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Twin Atlantic Tour Diary: Birmingham

Twin Atlantic drummer Craig Kneale recounts his touring tales exclusively for Rock Sound.

Waking up and looking out your window and seeing the inside of a motorway service station is a very weird experience, and not one that i’d recommend you try. It makes you feel quite dirty. One good thing about it is that the rip-off that is the Travelodge WiFi (approximately £3000 for 10 minutes of internet usage, seriously... not quite true, but still) is overpowered by the free WiFi offered in the forecourt by some of these ‘little cities of our motor ways’. And I stole vast quantities of this usually unobtainable T-Lodge commodity. I think stealing internet is maybe my favourite thing to do, probably more than drums and sleeping. One bit of sad news was that there was no Morrisons within a 10 mile radius to purchase a now tour staple - one of their famous breakfasts. Sad, unsatisfied times.



Onwards to Birmingham, which is like our Kryptonite city. Something always goes wrong or we always leave feeling strangely dejected. Which I guess means it’s not like kryptonite at all, if it was it would make us all very sick. And we wouldn’t be able to see through walls, which we can all do after Sam bought this distortion pedal that unknown to him at the time had radioactive crystals in the electrics so when he turned it on we all got special powers. Useful, although it did also make us all dreadfully tired and sad. We were playing the shiny new Academy, which looks very futuristic. Lamb Of God were also playing there in the big room, I went and watched their soundcheck - it sounded very good. They also had a big backdrop that looked like the most epic thing in the world, so epic I couldn’t even look at it - I think it may have been the devil slaying a monster.



It was James from Canterbury’s birthday so all of us Twin Atlantic boys chipped in and bought him a really nice red Ferrari - it didn’t arrive at the venue for the show, but we’ve been assured it’ll be there for the show in Southampton tomorrow. If it’s not, we’ll just have to count it out as a loss. Ah well, it’s the thought that counts eh? And it only cost £100,000. Mere pennies to a band like us. It was also our friend Jodie’s birthday too, who was going to be at the show, and we got her a Porsche which also didn’t arrive. Bloody car companies. It was no one else’s birthday, if it was let me know and we’ll sort you out with a sports car or VW Golf depending on how well we know you.



The show was slightly disappointing, which was mainly our fault - we just didn’t play that well. After a painless soundcheck something had gone dreadfully wrong in my monitor, my bass drum no longer sounded like a drum but instead sounded like some sort of beast being slain with a hammer, so every hit caused me to feel a little bit more sad. This bass drum would probably sound really good to Lamb Of God, I donated the monitor to them after the show. But the main problem was just we weren’t that tight. I think the last five weeks had finally taken their toll on us, and it’s the first show this year where we all felt a little dejected after it. There were positives to take from it, like all the shows on the tour it’s the most people we’ve played to in this city. But again we’d came and failed to conquer Birmingham.



But we will be back, armed with more amps and nicer clothes. Maybe what we’re missing is edge? I mean, I’ve got the bad boy image down to a tee with the denim jacket these days - but maybe we need more. Next time I might fire a pistol into the air after each song to show we mean business. People respect guns, I saw a documentary about it. But i’m sure there are other ways to conquer this city of Kryptonite. We just haven’t found it quite yet.