Be’lakor – TOUR PRANKS

In this Tour Pranks segment, the progressive death metal band, Be’lakor, share some pranks that have happened on tour. You can check out the feature, after the break.

One of our best ‘tour pranks’ was a completely unintentional one. It was equal parts hilarious and awful, and probably put us nearer to having to disband than any other event in our history!

The year was 2012. We had just finished playing at the Czech Republic’s Brutal Assault Festival. Our party of 8 (five band, three crew) was enjoying the festival, with people splitting up and basically doing what they wanted. It had been a long day and it was getting pretty late. The problem was that we all had to meet up again so that we could get into the van and head back to the hotel.

Collecting up eight guys from across a massive festival ground, when a few of those guys are a little drunk, is not the easiest thing to do.

A certain band member (not naming names… this incident is still too raw haha) had been getting pretty cranky because he’d been ready to leave for about 4 hours already.

When the other seven guys finally located each other, “Mr. X” was nowhere to be found. He’d been waiting for the rest of us for so long that we suspected that he had probably taken the van and left.

To be safe, we asked our good mate and roadie Pete to go and check the carpark for the van. No van would mean that we had indeed been abandoned… so, when Pete returned with the news that the van was nowhere to be seen, we grabbed some taxis and headed back to the hotel. (By the way, if you want a real adventure, try a ride in a Czech taxi going 120 miles an hour down narrow, winding country roads at 2am.)

Anyway, you can imagine what happens next. Upon arriving at the hotel, we discover that our band mate is in fact not there. He’s been left behind. However pissed off he had been at everyone else, we know that we can now multiply that by about 9000.

He spent the next hour getting gradually more and more pissed, first as he realized what had happened, and then as he drove the empty van back to the hotel.

The welcome was icy, to say the least, and by breakfast the next morning, there were still no warm greetings to be exchanged. In fact, mention of this event even now, four years on, may just be enough to tip the victim of this prank over the edge!

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