Chapter IV. Twelve months.
I: IANVARIVS • In the beginning there was a penis. Not just an ordinary penis, but a festive, sparkling one jolly ejaculating with fireworks. It was two meters long, it was made of snow and it stood under a fir-tree. It was the New Year. There was also some Karelian vodka infused on either the oak bark or alder bark (I don’t remember exactly), there was a sauna with a bucket of ice beer and there were the sounds of Onkel Tom’s Christmas album. As a result, at the sunny morning of January 1 there was a heavy hang-over, accompanied with chopping the firewood, drinking some beer (they say some beer in a sunny morning will never make you no harm) and making yellow snow of course.
II: FEBRVARIVS • They also say that you will spend the year in exactly the same way as you met it…. So the year began with the gig in Moscow already mentioned by RayNach, followed by another gig in St. Petersburg 6 days later.
III: MARTIVS • In March we had celebrated the “Twilight of the Gods” radio show birthday. There was Ensiferum. Their session drummer who had a pretty hangover and was in anabiosis during the whole Russian tour and the only sober-minded band member was a girl who played keyboards. Maybe it was since she drunk only water. As for us, we presented our new musician Anna Fukalova, a girl with violin.
IV: APRILIS / V: MAIVS • During the April we prepared for the visit of our Irish friends Cruachan, who, when we met at Moskovski railway terminal, said as one: "Hey, hello, guys! Where can we buy clean socks and t-shirts?" It was Sunday’s 9:00 o’clock, so "Possibly nowhere…" was our answer. Nevertheless, we gathered some socks and t-shirts labeled as "Abibas" and "Ribok" and wended our way to the club all together… As we walked along the banks of Smolenka river, after the long sound check, Keith Fay decided to play with his bassist John Clohessy. So he grabbed the first stuff from the ground he could grab. Unfortunately, it appeared to be neither a piece of stone nor a piece of wood, but a real piece of dog shit, old and ready to petrify. As he realized what is it, he thrown it away and began to search for some coat to clean his hands. That’s why we were ran fast and appeared in club in time. At the evening of this day (and the day was 1st of May, 2005) we played a jolly concert for the crowd of our and Cruachan’s fans. The whole month was full of gigs, and some of them were remarkable. E.g. May 8 we were supported by naked girls. It was a result of our joke at the Fool’s day, when we posted a notice that we would like to see 15 naked women on stage. We really did not expect to find the girls, but they have found us. May 28 we became the winners of the first all-Russia prize Metalheart 2005 as our album Widdershins was voted the album of the year.
VI: IVNIVS • Good work was followed by good leisure. Almost the whole band came to Karelian Isthmus to meet our good friends, lakes and rocks. We did our best but vodka was finished before pike cukes and goose liver pie.
VII: IVLIVS • Another gig was at the airfield of Sivoritsy (Leningrad region). It was the Night Wolves MG Bike-Rock-Fest. We played with support of deadly drunk but still undead mummy made of toilet paper, which jumped and twisted in the spotlights and barred the view of the stage. It was the first performance with Dmitry Yakovlev, now our regular piper and just a good man. As for Alexey A. Redin, he left the regular on-stage cast because of numerous troubles with his cords and switched to the studio works.
VIII: AVGUSTVS • The eighth month was marked with supporting Finnish band Moonsorrow, who appeared to be good and jolly.
IX: SEPTEMBER • September 15, 2005 we took part in a show with another Finnish band Korpiklaani. I was appointed to make an important part of the show, namely to sing an intro of our epic Wolfsangel. Unfortunately, I was too absent-minded that day so I lost my suit anywhere. So I the fans saw me in pants and t-shirt. Excuse me…
Since there was still plenty of space on stage and since there was still nobody to run across it and please the girls, and since we needed one more instrument to satiate the sound, we recruited another musician, Vlad Varnavsky, guitar. Hooray, the vacancies are filled up!
Suddenly I received a message from Keith Fay from Cruachan. He offered us to play and sing the song "Some Say the Devil is Dead" together when they visit us in October. Of course we agreed and offered them to play "Villemann og Magnhild" with us. They also agreed.
X: OCTOBER • Wolfsangel took place in another remarkable venue. It was devoted to the marriage of Dmitri Petras and Iana Nikulina. Here is the detailed story of this date and tour with Cruachan. And here is a short story from Keith Fay:
Hi guys, I’m really busy working on the new album at the moment, it is going really well, and we finally are working with a professional top quality producer. Anyway, I just want to say a few words about the last tour we done with Wolfsangel. We had a fantastic time with them, they are the coolest and weirdest people in the world. We arrived very late in St.Petersburg and entered the venue while the first band was on stage. We never hide back stage, we are always out front with the fans, shaking hands signing cd’s….whatever, we respect our fans and will always do that. We got to see the second band of the show and then had to go backstage to get ready. It was very hectic, I think John Ryan went on stage with Wolfsangel and had a lot of fun. After the show it was back for a night train to Yaroslavl. The place was so cold and the venue had really bad equipment but hey it was a fun night anyway, we had a great time. Next to Moscow. This was amazing, sold out!!! We had a lot of fun in the bus on the way to the show. I kept everyone awake shouting my head off "JULIE!!!!!!!!!!" I paid for this during the day as I was a little hung over. What a show!! We got the Wolfsangel guys on stage at the end and had a good laugh on stage. We then continued for 2 more shows without Wolfsangel which were brilliant and we met a lot of fans there. It was an honour for Cruachan to be the first Irish band in history to tour Russia!!!!!!!!!!!!
regards, Keith Fay
By the way, due to our tour with Cruachan we cancelled supporting hard rock veterans KROKUS, but we do not regret…
XI: NOVEMBER • After this wonderful time we were invited to support TIAMAT at their gig at the Port club at November, 12 2005.
XII: DECEMBER • By December we realized that we are a little bit tired from the live concerts and decided to make a break after headlining the Tarakan birthday at December 17, 2005 at the Arktica club. So it was… We had a long break.
The last rehearsal of the year took place at December 30 and it turned to the general rehearsal of celebrating the New Year. It was good and soon the holiday happened. I celebrated it at home with friends and brothers-in-arms from Wolfsangel and Frosted Glass. We pleased our neighbors with triple playing Annihilator’s "King of the Kill" at the maximum volume of our stereo and left for the forest park to cook some meat. Somebody lost a cell phone, somebody – a gift, and somebody – the last shades of consciousness there. So we headed to the place of my good old friend Ashot Markaryan (ex-Ambehr, ex-Sankt-Peterburg) to continue. Almost dead but jolly I see an old lady on the street. She cleaned the bus stop from snow. I decided to begin the first day of New Year with a good deed and took the shovel away from the old lady. I cleaned the whole bus stop and began to seek for other deeds. So I and S. Sudakov (Bestial Deform, Necrosarcoma, ex-Frosted Glass) found an empty wooden coil of approximately 200 lbs weight and followed our way kicking it. Suddenly I slipped and fell and could not raise by myself… It was intra-articular fracture of the knee followed by two months in a plaster, so I did not need any warm clothes at the cold winter of 2006.
That’s why nobody heard anything of Wolfsangel for a long time. But now everything is alright and we are ready to entertain our friends and fans with new albums and live performances.
Cheers!
Max Znaevsky, May, 23, 2006.