The Tour that Almost Didn't Happen

Patreon family! We're back from the first leg of the Nine Inch Naans tour (India, Japan, EU, UK) and BOY do we have stories for you!


First off, we have to wholeheartedly apologize for the silence here. Believe it or not, we've been battling impossible odds for a few months now and almost every day started with a punch in the gut. Here's a list of just a few of our worst nightmares coming true:


1. 10 days before the start of our tour 2 of us tested positive for COVID (thankfully they recovered just in time)

2. An overzealous ground staff officer at the Delhi Airport did his absolute best to stop us from boarding the flight to Japan just because there was a trivial spelling mistake in one of our negative RTPCR tests (he held us up till the was sure we'd miss our flight, obviously underestimated how fast we could run)

3. Our UK Visas did not arrive until 12 hours before our flight (we had to pull MASSIVE strings to make this happen. Even though we had applied 3 months in advance, visas in the UK are chaos right now. Thankfully, the Ministry of External Affairs of India got involved and helped us secure the visas right on time)

4. We were stopped at the Dover port by customs since our carnet wasnt properly filled by the officials and Delhi airport. They wanted someone from the Indian Customs Office to send them an email saying they made a mistake filling in our carnet at 7 in the morning India time. To make things worse, it was a national holiday in India on that day and we had a show in London the same day. Dont even ask how me managed to pull this one off.

5. HALF of our merch and vinyls were not delivered to us. Thankfully, we've located them - they're at a warehouse in Netherlands and we have no clue what to do about them yet.


Combine all of this with the impossibly long drives and lack of food and sleep and you know its a perfect recipe for disaster.


HOWEVER, we managed to play each and every show and absolutely slay all of them! Credit goes to the man with the biggest balls in the whole world - our driver, Colin. Of all the people that made this tour happen, he deserves the most credit.


Now, on to the good parts!


1. Fuji Rock Fest - Oh, Japan! It was everything we ever dreamt of. The food, the hospitality, the PEOPLE. Needless to say, it has become favourite place in the world hands down. The stage was in the most beautiful setting possible - overlooking lush mountains and grasslands. We opened the festival and even before gates were open, the Indian flag emerged. 




Shout out to the lovely dragonfly that rested on my flute mic stand during soundcheck.




We had the time of our lives playing for the amazing people of Japan. Their energy was explosive from the first to the last note we played and the livestream was attended by 22,000 people! While the standing instructions of the festival were that the audience arent allowed to shout or take off their masks during the festival (COVID protocols) it still didnt stop them from singing along to our songs and roaring in appreciation after every track.




Icing to the cake - we were actually trending on Japanese Twitter right after our show. How cool is that?

 Here's some behind the scenes photos of what we did later:

Chilling (literally) at the little out-of-bounds river in the festival:




Exploring Tokyo at night:




Visiting the statue of the goodest boy ever:




We cant wait to come back to this beautiful country and people. Psst.. there are talks of a possible Japan tour in 2023!


2. Brutal Assault, Czechia - Easily the most unique place we played at. The festival is inside a fort! It was our first time in Czechia and we loved every bit of it. The fort city was swarming with metalheads and was alive with art wherever you looked. They even had cool catacombs with skull props and depictions of satanic rituals haha! It's an extreme metal festival, would you expect any lesser? 




We were very pleasantly surprised (and relieved!) by how much love the audience gave us. We were of course the odd-band-out being a mixture of 1000 genres of metal but ofcourse the prime being nu and folk while the rest of the bands had never heard of BPMs below 300. Nevertheless, there were no elitists in sight and the audience was more than happy to have moshpits, wall of deaths and even the viking rows for our set! Hell yeah!





3.  Bloodstock Open Air, UK - The one we've been waiting to play for a long time. It was SO worth the wait! Even one of the worst heatwaves the UK has ever seen couldn't stop us or the audience from bouncing for 40 minutes straight! We had the largest crowd and longest signing line of the weekend according to the festival officials and Alan and Vicky were amazing hosts. Vicky even called us the future headliners of the festival! That's quite an honor.




4. Alcatraz Festival, Belgium - Our first time in Belgium and another spectacular show! The festival itself was very well organised and the food and hospitality were top notch! 




5. Reload Festival, Germany - This was our first time playing in the night. While the crowd was amazing and full of energy, we had to cut our set short because the stage was running late. We also had a horrible encounter with an absolute asshole who turned out to be one of the band's tour manager (he thought we were vandalizing the band's drummer's car and told us to "get the fuck out". Needless to say, we did not take any of that shit) 




6. Summer Breeze, Germany - The one that blew us away. We opened this festival to a sea of 30,000+ people who jumped with us like there's no tomorrow. You must have seen that stellar shot from stage of an endless crowd bouncing to Machi Bhasad. If not, check it out now on our Instagram/Facebook, it'll be worth it, trust us! This festival too, excelled at hospitality and catering. Dare we say, their "best omlette in the world" wasnt a joke! All in all, this was by far our biggest show yet and the fact that 30k+ people would amass for our opening set still blows our mind. 










7. Motocultor Festival, France - after out little club show in France back in 2019, we had high hopes for this one. Long story short, we werent disappointed. The crowd had a literally kicked up and sustained duststorm throughout our set. The energy was MAD and we, along with all our gear, were soaked in a thick sheet of dust and sweat. It was the perfect send-off for the tour and we wouldnt have asked for anything else. 



To summarise:

- All the shows were way beyond our expectations

- Every festival we opened had the same thing to say: they havent seen such a large crowd for an opening band in years!

- The three club shows we played (London, Southampton and Munster) were all sold out.. and extremely hot!

- All's well that ends well :)


We hope we made you proud! As always, none of this would be possible without your support. We're sorry once again for not being able to post here more often. Time is something we seem to be forever short on.


We now shift our focus to the US leg of the Nine Inch Naans tour. We've had no time to rest even after returning but this is the life we chose and we love it! If you're looking to catch us live there, here are the dates:


26-Sep-22 Atlanta, GA The Masquerade (Hell) 

28-Sep-22 Chapel Hill, NC Local 506 

29-Sep-22 Baltimore, MD Baltimore Soundstage 

30-Sep-22 Cambridge, MA The Middle East Downstairs 

1-Oct-22 New York, NY The Gramercy Theatre 

3-Oct-22 Chicago, IL Beat Kitchen 

4-Oct-22 St Paul, MN The Turf Club 

6-Oct-22 Denver, CO Marquis Theater 

10-Oct-22 Santa Ana, CA Constellation Room 

11-Oct-22 Mesa, AZ The Nile Theater 

13-Oct-22 Dallas, TX Studio at The Factory


We'll see you in the next couple of weeks with a private Patreon livestream and hopefully I wont completely ruin it with wrong stream settings lol.


Tons of love,

Karan