394 days. No more no less. That's how long it was since our last show with PAIN and as a matter of fact we were not supposed to do any shows in 2015 at all! But a good friend of ours convinced us to do this for the Finnish fans as an exception and we agreed. PAIN are officially on holiday in 2015, hehe... The funny thing when it's been over a year, is that most of us haven't met in over a year as well. So getting back together, even if it's only one show right now, is like being back with the boys after summer break in school, and it's all good vibes! Another funny fact is that none of us have played our songs in over a year and as PAIN never rehearse (still hasn't happened with whole band since Feb 2007) it's even more of a challenge to just do one show. 50 shows would've been much easier!

 

So the setlist became the safe choice of songs we knew we could pull off and that we thought most people wanted to hear. Got a few great ideas on my official FB page from Painheads that were included. Then just a few hours before stagetime, when we sat backstage discussing the setlist, we threw in a few more songs just to make it even more "interesting", or living on the edge as some would say :-)

 

Anyway, it was good fun and we all appreciated the great response from all Finnish Painheads! We had loads of energy on stage and we managed to do everything right, despite our long time away. Of course it was some confusion when Peter didn't know which song to present towards the end of the show when we threw in a few more of them, but that's just funny.

 

We flew in late afternoon from Stockholm to Vaasa and were picked up by a van and headed towards Seinäjoki. We had dinner on site backstage and then left to the hotel for some rest. Were picked up by a van a few hours later and headed to the festival. As we were headlining, the stagetime was set pretty late (we started 00:00) so we were not at the hotel until about 03:00 and lobby call was 05:40 so we got ourselves about 2,5h sleep until the same van drove us back to Vaasa again to fly home to Sweden. It must have been the quickest in-and-out journey we've done so far - we only spent 18 hours in FInland and that includes travelling Vaasa-Seinäjoki-Vaasa :-)

 

We all said goodbye to each other again and most of us went home to crash and regain some lost sleep. Well, except our hero David who flew straight to Vienna to do another show with HammerFall... Oh well, he's still young and can pull that off :-)

 

I'd like to thank all Finnish Painheads once again - it's always a pleasure to play in Finland!!

 

//Michael