White Flame

Have Band, Will Travel..

2009-11-02T22:19:00.000+02:00

“Good morning, darling. I trust you slept well. I hope I wasn't too much of an animal.
- Come. Hold me.
- You know I will!”

I just woke up to the coldness of November and I blew the soap bubbles out of my pipe…NOT!
But I noticed that October passed by quickly while doing some shows and little this and that. I also realized that we are having our last shows of this year in couple of days.
We have a great month behind ‘cause we did some pretty tight shows and our latest single/video Frontrow Girl has been on the official Finnish download chart and single chart 4 weeks now, which is nice.
Specially I think that we did nice stuff in St. Petersburg, Hämeenlinna Suisto-club and Tampere Dog’s Home.

Well, next we will have our last gigs ahead, so if You wish to see the set of “Tour Bus Diaries” tour, it’s about time to come and check us out. At least I recommend it! :)
More or less end of the year and winter time we will work with the new songs. We already have a good start ‘cause we’ve been doin’ some new demos during this month and we also have a lot of new riffs and ideas in ProTools. And I think that we still got the touch! I can tell you that there is some good shit already done, kinda of “standard WF” R’n’R stuff and some new feeling as well. It’s good to start working around it, that’s how I feel.

So hope to see You soon!

Get the White Flame vaccination to protect effectively against the pandemic:
05.11.2009, (FIN) Tampere, Jack the Rooster
06.11.2009, (FIN) Jyväskylä, Redneck
21.11.2009, (FIN) Tampere, Pub Ahjo
-Vince & Anthon acoustic Hurdy-Gurdy set-

~A~

St. Petersburg

2009-10-12T13:59:00.004+03:00

At last we had our very first visit to our eastern neighbour and it was lot of fun! The club we were playing at was Jagger Club located in St. Petersburg.

We started our journey early in the Wednesday morning (even it was more like night...) from our rehearsal joint where our Russian shuttledriver arrived to pick us up. Due to lack of space in the car we had to leave couple of objects (our guitar/bass cabinets) and trust that the house backline would work for us. The drive went smoothly and it was possible to get some sleep in the car ´cause it was dark outside till we got to the border. There we had to fill up some forms which had too many questions for simple-minded rockers and there was only one pen... Luckily the whole border bustle only took under an hour and we continued to the other side. The traffic culture was so different in Russia compared to Finland... It took some time to get used to it! Luckily our driver was experienced and took us alive at the destination.

The club itself was gorgeous! I think we´ve never seen a place like this in Finland. Everything was so well put together and designed. The audio and lighting systems were placed nicely and the stage was big enough. The backstage was equipped well and there were enough space for two bands. We were served a great and tasty dinner including four courses. Our promoter took really good care of us! And of course we enjoyed pints of delicious local beer brewed there in the club. And it didn´t take so long before we had a chance to took shots of local Vodka!

When the house technician arrived we set up our stuff on the stage and did a nice, long soundcheck. The stage sound was good (at least I was very happy with it) and the local tech was awesome guy and it was a pleasure to work with him. There was a local band supporting us that night and they did soundcheck after us while we got our chance to visit a local supermarket. And everyone can imagine why we went there... Of course for cheap Vodka! Finnish musicians used to high prices in their home country were astonished in front of the Vodka shelfs. Money wasn´t the problem, only problem was to choose among huge selection of that liquid yummy.

Later in the evening, after the local support having their blast of metal music on stage, we started our rock show. Four musicians (Vodka in their veins), great audience, awesome atmosphere and succesful show! We played something like 1,5 hours and had also encore after audience demanding it strongly. It was hell of fun! After the show we were having a good time with our local colleagues from the other band and of course involved some Vodka and other liquids. We were so happy to get even some supper the organizer offered us! They truly took care of us.

The drive home was so unclear to me that I don´t remember much. But I remember we had to show our passports like 5 times or something on the border... But most important: we got home alive! (even I got some flu including high fever, sniffle, sore throat, cough...)

Great gig, great people, great experience! The local promoter was excited about us so who knows if we´re gonna visit Russia again sooner or later.

-Sammye

Click top of pic to view the full size:

Man behind the second g'tar!

2009-07-08T14:01:00.004+03:00

If you've been rocking with us at shows lately in Klubi @ Tampere and Klubi @ Turku, or last year in Pakkahuone, you might have been wondering who is that hot lookin' guy with vintage equipments on Sammye's side of the stage. We've heard that some of you´ve been confused if that is the fifth member of White Flame or whadda hell is happenin'. Well, we wanted to introduce you this mysterious guy who sometimes gives his helping hand with his guitar and background singing.

So, who are you, please tell us something about yourself?

”Hello, my name is Laz. I play the guitar and I'm addicted to good sound. I love guitars and their ability to make people feel something special. I don't consider myself a traditional session man musician, and I never want to end up being one. White Flame is an exception, because... well it's White fuckin' Flame!”

”I'm not an acrobat in playing the guitar. I rather just play the notes that have something to say. I'm in White Flame to make the band's live sound bigger, and that suits me well. I like to try out new stuff, which helps things to keep rolling. I love the feeling of finding out something new - something that nobody else has found out yet. And if it sounds good as well, it's even better :) I hate bad music and I love good music. It's as simple as that.”

How did you end up with these guys?

”A few years ago I was forming a band that would play sincere and down-to-earth rock music. The result was a band called Bullet Ride. It took off pretty well, and soon we got some gigs. One night there were four charming young men watching our gig, and soon I found out they called themselves White Flame. We got along pretty well, and after a while Vince called me and asked if I would like to play Aerosmith songs with them. I liked the idea. We landed some gigs, and soon I got myself the nickname 'Laz Whitford'. How cool is that? Also Anthon and Jony were playin in the band which we named Ragdoll. We realized it was cool to play together, which must have had some effect when Vince, Anthon, Sammye and Jony were thinking of me to become the second guitarist in White Flame live shows. I didn't hesitate, when they asked me to join them.”

What is it like to be with this band?

”Cool. I always have lots of fun with these guys, which is important. Yes they are nuts, but they know what it takes to make music. I wouldn't play with anybody who doesn't love music and playing. Just look at these guys on stage, and you'll see that it's cool to play with them!”

And finally, the word is your's, if you want to say something!

”Like Ilu Fagerström would say: 'If you have THE thing, keep THE thing.' ”

So people, that's the story of our livemusician dude, Mr. Laz! Next time he will rock with White Flame at Simerock and Tammerfest, so don't miss the shows!

10.07.2009, (FIN) Rovaniemi, Simerock Festival
- Showtime 3:00pm (klo. 15:00)
11.07.2009, (FIN) Tampere, Tammerfest, Noste-lava
- Showtime 7:20pm (klo. 19:20)

2009-05-22T15:17:00.008+03:00

Here is some pictures from our tour with Deep Insight this spring. We played in Germany, Austria, Switzerland Hungary and France. We met a lot of new people and I was glad to also see some people from previous encounters both abroad and back in Finland aswell. It was fun to play all the new tunes, and we had a positive problem with so many great songs we just couldn't fit in the set every night. Thanks to everyone who was involved in putting this tour together! I hope you enjoy my pics and vids!

Look how happy we all were at the beginning of our trip. Everyone enjoying a little ol' Meister.

Here's our driver Ville. But we called him more than just that. He went by the names Trance-Rantanen, Dance-Rantanen, Mr. Late and finally Iskelmä-Rantanen.

When on the road, make sure you have enough to eat...

...and drink

Also you must remember to try to get some rest

Alltough I know you'd much rather be playing NHL

Duct Tape High School part 1

Duct Tape High School part 2

Look! We even met Conan O'brien on our trip!

It's time to meet our tournig buddies, Deep Insight. A fun bunch of lads!

First one up is their bass player Jore. He is the only guy we knew before the tour.

Here is their lead singer Jukka. He taught me a few new moves even tough he didn't recodnize them to be his. Notice the mirror - there you can see:

TERO! He's actually a guitarist, but demonstrates his ultimate drumming skills on this video.

This is Ville. He reminded me of Taylor Hawkins of the Foo Fighters.

Johannes digged our band, but had some suggestions for the guy's hair styles: (He is a stylist, after all)

Still Julian's brother...

Dude, you look just like Johannes!!

Rowan was Deep Insight's mixing guy and backup singer. He also happens to book our gigs.

I even joined Deep Insight on the last gig to do Rock With My Band!

Indeed you are!

Little did Sammye know that his sausage was covered with plastic...

They left their mark on the bass amp...

We left our's on the bass drum

We went to see Finland - Chech Rep. in a local sports bar in Zurich and ran into a whole bunch of finns.

Typiska Turister

Have I mentioned that I also met Heikki Hietanen?

That's about it. Thanks again from the WF Crew, see you on the next one!!

Tour bus diaries pt. 4

2009-05-02T10:08:00.000+03:00

It’s been few days since I’ve write anything. A lot has happened and we’ve played shows in Budapest, Vienna, Zürich and Uster.

On a way to Hungary we stopped on some gas station nearby city. Guys from Deep Insight were there too and they had football with them. Of course we need to take short football match there and have some fun beside of the shows. It so great to have days that you don’t need to be in a hurry.

Next morning after Budapest show we head to Austria, Vienna. There we were also quite early so we had some time to explore the city. I took some time to hang out with my friend living there and guys get something to eat. After that we went to venue and put our stuff ready. DI arrived a ‘bit late and our sound check was just before doors opened. Everything went fine though and we had great show in Vienna.

Next morning we get up early and started our journey to Switzerland. We had show at the venue called Dynamo in Zürich and it seemed to be great place to play rock music. Next day we had day off and they let us hang out in dynamo band flat so we stayed in Zürich another day. Our off day plan was to find a place where to watch FIN - CZE world championship ice hockey game. We found bar called Nelson where they told us that you could watch the game like “mixed” with SWE - USA game. You know, they will show part of the both games. Well… that was all that we could get. It was great time tough and we met some Finnish people living in Austria. And after the game that bar was full of Finnish ice hockey tourists coming from the arena. You can imagine how fun it’s to party with tens of Finnish people in foreign country. And more fun ‘cause Finland won that game!

Next day we had tiny hangover and we went to sit on the sun beside the river flowing outside Dynamo. There were only like 30 kilometers to the next venue in Uster so we just wanted to hang around a bit before doing anything. We arrived to venue quite early. We had info that we could get inside there somewhere around 4pm but the guy at the venue told us that we need to wait ‘till 6pm. So we had more free time and we went to explore the streets of Uster. The show itself was great and we we’re quite energetic on the stage. There’s definitely listeners for our music style in Switzerland.

Now we’re on the way to Biel in Switzerland. We took some breakfast with the guys of DI and played guitar in the sun. Let see what happens today and you all are welcome to see the show!

And for the Finnish people: Hauskaa Vappua!

Tour Bus Diaries pt. 3

2009-04-26T19:24:00.000+03:00

It was nice to play again in Logo and see some familiar faces in the audience. Even tough it was again bit hard to get our equipment inside the venue ‘cause of road construction next to it.

Yesterday we started 1200km long way to Budapest. We had private accommodation in Hamburg and it was great to have some sleep before this long trip. Niina from Finnbands joined to our crew too and started to organize our interview schedules and merchandise. She’s big help for us because of tight time table on venues.

We traveled whole day through Germany and Czech watching sunny landscapes. Some necessary stops during the day but more or less driving. I think it was something over midnight when we decided to have a hotel room somewhere. First two were full but we found cheap and just perfect place to sleep for a while.

We get up from bed around 10:00am this morning. Fast shower and on the road again. “Trance Rantanen” (our driver got quite many nicknames already) started engine and our way to Hungary continued. Some breakfast after crossing the Slovakian border and Queen DVD on our PS3. So far seems that it’s great day ahead us. I think we’re now on near Hungary border and there’s under 200km to Budapest. Should I open a beer now?

“Lazing on a Sunday afternoon”

Tour Bus Diaries pt. 2

2009-04-24T19:18:00.001+03:00

Yesterday we had our first gig of this tour. Day started quite nicely after 8 hour sleep, relaxing and couple of beers last night. When I woke up I headed to Vince’s hotel room and there he was cutting Markku’s hair and beard. Our technician have now a brand new look taken from Lemmy Kilmister.

When we left from hotel room we went straight to our venue and parked our car there. We had enough time to do some shopping and finally we found ourselves drinking beer outside some local bar. Sun was shining and we had great time to hang out in Berlin.

When it was time to load in our equipment to venue, everything happened quite fast. We met some of the guys from Deep Insight for the first time and get to know each other. Great guys and we already had great time during load in and sound check. We decided to use my drums there and DI’s guitar and bass cabinets to make things work out faster in change between bands. Markku liked my new higher pitch drum tune and it was easy to mix the sound because of that.

Around 9:45 pm was our time to jump on the stage. It was very hot to play there and I think it was hot in audience too. We mixed up our new and old songs in our setlist and I think it worked pretty well. Maybe same setlist today or chancing one or two songs. Let see. We don’t usually plan these things =)

Now we’re sitting in our car and heading to Hamburg. There’s 20,5 degrees of Celsius outside and no clouds in sight. Let what happens today and where we’ll find ourselves tomorrow. If you happen to be in Hamburg you’re more than welcome to see the show. CU there!

Tour Bus Diaries pt.1

2009-04-22T20:26:00.000+03:00

It’s something around 7:45 am local time and we’re driving through Denmark right now. Yesterday we started our journey 5:00 am Finnish time so we’ve been sitting one whole day in our car so far. This time we’ve got new driver, “Ransu” with us and I think he’s got lot to learn about us. He really don’t know yet how annoying people we can be while sitting hours in a tour bus and having most extraordinary conversations with each other.

While I’m writing this blog text up to this laptop, our car navigation system tells me that we’re arriving to Berlin approximately 1:30pm today. Then we’ll have rest of the day free time and we‘re ‘bout to chill a bit. You know… something good food and maybe couple of beers. But we’re open minded so if you have some party goin’ on, make sure we get the invitation ;)

Maybe it’s time to introduce our crew now:

As I said, this time we got new driver with us. During yesterday, he already get his new nickname and is called “Ransu” ever after. Likes it or not, he got name of the dog from Finnish TV show called “Pikku Kakkonen”.

Maybe some of you’ll remember Markku behind our mixing table on last Central European tour? He’s here again. So lots of bad jokes and even more bad stories and ideas up to come. You don’t even want to know… just buy him a shot of Jägermeister and you’ll get new friend =)

And that’s it. Only two crew members besides band. Niina from finnbands.com will join our crew in Hamburg and then we’ll have one local language speaking person included. Also Rowan from our booking agency is traveling with Deep Insight. He’ll handle tour management and working as Deep Insight’s technical person.

That’s it for now. I need to find WLAN connection somewhere and get this text online. See You on tour and let’s have a paaarty!

European Tour starts soon April 23rd - May 3rd!

2009-04-18T12:02:00.004+03:00

White Flame - Tour Bus Diaries Tour 09!

Few days and the White Flame’s tour bus starts driving ahead to Central-Europe! There will be helluva road trip through the Sweden to the sunny (hopefully!) Germany and onwards to Hungary, Austria, Switzerland and France. Altogether there will be over 7500km the sitting in the car. Well, that’s the shit part of it, but I guess that there’s a much FUN to come. The new album Tour Bus Diaries is out in the Europe and the band is pretty good mood at the moment. We started our tour 2 weeks ago, and the new song seems to rock very hard. Somehow we catch the live feeling with ‘em quite quickly which is good ‘cause older songs had have time to stuck’d in your mind longer time. So I think that there will be good mix to Yesterday’s News songs and TBD songs! Too much good shit to play and we’re able to play only about 40 minutes sets ‘cause of timetable. :)
And I noticed that the weather have been great in the Central-Europe, so I really really madly deeply hope that it still continues few weeks ‘cause in Finland it’s a little different.. God damn’d I want to feel that summer shine! And another nice thing is that there’s the Ice-Hockey world championship ’09 running in the Switzerland at the same time that we arrive the country, so five hockey-maniacs might get crazy. :)

We’ll do seven shows with the Deep Insight, the Finnish emo-rockers who will release Their new album very soon and two shows with the local heroes. Here’s the venues where You can catch us, so don’t miss the Tour Bus Diaries –Tour, we really want to entertain you and rock your world! C U in next two weeks!

~Anthon~

23.04.2009, (GER) Berlin, K17
- With: Deep Insight
- Ticket pre-sale: www.ticketonline.com

24.04.2009, (GER) Hamburg, Logo
- With: Deep Insight
- Ticket pre-sale: www.ticketmaster.de

26.04.2009, (HUN) Budapest, Dürer Kert
- With: Deep Insight

27.04.2009, (AUT) Vienna, Chelsea
- With: Deep Insight
- Ticket pre-sale: www.oeticket.com

28.04.2009, (SUI) Zurich, Dynamo
- With: TBA

30.04.2009, (SUI) Uster, Rock City
- With: Deep Insight

01.05.2009, (SUI) Biel, Etage @ St. Gervais
- With: Deep Insight

02.05.2009, (GER) Crailsheim, Jugendzentrum Crailsheim
- With: Deep Insight

03.05.2009, (FRA) Paris, La Mecanique Ondulatoire
- With: High School Motherfuckers

Right here in my hands, I'm so in luv!

2009-03-17T23:13:00.003+02:00

Hi folks!

I already knew how great it sounds, but today I finally got one copy in my hands and now I know that we really did right thing with the cover art too! (Milla at VIILTO did great job once again, thanks to Her).

You still have to wait about one or two weeks to get own copy in Your hands, but don't worry, You will get the taste what's comin' up 'cause there will be more song available in MySpace really soon!

Oh yes, can't wait the release and the tour!

~Anthon~

Excited about the show tomorrow

2009-01-20T23:00:00.004+02:00

Just got the feeling that I need to write here something.

It's been while when we have played a real ROCK show and you can imagine how excited we're when we jump on stage tomorrow. Last week we had acoustic show here in Tampere and it was quite fun, though I felt something was missing... you know... Sammye turns his balls shaking sound to volume ten and Anthon screams with his guitar... and Vince is throwing around the mic stand in a way you'd better look for cover behind the drumset.

It was in November when we had a real rock show before this and I can tell you that I've really waited this day to come again. It's great that we've recorded new songs for upcoming album and almost mixed all the material but these are the long days when you realize that you belong to stage.

Hope you still have patient to wait new WF album and album release tour even though we have been in silence for a while. I think we'll rock harder than ever before now when we've been of the stage and gathered all our strength and energy. At least I got that feeling!

CU soon!

Finishing the album and some guitar stuff!

2009-01-07T16:07:00.010+02:00

Finishing the album and some guitar stuff!

Good morning to everybody in the world of White Flame and sorry that there has been so long silence. To be honest, even there’ve been lot of stuff to do we are lazy people to write. Well, but now I’m glad ‘cause the mixing sessions have been finally started. We did lot of recordings between August and January. As we told earlier we worked with sixteen songs and now fourteen survived in the mixing room.

There’s still missing horns, but we will record ‘em in the next week and after that ALL THE TRACK IS DONE! Well, I can’t believe that.. ;)

We’ve spent so many hours and days in the Deerhouse studios, specially me and Vince, but I can tell you that you will hear why (at least I hope you can) and it was worth it. Now we moved back in the Seawolf studios where the final magic happens. The mixing, post-producing, all the little hooks you know and the mastering. The biggest problem will be to decide which songs end up in the album and of course the singles. Anyway during this month we have a completed master tape in our hands. And let me tell you, that’s cool! I’m so happy! I can’t wait to introduce that new shit fo’ U! The art work is move ahead really great and we have the title of the new album, excellent! Unfortunately You and we still have to wait the releasing date a little while, but don’t be worry, you will hear it pretty soon. Stay tuned!

Okay and now little bit technical information ‘cause some of you might be interested how I do the guitar parts in the album. The basic setup was almost same that in the Yesterday’s News album. Stereo guitars (L&R) is taken with two different guitars, amps (Laboga, Mesa) and cabinets (Laboga, Marshall) with the three microphones which are pretty same in the both setups, usually =). Of course there’s a lot of variations like gain rate, pedals before amp (like boost, compressor) and sometimes different preamps, but usually when I started the guitar parts I do these main rhythm guitars first. Basic White Flame rock songs needs humbucker pickup, so I use pretty much different LesPauls in the basic rhythm parts. Jem’s Dimarzio pickup sounds very good too, specially with LesPaul so I used Ibanez also. If I remember right I used more different LesPauls in the Yesterday’s News album and now I replaced another LP track with Jem. Well anyway the setups etc. are introduced in the end.

This time I fell in love with the Fender Stratocaster so I play lot of tracks with it. In YN album there was clean/low gained Telecaster tracks, but now I found so brilliant sound with the Strat. that I used it pretty much in rhythm parts and solos. Mostly I like to use LesPaul and Jem in solos as I did. And everybody who has record with LP knows the troubles with fine tune, so when I fucked up with that, then I use PRS. They are something that you can trust with that kinda of problems, so I played some lead stuff or solos with them and little x-tra tracks. Slide stuff I did with Tokai LP and all the acoustic parts with Cuenca. Some freaking with guitar synthesizer and cool double tracks with baritone guitar, that is lot of fun!

In my case I like that there is two perfect main sounds and guitars. It’s also important thing to make recognizable basic sound for the band and of course for my self. By chancing amplifiers, different sounding guitars and put it along with other elements I can make more interesting and bigger sound, I hope. Okay, sometimes it’s good to remember that you don’t have to do the “guitar wall” in every song or from the start to the end. That’s why it’s good to mix different setups.

You thank your self if the recorded sound is already that good that you don’t have to fix it in the mix. Of course we cut the “bad frequencies” etc. to make it fit, specially ‘cause we have a bad obsession to make so many bg-voc/choir tracks, guitar tricks, keyboards, horns, strings, percussions what ever that sometimes it’s a challenge to mix it all together. The main equalization and sound is the balance of the three microphones. It’s important part of the sound. Then there’s is a 6 or 4 band EQ with Low/High Pass Filter and some tracks will go trough the external three band compressor. Some extra tracks or solo tracks are taken only with two microphones ‘cause there no need to make it so large.

In the mixing process we also do the final delay, echo and special effects. Some of them have done already in the recordings, but specially the delay/echo and very radical stuff is more safely to do in the end in my opinion.

For example I love the EH memory man deluxe kinda of delay sound and some tape-delay stuff so Line 6 Echo Park –plug-in or Tel-Ray –plug-in works for me!

Well, here is the list of the equipments that I used in the recordings. If you got some questions in your mind (ok, maybe after you’ve heard the album) feel free to ask.

Now let’s finalize the next masterpiece ;)

Take care, hopefully we all stay health and happy New Year to all of You!

-Anthon

Anthon’s Gtr-Gear in Studio 2008

Guitars:

Gibson Les Paul Custom 1970

Fender Stratocaster 25th Anniversary -54/-79

Ibanez Jem7VWH

Paul Reed Smith Standard 22

Paul Reed Smith CE24

Tokai LoveRock Les Paul with Seymour Duncan pickups (slide tune “A”)

Danelectro Baritone Guitar

Cuenca NW 10-elec. acoustic guitar

Ibanez X-ING IMG2010 Guitar Synthesizer Controller

Epiphone Boneyard Les Paul

Harley Benton HBN100 (Dobro)

Amps/Cabs/Mics:

Laboga Mr. Hector

Mesa Boogie TriAxis

Marshall JCM 2000

GT Trio 25^th anniversary silver edition

ENGL Tube Preamp

Groove Tubes RF-1 Soul-o-series. (Shure SM57, Sennheiser MD-421)

Mesa Boogie SIMUL 295 Stereo

Marshall 1960TV cabinet (TSM Ribbon, Shure SM58, EV N/D468)

Laboga 4x12 celestion vintage 30 cabinet (EV N/D468, AudioTechnica AT4060, Shure SM58)

Pedals/FX:

Roland GR-300 Polyphonic Guitar Synthesizer

Roland GR-700 Guitar Sunthesizer

Roland PG-200 Programmer

Solton Cathedral Echo Model F-300

VOX Bber the Top Boost, cooltron tube techonoly.

VOX Snake Chermer Compressor, cooltron tube technology.

BBE Mind Bender

MXR Phase90

Morley Bad Horsie 2 Wah

Dunlop Cry Baby wah

Boss BD-2 Blues Driver,

Boss TR-2 Tremolo,

Boss CE-3 Compressor/Sustainer,

Boss GE-7 Graphic Equalizer,

Boss TU-2 Cromatic Tuner,

Danelectro Free Speech TalkBox

Dynacord Tam 19

Pics:

Guitars, one missing.

Main amps! Secret of the sound: Mamba ticket!

GT compo, we did some very cool 70's stuff.

Guitar cabinets and mics.

Some Guitar Synth stuff, freaky! And used pedals.

Long echo.. we did nice backround harmonies.

Trough Vince's lens

2008-10-28T18:27:00.032+02:00

I had a camera with me and once in a while I remembered to snap a shot or two. Most of them are shaky but at least some are useable and not filled with passing genitals. Have fun checkin' us nutjobs out, eh!

This here is a VW Sprinter, The Bang Bus or "home". That's where me, Jony(pic), Anthon and Sammye spent two weeks while we rode trough various euro-countries playin' shows in pretty much all of them. A Sprinter is...well cozy enough even for four guys for such a long time but we had to fit a few extra members as well.

Some of You might recodnize this charming character from behind the mixing table at our live shows. You can call him Markku. We call him a bunch of names but I don't think he'd appreciate me writing them here.

Say hi to our driver Jusu. It was his first time driving round rock hippies, but he managed to keep his sanity. Jusu also did a fantastic job with selling our merchandise.

And finally, this is Niina, or "Mami" as the crew called her. She took care of our daily routines but also managed to fit in a jäger or two.

We tried to use our time in the car wisely, so often one of us was trying to put their hair in order...

...alltough it did go horribly wrong while driving on the bumpy roads in Poland. (Poodle, Hah!)

Ahhh, good Ol' Sammye! He was very popular with the females over there in Central Europe. Perhpaps it's his way with (german) words that gets the fans all worked up. He did more authographs and is now featured in more MySpace profile pictures than the rest of us.

Usually after the shows I was soaking wet and totally beat. You should've seen the bruises on my feet after all that mic stand kickin' and knee droppin'!But me and the bro, we had a little secret...

Are you sure that's Lovex and not White Flame?

Or is this Lovex?

Now THIS is White Flame!!

Oh yes! Miss You we will!! It was a long and exhausting journey but we had

Cool shows(I'm in the crowd BTW)...

...tasty and nutricious food and drink...

...new (and improved) frindships..

... and even reuniting some siblings. All in all that was time well spent. After two weeks of constant travelling and doing shows it was time to head on home. But first we got some packin' to do since half of our stuff had been riding in the Lovex bus.

You got that last piece? Good, let's go home now?

PHEW! What a ride! Have as back real soon now! For pictures that actually include me(and maybe the others too), go to Myspace and check out pics sent in by all of You wonderful Flames and Flamettes!

Cheers! Vince

Vocalist's log, rockstardate 5.8.2008, 10:39

2008-08-05T10:37:00.003+03:00

So here I am, fresh out of the shower with a cup of coffee and a keyboard. All I would need now is some crushed pineapple and curd and I'll be set.

It's day two here at Seawolf studios. Or day three, as we arrived on sunday already. It would seem to be that whenever we make an album me and Jony must travel to the scene together. Just like last time, I watched aside as he packed his VW Golf with drums and guitars as well as our personal stuff. Well, at least we saved some space since we didn't have that big Nokia bag I used to carry around. This time I only took a backbag. Oh, and my PS2.

Yesterday was the first day of recording. We are doing Jony's parts this week. It's just me, Jony and Anthon here, with Petri Majuri pressing the record-button. We got off to a good start, waking up around 10:00(Yeah, I couldn't believe it either!) and pretty much starting right away. I think it helps alot that we are doing the drums the same way as last time. Jony and Petri had no trouble in finding a satisfying tuneup for the drums and setup for the mikes. The only thing we went back to adjust was the tone of the snare drum. But It's safe to say that everyone is pleased with it now.

No matter how You prepare these tunes, theres always some new crazy shit You come up with once that rec-light is on. It's only when You hear the actual tracks with a proper sound that You can notice if something is missing or something could just be like a gazillion times cooler. Poor Jony's had so much to remember in just one day that if he'd have to do them over today he wouldn't know what goes where. But luckily me and Anthon get to mess with his head with completely new stuff today.

Well, I should be going now since I hear some banging(although I can barely hear it over Kakko's powermetal voice) coming from our headquarters. They can't possibly manage without my snotty remarks and stupid ideas.

White Flame Blog

2008-08-02T18:32:00.000+03:00

Finally White Flame has their own BLOG! Here you can read texts written by band members and get information what really happened there where the band were. This can be very weird thing to read and you do it by your own risk.

Be carefully 'cause this can ruin your mind forever!