Sara Hammerzmith

Oh wow. This morning started out extremely weird, and heavy hearted. While sorting out the things for my work, I heard the radio speaker announce some bad news for metalheads. At first, I didn’t listen too much – I figured it was just going to be about some band breaking up, but then he announced it.

Lemmy Kilmister, frontman of Motörhead, has passed away at 70.

I… completely froze. And then I sat and stared into the dark for several minutes before composing myself. But I tell you no lie.. Lemmy was on my mind the entire ride throughout the county.

Hard rock and metal lost an icon today. Rest in Peace, Lemmy.

(Lemmy live 2008, on Dec 1, Karlstad, Sweden)

The rest of the day was spent with Nathalie, a good friend of mine I rarely see. We went for lunch and some shopping, catching up about literally everything.

// Sara

Seriously. The days are passing by so fucking quickly. It’s hard to imagine it’s only a couple of days left of this year. Like, what happened? It feels like it was just yesterday I saw SlipKnot live for the first time, or got on the bus to see Amaranthe in Västerås…

These past couple of days has been stressful. I always thought third time would be the charm, but I still had a shift from hell at work. BUT, I am optimistic for today, so hopefully, FOURTH times the charm. I guess we’ll see. The perks of doing a car district is that it’s always warm and I can listen to my music and have a generally cozy time. It’s a long district, distance wise so I spend most of the time just driving.

With that said… there’s so much on my mind right now. We have finally finished booking SlipKnot, and are practically done with Toto, and I cannot stress how GOOD this feels, people! Like seriously. A big stone has left my shoulders.

With all of that said, I’ll now head off to bed.

// Sara

Merry Christmas blogreaders!

I hope you had a good day. My day has been up and down, I must admit. I started off with the workshift from hell, where I wound up in two car accidents on the same day. I curse countryside roads, just saying,

But from there, the day was better. Donald Duck on the television, “Kan du Vissla Johanna”, good dinner, Karl Bertils Jul and then giftgiving. I must say, I appriciate every single person around me who bothers and feels that I’m worthy getting gifts. Seriously, you are all so precious.

Suitcase, The Body Shop and cosmetics are from my family, and the electric drumset is from Michelle. I kid you not when I literally sat and said “no… she’s gone mad” when I realized what she had actually gotten me.  Thank you all, you are amazing!

Later in the night, I gave my aussie-buddie a call where I sang “We Wish You a Perry Christmas” to him over the phone, because it’s simply the kind of thing I do to my best friends. After this, I packed as much Christmas-y things I could and got in the car and headed to Jennie’s.

Where I had… Like.. As if I hadn’t had a rough day already, of course shit got worse. See, I’m not afraid of living things. Like, horses who fights, men who follows me and things like that. But if I’m cranking “Blessed and Possessed”, on a pitch-black evening on a country side road… then I will fucking cry out of fear when the radio all of a sudden goes silent, then cranks out the creepiest of noise and a lady with a monotone voice telling me there’s a pinetree on a road close by. And once she’s done, Attila’s voice took over the car again. I shit you not when I said I cried. I’m somewhat afraid of technology.

Anyway, I eventually made it to Jennie’s, got inside, rumbled around her kitchen and set up a nice Christmas table. We sat and talked about about everything and nothing, she gave me two gifts – two different hats, and they are amazing! One silver sequin, and one with Rudolph. My kind of hats.

After this, we played “Cards Against Humanity” which I won 61 – 28, Sorry Jenz! The night continued on talking about everything and nothing, eating lussekatter, popcorn and cheesedoodles, whining about everything and nothing and ‘torturing’ the cats.

For the first time ever, I think, we did in fact NOT EVEN TOUCH the computers. That was… pretty nice, actually.

I went home earlier than usual because I’m seriously DEAD TIRED. So good night people, and Happy holidays all of you!

// Sara

Todays rehearsal was short, but it went well. Or well, at least for my own accord.We went over like, half “I’m Eighteen” before moving on very quickly to “Highway To Hell”.

I felt a bit rusty, I must admit. I haven’t been to the rehearsal lot for about three weeks or more now, so I actually had to sit and ponder for a while on how to play “I’m Eighteen”. Everyone was waiting and I’m like “hold on. I need to think”. But once we started playing, it all just let go. It came naturally.

“Highway To Hell”. Well, we got through it but I was unsure on a lot of the fills. After the girls had left me, I sat down and closely studied a video on youtube and listened to the song, and I triumphed myself by learning the entire song there and then.

Anna forgot her vegan ham, so she came back after a while where we planned next weeks rehearsal. We will meet up earlier to perfect my playing, it’ll be easier when I can play WITH someone rather than look at a silent video.

Great progress. I can’t wait for next week.

// Sara

Such an Adele phase for me right now. Not sure why, but I’ve really gotten into her lately. I guess “Hello” got to my head after hearing it one too many times on the radio at work.

2015 is really rushing away, and it’s hard to think about the fact that it’s merely 3 days ’til Christmas. It doesn’t really feel like it. I’m not sure why.

Gladly, I’m done with all my giftshopping and the only problem I really have left now, beside the big vegetable soup that is Australia, is my newest CD purchase. I couldn’t decide whether to go for “Blood of the Saints” by Powerwolf or “Gods and Generals” by Civil War, so I went for both.

Only to be greeted by “Blood of the Saints” being “need to import”. Which means, I will probably never see that album. Or perhaps in four months, like I did with that Firewind album that mysteriously appeared while I was at Sweden Rock Festival.

// Sara

Sitting at Jennies after some stressful days at different works. The great thing with being with Jennie, especially when being so tired you can’t sit up is all the laughter. And all the laughter is more than needed right now. I must admit.

Soundwave cancelled. Let down by the most important person in your life. Trying to come up with a new tour after Soundwave cancelling. Figuring out what the heck to do with SlipKnot. You know, normal shit.

So we sit here. And sing “Do you wanna build a snowman”/”Of course I wanna build a snowman”. Joke about friends that aren’t really friends, whine over people who can’t make up their minds and having a headache on top of that. New years will be good I think.

// Sara

So, today came the verdict. Soundwave 2016 is officially cancelled as of today.

Wow. What a time to be alive, huh? You see, it’s so fun. I figured there must have been some reason why we never got around to book hotels or return tickets.

This sucks big time, I must admit. I really looked forward to going to a FESTIVAL in Australia, getting wristsbands, chilling out in the sun with a cold drink between bands, showing the Australians who’s the boss in the pit… You know, things like that.

Things that won’t happen at all. Gladly,we have a bit of a back up plan, and in a TWISTED TURN OF EVENTS, I will, finally, get to see the Quantuum Enigma tour in it’s full, in the most unexpected places of them all. I guess it’s a bit of comfort, after all.

So yeah. You could say our Australian trip took quite the turn.

// Sara

Wow. Guys, I’m truly sorry for the lack of updates. December has been superbusy with pretty much everything, considering Australia is creeping closer and closer by the day.

With that being said, issues have started to emerge as far as Australia goes. And that little detail, is the fact that Soundwave seems to be going nowhere. They not announced nowhere NEAR as many bands as I usually see them having and seeing the early bird tickets are still up, something is truly, truly wrong.

To make things even better, it is indeed confirmed Soundwave won’t go on in 2017, and rumors now has it it’ll be cancelled in 2016. AJ, the promoter, said yesterday that we’d be hearing from him soon enough, as soon as he knows himself, but it all feels pretty dark, if you ask me.

And it’s sort of… fun. Because I can honestly said, I’ve had a bad gut feeling about this trip all the time. But I decided to ignore it, and I figured it was because of out flightroute, or the travel being so long.

Turns out it was about this. All we can do now though, is to wait and see.

// Sara

Seriously, this is probably the best Phineas&Ferb song ever written. No joke. Listening through my Phineas & Ferb playlist and remembering all the gems from this show. This seriously is one of the best shows ever produced by Disney.

The days are running away, it feels like. It’s about ten days to christmas, gladly most of gifts and such are already bought and I have some last minute things I need to fix that I’ll fix on Tuesday since I get off an hour earlier from work that day. And I can’t begin to tell you how relieved I am that the work is about to come to an end. It’s been a good run, but it’s over now, or well, soon. Finally.

This also means this year is about to come do an end. And that feels weird. It feels like it was just yesterday I got on the bus to see Amaranthe in Västerås, or saw SlipKnot for the first time. It’s so weird.

And by that, it also means that Australia is creeping closer. I’m both scared and excited about it, so I guess we’ll see how it all wraps up.

// Sara

Hello amazing people!

I’m sorry for the extreme delay of any kind of update. December is a busy month, trying to pull together things for Australia, working what feels like 110% and trying to study for an exam, all at once, but also trying to figure out what to even bring to Australia.

Decision, decisions…

However – something amazing was announced yesterday. New acts for Väsby Rock Festival includes POWERWOLF and TRIXTER.

I love Powerwolf, as you all know, but Trixter… Trixter is one of those bands I discovered in 2007 that I always cared a little bit more for. That I like better. That I always hoped to see live. But it was one of those bands who were big before, and now are more… yeah. Where all those bands are.

However, I saw that they were booked for a festival in Italy, and I thought I’d try to go there to see them, because seriously, it’s one of those bands I just have to see. Sometime. So when I saw their name at the poster for Väsby… I was on Skype with Paula I remembered, and I just stopped mid sentence. And then I started breathing heavily. TRIXTER. IN SWEDEN. AT VÄSBY.

Now, I am for sure going to Väsby next year.

// Sara