THE HAUNTED Frontman Is Digging The 'City Of Angels'

THE HAUNTED frontman Peter Dolving has posted the following message on his MySpace page:

"A couple of weeks ago I get off the bus in L.A. All I can see is a dumpster and I know that the walls surrounding us is the backside of Disney reality. The other side of the veneer. Grey bland concrete walls and mexican dudes looking like 'whatever man...,' coming around after clean up duty. The actual House Of Blues, Anaheim. It's Friday the 13th. We get 666 paying guests, and a hundred or so on guest lists and giveaways. You dig. We're close to a thousand metalheads in the heart of Squeek Cheese City. Just about every single motherfucker in there wearing faded worn black metal T-shirts. Proud carriers of our IMMORTAL, METALLICA, SLAYER, MACHINE HEAD, 1349 and LAMB OF GOD logos — shoulder to shoulder with more dudes and dudettes in ALABAMA THUNDERPUSSY, THE BLACK DAHLIA MURDER, TROUBLE, ATHEIST and MASTODON shirts. And we're all there with this 'Fuck yeah!' grin. Moments like this, MANOWAR feels fucking righteous and no I'm not joking. Are we all cool? Hipsters? Down with the new excuse and tick right scenesters? Fuck no! Cool is for assholes moments like this. We're the scum of the earth and we are all there for the same reason. The R.O.C.K. Oh yeah.

"I walk around the Disney shopping landscape with my Mickey-Mouse-holding-a-head-on-a-fork-T-shirt and drink an XL milkshake for dinner. Jonas from SCAR SYMMETRY gets his face painted by one of those 'We-paint-your-kids-to-look-like-cute-animals' stands and looks completely insane and scary for real in his pinkish butterfly face paint job. I do an interview with some kids from some Internet site called Razordolls about music, porn and, I think, sex. It's weird, because I now how it all kind of feeds itself and how we somehow use our disfunctionalities to get by. I don't mind porn per se. God knows my soul is well stained by now, but there's something endearing about the girl who tells me she's a porn model, and how she stuck a bottle up her pussy the other day in a photo session. I hug her and we laugh about how weird it really all is. She and the kid who does the interview say their thanks after some more talk about why good sex is so dependant on trust, lust and respect, and whether I find large or small boobs prettier.

"The next night we play The Avalon, on Hollywood. During the day, more interviews. One takes place in the same studio that Henry Rollins does his radio show, and I know I'm making a fool out of myself during the interview, but it's all feeling unreal and I figure, 'Fuck it, it's the last night of the U.S. tour, we might never come back.' DARK TRANQUILLITY, INTO ETERNITY and our friends from SCAR SYMMETRY all do great performances that night and after the show as I'm slowly landing, having shook hands and hugged, I end up sitting all alone in a really nice sofa on the VIP balcony watching the go-go dancers and the hypered up disco crowd; who, out of the blue, have switched places with the metalheads and HC folks. A taste of rock-star doom, as I'm sipping my Gatorade, feeling the after-show glow carefully turn into fatigue.

"The in-house security personnel treat us with dignity. Professionality and respect. It's something you learn to cherish, spending half your life in vans, tour buses and economy class airplane seats. So again, I felt gratitude. Inspired, and with a sense of humility to the whole scene. Right there in the smack middle of Hollywood, Los Angeles, we meet friends; and yes, REAL people...

"I'm not talking about all 'the other ones' — of course, they were there as well. But the ones with real humanity, who are there with an honest smile and wonder of it all, who with a twinkle in the corner of their eye look over at you and you know right away that they know that you know and for the first time ever in L.A. I felt that 'Ha, this is so cool! I'm digging the City of Angels.'

"Later, round 3 am, me and our tour manager (this skinny really intense guy who always makes me think of a very young Michael Corleone, but with more humour) wave down a cab and head over to the Rainbow. Freakshow Central for rockers. Slightly tarnished and in some ways out of time. To sit there and just watch all these hysterically funny dudes and chicks doing their dance-and-a-prance around the mutually nurtured idea of celebrity and opportunity; eating fried cheese and fries — was probably the most fun I've had in a while. It's disturbed. Completely out of touch with reality and absolutely hilarious. The literal waterfall of verbal diarrhea washing around your head as the crowd like hyenas in heat, racing around the recently deseased carcass of fame and fortune, bloated to double size in the beautiful pacific sun; irreplacable.

"It's not a scene for the faint of heart, it's for those who fully dream life is an Iggy Pop song. And that reality can ultimately be controlled through chemical warfare on the mind, and the heart held at gun-point hanging on the edge of the abyss. Determined minds straight out of 'Lord of the Flies'. Grown men talking about their hair as a treasure. One guy tries getting laid on the merits of ten years in the music business (the enthusiasm!),mixed with haphazardous slip-lipping on who's got the good cocaine, and yes — '... $500 for a piece...'

"2007 is obviously the new 1972.

"Vain, self-absorbed, and so wonderfully crawled up their own asses I watch them feel nothing. All executives and CEOs of their own destinies, with a plan for the game. For some reason I really dig the scene.

"Did I mention the food? It's great."