The Taste of Chaos kicked off with a 12.5 hour flight from Los Angeles to Auckland, NZ. Due to the extreme fear of flying that I and many other members of the group have, there were definitely some drinks envolved. I was extremely nervous about being on a plane for that amount of time... but was surprised at how quickly the time went by. I spent the first 6 hours being distracted by excited banter about Mr. T, the prospect of the planes landing gear not working, drinks and food. The other 6 were spent in a weird dream like state not to be confused with sleep... because there is no such thing as sleep on planes. For all of my anxiety about the plane ride, it really was very uneventful and smooth. We got into Auckland at about 6am and made our way to the hotel to shower up and take some naps. At first glance New Zealand reminded me very much of a Northwest city much like Seattle or Vancouver, with beautiful rolling green hills and seaports. It is such a funny feeling to travel half way around the world only to realize that life is almost exactly the same everywhere you go.

The fist day was spent walking around the great city of Auckland exploring shops and meeting the locals. There was a little city center were about 50 kids all dressed in black were hanging out basically just waiting to meet someone who was in a band, it was
unlike anything I had ever experienced. The level of excitement for the show was electric because most American bands don't ever take the time to visit New Zealand on the way out to Australia. After fighting the jet lag for many hours, I ended up passing out around 9:45pm only to wake up at 6am with a pounding headache and the realization that I was getting sick. I headed over to check out the venue around noon, hung out there for a little and then I came back to download the first episode of Lost season 3.

Fast forward to the important part and the reason we are over here in New Zealand... the show. I haven't been this excited to play a show in a long time. I guess it was the mixture of the first show feeling and playing in front of people that have never seen our band. It was so refreshing to go out on stage and have a clean slate in every aspect. There was no pressure of past performances, no anxiety of any kind, just pure adrenaline. I would say the first show in Auckland will go done as one of my favorite shows in the history of this band. There was just such an inviting vibe to the venue and the crowd, that reminded me of why I love playing music so much. So thank you so much to everyone that came out and check us out, I hope you had a great time.

Next up is a series of about 6 flights and 5 shows over the course of a week in Australia and if it is even a tenth of what Auckland was this is gonna be an amazing tour.