Mourning Beloveth Doom Metal / Co. Kildare

And yep 2009 came with the Milestones of Misery tour with our longtime friends Mournful Congregation and Canadian funeral doomsters Longing for Dawn and master of ceremonies come tour manager Adrian Butler our once withered bass player. Three weeks on the road starting in France with Ataraxie and on the second night playing Baroeg with another tour going on Evoken, Isole and Officium Triste, surely one of the heaviest doom bills ever. It was a great night. We hit Finland for the first time and although the shows were not well attended (what underground show is on a week night anymore) we enjoyed ourselves. Some gps monkey driving on back roads through Poland we did make the 3 gigs, just…One of the highlights of the tour for us was Moscow…first time there..and from visiting the war museum, to a packed house of 500 people to the friendly organizers and fans it was just amazing from start to finish…and what a finish…3am walking through red Square drunk……it is what we dream of when in a band…..and we’ll be back. Of course I can’t forget about Lithuania…we were tired, lack of sleep and a lot of drinking does that but again Lithuania was a great show, some great people. And the last night of the tour in Belgium, small biker place Adrian plays the Mountains are mine with us for the first time since Party San 2006….not that we have tears or anything but if we had…haahaa..a special night topped up with some especially strong beer and a cracked head or two.

We finished off 2009 by recording a Nick Cave cover The Weeping Song and outing on own little twist on it it was something we had wanted to do for a long time and it was released through Sentinel on a split with Wreck of the Hesperus taking a butchers knife to Tom Waits. I think we did ourselves proud and it has become a fan favourite… We were then offered a support to Opeth in the Olympia in front of 1000 people, the most we have played to on these shores. Not the best of nights for many reasons mostly with the news that it would be Brians last gig. He had had enough. We tried to persuade him to stay but the man had made up his mind. Not a bad way to end his MB days. Brian; the quiet man… Nobody outside the band knew what he did other than play the guitar but he was that glum adhesive that held everything together and when he left I personally thought that was the end of us and it has taken a bit of adjusting without him. We took some time out and we all realized we still had a lot more to give to this band.