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What can I say,
after risking life and limb to get to York in torrential storms we're
greeted at the pub door by Sign's tour manager James from Riot
Promotions. We're quickly ushered round the corner to the tour van
which stands in complete darkness, no lights, no signs of life inside.
James warns us that the band have journeyed further than their earlier
naked post-gig folk dancing and are now traveling totally naked for
most of the tour.
A quick check reveals the band have remembered we're coming and have put
some clothes on to save any blushes (ours not theirs). We journey
to the chill out area where the band sit merrily around a small coffee
table festooned with bottles of alcohol in various states of consumption
(at least I think it was all alcohol!) and candles, which tastefully
highlighted the porn posters festooned around the walls.
Touring
The band are no strangers to these shores and are half way through their
current tour when we catch them for an update on how it's been so far.
Zolberg - Well so far we have been in for
one hell of a ride. You just couldn't imagine how it's been,
there's been so much crazy shit going on, there has been a lot of
nakedness involved and a lot of drinking. Eagle - Ah yes
there's been a lot of good times and a lot of good music. There's
been a lot of nice gigs. (The
Mexborough gig had over 250 screaming fans turn up and let's just say
they weren't afraid to go mental ... I still have the bruises to prove
it!).
Zolberg - When on day one of the tour it
didn't begin very well. When we landed in the UK because no one
knew our lighting engineer was coming along with us, so there wasn't
room in the car that was picking us up and all the gear and stuff.
So we had to hire a new car which cost us a lot of money. Then we drove
back to Rob & Donna's place in Yorkshire and they looked after us.
Eagle - We hadn't slept for the whole night before so we were very
tired. It was good to go there and relax and recharge our
batteries. Then the actual tour started, our first gig was in
Leeds.
Zolberg - Yes it was a good gig in Leeds (Rios), we had some
people came down to see us all wearing their Sign shirts which was great
to see. Eagle - Yes it was good to see a lot of both old
and new faces in the crowd. Zolberg - We'd played the
same venue before but in the larger room with The Wildhearts on the last
tour. It was very cool playing the same venue only a couple of
months later but this time as the headliner. Having our own tour
bus as well has been great.
Eagle - We've toured in smaller vans in the past and it's not so
good trying to sleep at night all crumpled up in a pile.
Zolberg - Our promoter James's wife toured on the bus with us to
begin with and tidied up after us, that was great. Eagle -
We've been broken without her, good job we have not switched on the
lights! Plus there's no one here to shock any more. You
shocked Michelle? Eagle - Yes
you'd be surprised just how much we can shock people. James is
really cool, he just goes with it. Some of the Teenage Casket
Company guys are really scared of us, they just go to bed really early.
Zolberg - James has told Rob Wilde that we are going to rape him.
He actually believes that we might be able to do that. Yes we have had
our penis's out in the air an awful lot of times. Eagle -
Yes we have been naked most of the time. It's the same as when you
get to a hotel room the first thing you do is just take all your clothes
off and just jump on the bed. It's been like that for almost a
week now on the bus. The fun never stops, we're always inventing
something to do with our dicks. (I
did actually hear from another source that at one point Rob woke up to
find the whole band butt naked standing over him pointing their penis's
at him, which probably did not do anything to calm the rape rumours at
all).
Eagle - Well James kind of told us off
last night because we were shoving them into the back window showing the
lorry drivers. James said if a policeman drove by and saw us he
would stop us and we would be deported, which wouldn't be cool at this
time. (Can't you just imagine the
field day Kerrang would have had if the band had been deported!)
Zolberg - As the days have passed we have progressively become
more hammered and more naked. Yes
we know all about your naked folk dancing after the gigs!
Eagle - Yes that was at Mexborough. We were just singing our
national Icelandic folk songs with socks on our cocks as you do in
Mexborough. Zolberg - Well Michelle, she decided to join
in, she took her top off and did some dancing with us. Eagle - Michelle
is cool.
Eagle - The Mexborough gig was really good though, a lot of
people turned up and got very sweaty with us. It was one of the
best gigs I have done in my whole career. So we decided to
celebrate and we had the naked dancing. There was also some vomit
involved that night. Zolberg - Disarm were vomiting too
then they came on the bus and passed out.
How many times have you been over here in Britain?
Eagle - This
is our seventh time in Britain, we've done a lot of one off gigs before
we started touring. We did the Barfly in Camden, London ... Zolberg
- This is the fourth full tour we've done. We've toured with The
Answer, Wednesday 13, The Wildhearts and now this is our fourth tour.
Eagle - Last Summer we also did the Middlesbrough free festival
which was great. Zolberg - Each time we come back the crowd
gets bigger and bigger and we see some familiar faces which is great.
Actually it was at The Wildhearts gig in
Newcastle that we first saw you guys live. Zolberg
- That's a nice big venue, nice people. Eagle - Ah The
Wildhearts tour, we weren't allowed to get naked on their tour bus.
They didn't want any jizz on the curtains. Now it's fine because
we have our own bus. Zolberg - Well we have this thing
going on though where no one is allowed to jerk off on this tour at all.
On the bus or in general? Zolberg
- In general. And if someone does then the rest of us are all
going to jerk off and cum on him. So
... no one's jerking off! Eagle
- The balls are getting really big
though.
Zolberg - Each day we are getting more and more horny and all this
porn is not helping at all. Eagle - We love English vile
porn, it's just horrid some of it. We started by buying fancy nice
girl porn then James starting buying some filthy porn with 70's old
ladies in and stuff, it was horrible and yet so intriguing! You
did not want to look but somehow you just couldn't stop looking at it.
Zolberg - You'd say ... what is that? How come ... I've never
seen one of those do that before!
The band have been together for 7 years and have already toured
considerably, quite an achievement from ones so young.
Eagle - Up until the last couple of years we'd only done some tours
in Iceland. Zolberg - Yeh over the last couple of years
we've been touring further. We've come prepared for maybe 20 years
playing music. Eagle - We've played Britain, America,
Canada, all around the Continent, in Europe we've done Belgium and
Holland. That's
quite a lot of touring for such a young band like yourselves to have
done so soon.
Zolberg - Well when you're
played in Asia or Russia, then you know you've fucking made it. We
want to tour the whole world. We want to tour places that no one
has even heard of. Eagle - We'll tour Babylon. Zolberg
- Ok, but then we need to play Atlantis. Eagle - Yes and
then the Bermuda Triangle. Zolberg - Actually we should go
down to the actual centre of the earth and play there. Eagle
- Yeh I hear it's great there! Well
I think you'd love it there because I've heard it's really hot and you
can take your clothes off all the time!
You guys will be headlining the infamous
Trashstock Festival in Nottingham this Saturday. How are you
feeling about that?
Eagle - We are all very excited about this although we have no
idea what to expect though. Have
you not played Junction 7 before?
Zolberg - No, we've never been there, we've only played Rock
City. It's a
really cool place to see bands and it will packed and probably very hot
and very sweaty! I think you
will all enjoy it very much.
Zolberg - There's
a lot of cool bands playing that I'm looking forward to seeing. Eagle
- Yes it is a shame we can't be there on the Friday as well to see those
bands as well. It's a good bill both days.
Zolberg - The next day after the festival we will be playing in
Doncaster at the Gay Pride Festival. That will be fun as well.
Eagle - Maybe we should put on some costumes and stuff and show some
support. If
it's not too personal a question to ask, which way do you guys swing?
Eagle - Which team do we play for you mean? Yes.
Eagle - We are not up-hill gardeners, we are just very open
minded. We all have girlfriends back home and they said no
cheating!
Zolberg - Well I had my first shower last night. That was
the first shower I'd had since we left Iceland. It's only been a
week though. I am SO glad I came
to join you today! (laughs) Eagle
- We thought we'd have to call the fire department. We took the
shampoo and we made him clean again. One time we were on tour and
after two weeks we were all nagging him to change socks, so he came out
with clean socks on but he still smelled awful and when we checked he
hadn't taken off the dirty socks, he'd just put the clean ones over
them! He is so bad. This tour we are not wearing clothes most of
the days so it saves on the washing and the dirty clothes so that is
good. We are maybe only wearing clothes for two hours a day and
then the rest of the time we are naked.
Zolberg - That sounds very unnatural but it's not.
Eagle - No you see we're brothers, we grew up naked with each other.
Zolberg - That sounds even worse now. Our parents are
hippies. It's just a lot of people are afraid of being naked
because they think it's wrong, but I don't think so. I think it's
perfectly natural, it's healthy. Eagle - It is natural to
take the little fellow out for some fresh air and a walk. So
this tour you have had a lot of nakedness, a lot of alcohol, a lot of
good music ... and a lot of porn. And you young man wear your
socks for far too long then put them places you shouldn't!
Zolberg - This tour has been so much fun though, we have had so
many laughs on it. Eagle - We broke a table. You
broke a table? Eagle -
Yeh Homer was peeing in a bottle while we were driving, he was crouched
down on his knees peeing into the bottle and then a car pulled out in
front of the bus, so we had to brake suddenly, and Homer just flew over
on to the table like Superman with this bottle and they went down the
aisle. He just laid there flat on his tummy and the bottle he'd
been peeing in was on the floor and was going all over the place. Zolberg
- Oh we laughed for so long after that happened. Eagle
- Yes and he was all bruised all over his front after that.
The table was just lying flat with the legs laid out the sides
flattened. It was so funny. Zolberg - It was the
funniest thing I have ever seen in my entire life.
Swiftly moving on ... have you considered when you will be coming back
after this tour? Eagle
- Well when we get back we will be finishing off our new album and
then release it in Iceland and online. Zolberg - Hopefully
we'll get to gig on some tours after that. Eagle - It all
depends on how much you British people ask for us. If you want us
we're here. Heimer - Naked! Eagle - Everybody
wants to be naked and famous man! Everybody wants to be just like
me, I'm naked and famous! Zolberg - We're having such a
great time we really don't want to have to go back home.
What can you tell us about this new album?
Eagle -
Well it's already written and recorded. Zolberg - It's
almost finished, we've been working on it for two years and we're
producing it ourselves and mixing and recording it all. It has
cost us a lot of money because when you are doing something yourself
it's very hard to be objective. We've been working on it for two
years and every day when we wake up we go to the studio and do things
with it. It's going to be really great when it's finished.
We have eighteen tracks recorded already, that's eighteen tracks out of
maybe sixty that we had written. Eagle - It's going to be
hard to cut it down to fourteen songs for the album.
Zolberg - There is a theme, a story attached to the album, the songs
are all very emotional, very beautiful, angry, it's going to be a little
bit less 80's hair metal than the last one, that's not the kind of thing
we're going for. I think maybe it sounds more mature because we
have matured. I think you'll like it. Do
you know what you're going to call the new album yet?
Zolberg -
Yes, 'The Hope Of Sign'. Heimir - Or maybe 'The Naked
Truth'!
Tattoos
Throughout the interview I can't help but admire the tattoo's the guys
have and ask them if there's any stories behind them. Eagle starts
us off by telling us about his tattoo's.
Eagle - I have some shit tattoos, well actually I have just one
left as I managed to fix the others. My friend and I decided to
buy a tattoo machine when we were 16 and that was not such a good idea.
I would recommend to all the kids never buy a tattoo machine, unless of
course you have a bald dog that you can do whatever you want with, or
perhaps an old grandma.
(To this the band burst into hysterics and ask just what it is that
Eagle has been drinking this evening).
Zolberg - You ended up with something like 3 new tattoos in one
month! Eagle - Yeh it was something like that. My mum
wasn't very pleased. She liked the first one, the second one she
said was OK, but by the third one, she said ... "What are you going
to do with yourself? Do you have some mother issues?" ... but I
kept on although after that I went to a professional. Well at
least I thought he was a professional when he showed up. He told
me to come see him on the Monday morning so when I got up and walked
there there was no sign of him anywhere. That went on for a couple
of months until he did the outlines. Then I had to get another guy
to finish it because he never showed up. But it looked good and it
was a big one too, a Celtic dragon.
Zolberg - We all have Viking type tattoos. I have magic
runes on my arm, it's a love charm, that's my favourite one.
Heimir has a celtic design on his arm. His guy drew it on
freehand. Heimir - Yeh it was done freehand, which was
cool. That was really brave of you
letting him do that!
Zolberg - A.D. has a raven. A.D. - Yes so do you!
Zolberg - He also has me on his neck when I'm dead, the skull
with the face paint. I also have that tattoo as well on my wrist
and Eagle's going to get one done too. Eagle - Yeh but I
haven't had time yet. Maybe we should have had it done today as
there was a nice one up the road. If we have any more tattoo's
then we're going to be like 'Tatt-udes'! Zolberg - Yes
we're going to be like old men with long hair and all covered in
tattoos. Eagle - With black suits and white hair? Or maybe
just naked old men? Do they have alternate retirement homes?
With this imagine engrained
firmly in our skulls the bands tour promoter James pop's his head round
the bus to tell us it's time to get back to the venue and with that we
head off for more beer and look forward to the gig ahead of us.
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