Well, I’ve been about a bit the last couple of days. Elaine got me settled in at her place before driving me to see “number one son”, Dale. Dale was actually born in Yorkshire, but moved out to Brisbane with Elaine and her hubby-at-the-time when he was a handful of months old. He’s the first of Elaine’s three kids to give her grandkids and the two little girls were both there. Dale dug out his old death/thrash metal collection which he used to listen to a lot. He’s got a recording studio out back and a rather meaty looking muscle car out front. He’s won a few competitions in it, and he’s also a regional and national Thai Boxing champion. So don’t dent his motor.

Next stop was Brisbane centre to meet Belinda and Albert (and a friend of theirs). We had dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the busy city centre. This weekend there was a street festival on with some pretty good bands playing for free. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to admire them as we were heading for a gig we’d paid for.

I’ve been told that The Tivoli is a strange venue for a metal gig, but the usual one had another band on. Having said that, it seemed OK to me. No seats and a balcony for those wanting to just watch. You could even stay in the (bloody expensive) bar and watch the gig live on LCD screens. Funky.

Kill Dry Logic were the first band on, but we missed them. Devil Driver were the main support and also due to play the cancelled Auckland gig. They seemed alright and certainly got a good reception from the crowd. I’d say over half were in there at the end of the gig cheering them offstage. They’ll be back.

Fear Factory were great as ever and thankfully played a longer set than the 40-minute one we had to settle for in Nottingham about 18 months ago. The crowd, however, just didn’t seem to want to get going. Jumping up and down seemed to be fine, but try starting a pit and you ended up in a big empty void by yourself. Bloody soft southerners.

I crashed at B & A’s that night, finally putting head to pillow at 2:30am. Even allowing for the time difference of 2 hours from NZ, that still made for a long day.