the venue. At that point I felt pretty good, so I went onstage filled with confidence, if not dinner.
By the end of the set, I felt like death so I begged out of loading and rested in the RV. As I lay in the upper bunk reevaluating my life choices, I heard multiple members of our party, led by Necrot’s crew, screaming obscenities towards IHOP, but not for the reasons I hoped. Apparently the management there had some kind of deal with a tow company, and that tow company had been towing the cars of the lovely and generous audience members who had parked there knowing that the lot would be relatively empty due to serving food that makes people violently ill.
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We left the parking lot with an RV full of insanely drunk people, Fermentor on the wheel, and me, sober as a judge (for once) but sick as a very sick dog lying in the upper bunk with a passed out Cremator. Cremator had earlier caused a minor international incident at a pizza parlor, and he was sleeping it off.
20 minutes into the drive I felt the overwhelming urge to barf. I sprung over Cremator like a gazelle, graceful and athletic. “Gimme a plastic bag!” I declared, a single finger raised in the air in a commanding yet mutually respectful gesture. Hoops and Dobrunkum immediately panicked while Dissector reached into his backpack (he says) and produced a bag (I am unconvinced, however; it was chaotic). Oblivious, I puked into my palm and tried to hold it in, causing me to puke even harder. Through my barely clenched fingers, puke sprayed all over the RV.
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Fermentor pulled off, for once legally, into a parking lot. Poor Hoops was wretching and Dobrunkum was yelling “It’s all over me! It’s all over me!” And reader, it was all over him. And all over everything, to be honest. I blame IHOP. Could’ve been my fault, I dunno.
The final show in Richmond, VA, was bittersweet. Huge venue. Huge hometown (for MW) crowd. Lots of friends of ours, including friends-of-the-band and accomplished filmmakers Jim and Renee Stramel, and former Occultist vocalist and current wonderful person Kerry Zylstra. But alas, the TOUR OF THE CENTURY©* had come to a close! Full bummer.
And that, as they say, was that! To wrap up, the crew, every member, was so amazing for the whole tour, and the other bands were always so fun to watch and hang out with and everyone was firing on all cylinders. We were so lucky to tour with all these people, especially The Municipal Waste guys, who we have known for about two decades now but never done a full tour with. Thanks for coming out! Bye kids!
*I actually did predict this.
** © Harald O.
***A cigar.
