Live November/December 2000

NOTES ON A RECORDING

One of the pillars of the Nasum history is the very long European tour we did in 2000. We supported Napalm Death, which was amazing for a "young" band born out of the massive inspiration they provided, and we covered a lot of Europe during seven weeks, which ultimately helped us a lot to get our name "out there". There are lots of stories to tell from this tour so I might come back to it in the future. I re-published a tour diary I wrote in 2000 last year, where some stories are told. This time I would like to focus on the shows. Eight in particular.

When I went through my boxes during the great cassette project of 2021 I discovered seven minidiscs with shows from the tour. I remembered that I had transfered these at some point many years ago and even published a few songs on an earlier version of nasum.com. But those files are all gone. I did a little Facebook search among my friends to see if someone had a working minidisc player, and luckily I found one and managed to plug it into my computer. I wouldn't say that I struck gold, but I found something at least.

But before we go deeper into that, I would like to pause for a moment and speak generally about the tour and the shows. We were the direct support to Napalm Death during the entire tour and we – full transparency – paid to share the night liner with them. Or, Relapse paid. It's nothing strange about that, that's how stuff works. It was a marketing thing that the shows and merch sales ultimately paid for. Anyway, the three of us, Mieszko, Jesper and I, tagged along with our backline and no additional crew. The Napalm Death touring party consisted of the five guys in the band (Barney, Shane, Danny, Mitch and Jesse) and a four-man crew with tour manager Jez Hale, guitar tech Steve Firth, FOH (= soundguy) Russ Russell and drum tech/merch guy Mitch "Chin" Dickinson. There was also a driver of the night liner but I can't say that I consider him a part of the crew.

I would say that we got along well with the entire touring party. I can't say that we understood that part of being a support act meant that we had to carry Napalm Death's backline in and out of the night liner every day. I guess that led to us bonding with the crew. Since I was our main merch guy on the tour I hung out a lot with Mitch Dickinson every night, which was great. He wasn't just any guy, but one of Shane's oldest friends who played in Unseen Terror and also in hardcore legends Heresy. Little did we know when we had a laugh together at the merch table that Mitch would be playing in Nasum at the end of the tour... CLIFFHANGER!

Also worth mentioning was that Russ Russell, who did the sound for Napalm Death and has been their main producer on the albums since 2000 or so, had no obligations to do our sound during the tour but eventually he started doing it, perhaps just to get stuff going for Napalm Death's shows. Needless to say, we were thankful that someone with knowledge of the music did our sound and not some random guy supplied by the venue.


Night liner madness with Jesse, Jesper, Russ and Mieszko

So, what did we play on this tour? Well, we had released "Human 2.0" which was done in our new tuning. "Inhale/Exhale" and everything before that was done in the standard B tuning, but "Human 2.0" was done in drop-A which was a problem. I won't go into details, but for all you non-guitar players it means that we couldn't mix songs from different tunings without changing the tuning or having different guitars. The second alternative was something we actually did later on, before we re-learnt all the old songs in drop-A-tuning. But during this tour we did the first half of the set in standard turning, playing mixed older songs, and then going into a "Human 2.0" half in drop-A before returning to standard for a few extras. I haven't got any old setlists saved but judging from what's on these seven discs I get a pretty clear picture of what we played.


The first pages of the tour book.

And speaking of the minidiscs, they actually featured eight different shows covering roughly one month of the tour. The first recording was done at Bikini Club in Toulouse, France, November 7. It's a pretty good show but the recording is very unbalanced with low guitars. Next recording was done in Neustadt-Orla, Germany at Wotufa Saal almost three weeks later, November 25. This is a terrible show and recording. The sound is not particularly good and the performance is really bad. We had some technical issues and didn't play well at all. I can hear Mieszko and Jesper apologizing all the "fuck ups" a number of times. The show recorded at Backstage in München, Germany, November 29 covers the second part of the show and is a very simple recording compared to the others. As a weird balance, the recording from the following day at Universal D.O.G. in Lahr, Germany, has the first half of the show and it isn't a particularly good recording. Technical issues with the actual recording destroys the show from Coop de Mai in Clermont Ferrand , France, December 4. The first half of the recording has multiple drop outs in the left channel but luckily it gets better towards the second half. The technical issues continued and got even worse already the next day, December 5, when we were at Splendid in Lille, France. There are drop outs the whole time and the recording is cut off halfway through the show. December 8 we played at the classic venue Baroeg in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and this recording is also slightly unbalanced and with some technical errors.

That leaves us with the eight and final show, which is an odd one for sure and therefor will be the main part of this release. It's a show that has three alternative line-ups of Nasum and none of them include Jesper! A few weeks earlier Jesper had told us that he would have to leave the tour before it was finished. I don't remember all the details but I believe he had the opportunity to apply to an education he had had his eyes on for a few years, but he had to do the application in person. And that collided with the end of the tour. I remember talking to Jez the tour manager saying: "We have to send Jesper home" and he asked "Did you have a fight?", thinking he was really leaving the band! Anyway, since we had some time until he had to go, we could think of how to solve the three shows that he would miss. The idea of just doing it as a two-piece was never an option, which is slightly strange since bands like Pig Destroyer, Wormrot and Meth Leppard have been doing grindcore without a bass player without any trouble. Shane was kind enough to offer his help for a few songs and we tried to teach guitar tech Steve some, but he wasn't really up for it, but we did manage to teach Mitch Dickinson a few songs. We didn't get a full set but we did at least get 14 songs together, with some exclusive stuff as well.


Shane, Anders and Mieszko.

We did this during the three last shows on the tour and the eight disc has the first one from Lintafabreik in Kontich, Belgium, December 10. It's not the best recording on these discs, but it's the most interesting one for sure. Never the less I found some good stuff on some of the other recordings with songs not played in Belgium, so I Frankensteined a mix of four different shows to achieve a 28 song album. Since there are multiple sources for this album I have tried to make the sound even by adjusting EQ and the volume, but I am not a sound wizard so you just have to take it for what it is!

And with that said, here's the manufactured set list and some additional comments:

1. Löpandebandsprincipen
2. The Masked Face
3. I See Lies
4. No Sign of Improvement
5. There's no Escape
6. Tested
7. Inhale/Exhale
8. Fantasibilder
9. End

These first nine songs were performed with the help of Mr Shane Embury playing the bass. I can't remember if Shane had done some guest appearances previously but I have some kind of memory of him playing "The Masked Face" while Jesper had nothing to do! Anyway, the first seven songs are exactly the same on several recordings on these discs so I would say that it was the proper setlist. The following two were two easy ones added to get more songs.

10. Dead Shall Rise (Terrorizer cover)


A legendary moment at La Locomotive.

Time for a line-up change. Now Mieszko handed the guitar to Jesse Pintado for a rendition of "Dead Shall Rise", the Terrorizer classic, which he and Shane played in Lock Up as well. On the second day of the tour, in the huge dressing room at La Locomotive in Paris, Jesse taught Jesper and Mieszko how to play the song. That's a memory that is burnt into my mind forever. I guess we talked about playing the song sometime later on. About halfway through the tour we had a day off in Hannover where we stayed with Maria who was working at Relapse Europe and in her record collection we found the Terrorizer song and had a listen to it to get a grip on the arrangement. Then towards the end of the tour we started to play it with Jesse, before Jesper left. It's a great song and it's been really great playing it with an actual Terrorizer member. However, I never got the intro right. I count the beats wrong in some way and I can only blame the lack of possibilities to really listen to the song regularly. Jesse, being a gentleman, noted that I played it wrong, but instead of correcting me, he adjusted to my "version".

I can't say how many times we played it before this show, perhaps it was just the day before in Holland, Jesper's last show. That version is on YouTube and a comment says "That drummer played the intro too long ...pffft newb!" - which sadly is correct. Here's that version, where the singer of My Mind's Mine hijacked the stage as well.

11. Disdain and Contempt
12. Blinded
13. Eviscerated by the Fiend
14. Shambler

And then we have alternative line-up #3 with Mitch Dickinson stepping in. "Disdain and Contempt" and "Blinded" were to my knowledge not songs that were part of the normal set list, but two hardcore numbers that we knew pretty well and that we thought fitted Mitch. One funny thing is that Mieszko sings the lyrics AND the vocal pattern to "Blinded" during the first verse of "Disdain and Contempt"! Haha!


The Mitch-Anders-Mieszko line-up from the show in Kontich. Photo by Erik Minnen.

15. A Request for Guidance
16. Dis Sucks

First Frankenstein: These two songs are from the December 8 show at Baroeg in Rotterdam. The slow count to "A Request for Guidance" was a little joke we had. Usually Mieszko announced the song as "a really slow one" and then we fooled the audience by actually playing a really fast song. I remember that Mitch Dickinson used to chuckle behind the merch table at this, so later on we started dedicating the song to him and the rest of the crew.

17. A Welcome Breeze of Stinking Air
18. Fatal Search
19. Shadows
20. Corrosion
21. Multinational Murderers Network
22. Parting is such Sweet Sorrow
23. The Black Swarm
24. The Professional League
25. Words to Die For

Here's is the entire "Human 2.0" block of songs, at least judging from these eight shows. They are not from the same night. The first seven are from Clermont Ferrand, December 4, which is the recording that had a lot of drop outs in the left speaker. The first three songs were affected by that so they are represented in mono here. The stereo kicks in after the first chorus in "Shadows". You can hear a little drop out later on in "Multinational Murderers Network" but that was too small to fix. And then the last two was recorded a few days earlier in München, November 29. It was just recorded with one mic in the room so it's kinda old school. "The Professional League" was a fun song to play live. It had a few drum breaks that I started messing around with as the tour went on. Mieszko and Jesper never knew what I was going to do apart from staying on the beat. Sometimes it got very weird but this time I did something good.

26. Shaping The End
27. Du är bevakad
28. Bullshit Tradition (Dropdead cover)

And finally, three songs to round it off. The first one is also from München and as always when we played "Shaping The End" I went bananas towards the end. The other two songs are from the problematic show in Neustadt-Orla, November 25. It was the last songs of the show and you can hear that we are getting rid of all remaining frustration in the songs, particularly in "Bullshit Tradition" where we pushed the song into overdrive for the last verse playing it at the speed of light! Sometimes we did that for fun.

So there you have it, the Frankensteined November/December 2000 show from Nasum!

- Anders Jakobson, February 4, 2022.

HELP ME FUND THE VAULT AND THE RARE NASUM

I have a lot of Nasum "vaults". There are the digital vaults, harddrives, CD-R's and whatever that contains some stuff. And then there are the analog vaults. Boxes filled with documents and notes and boxes filled with tapes containing rehearsals and rare stuff. I'd be more than happy to share this with the fans, but I need some funds to take time of from work to really do all that boring excavating that's needed to find and document everything.

I have put together a GoFundMe page for this: gofundme.com/the-rare-nasum and any donation is appreciated. You can also support this cause by buying The Rare Nasum stuff at Bandcamp. Or you can make a donation without going through GoFundMe or Bandcamp - just contact me at nasum@nasum.com. Everything that comes in via these channels are ear marked for a future massive excavation.

I really hope you can help me to preserve The Nasum Vault for the world. Thanks!

- Anders Jakobson.