Shihad Tour Diary: Part Three

At first I was like...

Then I was like...

There's been a lot of things happen between these 2 pictures being taken - finish school, join a band, tour the world, move to another country, work hard, become cool, become completely uncool, get good, go bad, forget why it was you joined a band in the first place, remember again, succeed, fail, change your name, change it back again, love, hate, forgive, stagnate, grow again - then to finally realise what an amazing ride it's been and how fortunate you are to have had a dream once as a little inner-city metalhead bogan, a dream you were fortunate enough to share with a bunch of like-minded inner-city metal head bogans, and to have been able to follow it through despite all the people telling you that you were living in a fantasy world and nothing was gonna come of it. get a real job. 

I suppose I would have been about 15 in the first photo. I am now 41 and on tour with Black Sabbath through Australia and NZ, still a massive Sabbath fan (in fact Massive Sabbath was the working title of Final Year of the Universe, the first song on Shihad's last album Ignite) and still completely in love with what I do for a living, which is playing in a rock band.

Watching Black Sabbath play over the last 4 shows I've seen that same love for what they do in every performance. Ozzy's still a little kid, energising the crowd, his enthusiasm totally infectious and still singing like a man half his age. Tony Iommi's guitar playing is tight as fuck, the riffs sounding just as huge and good as ever - his dressing room backstage is next to ours and he warms up for a good 2 or 3 hours before the show - let's face it, he wrote the book of riffs for fuck sake! and there he is right there... awesome! 

Our band name's in bigger font. Winning!

In Sydney I finally plucked up the courage to say hi to Geezer Butler, Sabbath's bass player and, as I found out recently, the man who wrote most of the lyrics to their big songs like War Pigs, Electric Funeral, Paranoid, Fairies Wear Boots etc. (I've been singing these words at the top of lungs for the last 4 nights along with arenas full of other Sabbath fans!) He was a total gentleman and let me stumble my way through telling him how awesome he was and how much his music meant to me. According to Nick, our stage tech who was watching all this going on, he said he saw me turn from a fully grown man into a 15 year old fanboy in an instant. Fuck it. I don't care. Later that evening I got to shake Geezer's hand and wish him luck as he was about to go on. Tour highlight? Yep.

If you were on tour with Black Sabbath, you'd be doing this all the time too.

For the tour we've put together a set that includes 2 songs off our first album Churn (which just got re-released on vinyl for Record Store Day). These songs were written 20+ years ago but are probably my favourites in our show. They are brutal and make me feel extremely well armed for the battle that is being the support act to a band as huge as Black Sabbath. Music's weird like that. When it's good, time doesn't enter into it. Watching Black Sabbath is a testament to that theory. Some of the most potent and effective tracks they play live are 40+ years old. I've been in Shihad for over 25 years now and it's truly an inspiration.

Sydney was great. We nail our show then, as per usual, Sabbath go on and tear it up. 

Allphones is a huge arena and on Saturday it is packed to the rafters with hyped up inner-city metal-head bogans who are loving every second. I was lucky enough to be one of them. 

Metal!!!

Written by Jon Toogood.