JUMPING DARKNESS PARADE: DAATH’S EYAL LEVI ON THE DANGERS OF TOUR BUSES
So here I am flying across the Atlantic Ocean again. A few months back I wrote a blog about how much I hate flying and yet here I am doing it again. Press / vacation trip to Paris. I know, I know, such a hard life. But you know what? You guys can eat a dick if you’ve got a problem with it.
Anyways, the topic of how shitty transportation is as fresh on my mind as a brand new bag of purp. I’ve already talked about my fear of flying, talked about how I’m expecting to die a horrible death in a van… Well what about the big ole phallic false sense of security we all aspire to called a tour bus? Granted, if you hit a car with a bus you are going to be much better off than you would be in a van, but I’ve had buddies in bus crashes, and they ain’t pretty. (I mean bus crashes. My buddies are very pretty.)
Let’s take, for instance, the Disturbed crew bus accident which occurred during the Mayhem Fest 2008 [Photo below – Ed.] . They blew a tire. The bus careened off the road. Down an embankment. Took out about 1000 yards worth of trees. And I mean sheared them the fuck down. Mohawk style. Then came to a stop. Not as bad as a van you say? Well… the back lounge was completely crushed. If anyone had been hanging out there they would have been like a smashed up cockroach. The guy who was sitting in the jump seat had both his legs completely smashed. For those of you who are wondering, the jump seat is the seat next to the driver. The front lounge got fucked up, too. My friend told me that he woke up because his face was planted to the ceiling of his bunk and that from then on it was like a Disney (fuck Disney btw) magical mystery ride in the bunk. Side to side, up and down, what the fuck is going on, until it came to a standstill in the middle of a field. Sound like fun? What I think is funny about the whole ordeal is that Blabbermouth reported “Disturbed crew bus in accident. Band ok.” LIKE THE CREW AREN’T PEOPLE?
In my limited experience on buses, and yes Daath has toured on a few, they are a sketchy form of travel too. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve woken up because I feel like I’m in a coffin that’s traveling faster than it should be, I walk up to the front, and notice that we’re going 90mph at night in a bus and the driver is text messaging. Or what about the time in Birmingham, England where we (Daath and Despised Icon) were getting some after-show drinks, and who do we see at the bar? THE TWO DRIVERS SHARING DRINKS TWO HOURS BEFORE BUS CALL! WTF! That made me feel safe. Promise. It did.
My favorite experience was one turbulent morning waking up on the floor of the bunk area. Mind you, I didn’t pass out drunk on the floor. I was tossed out of my bunk by a swerving bus. I was flat on the floor but my legs were definitely higher than my head-level. We were at an angle. And all I could hear was “FUCK FUCK FUCK” over and over and over and over. Then I would get jarred to the side back and forth. I’d feel us falling then hear the driver screaming. What happened is that that we ran out of gas on a two lane highway up a mountain and the driver was trying to pull a u-turn and then roll in neutral down the incline. FUN.
Moral of the story is that all methods of travel suck. Vehicles are all death traps. No matter how big or small, land, sea, or air, you are taking a gamble every single time you ride in one. It better be worth it. For me, the shows are.
-EL
Visit Daath on MySpace to get the full itinerary for their summer tour with Goatwhore, Abigail Williams, Abysmal Dawn, and Success Will Write Apocalypse Across the Sky.
