I Exist - Tour blog 3


Overnight drive from Sydney to Brisbane, with an early morning stop at the big banana.


All ages show afternoon show at the fort in Brisbane.
Jake Willoughby took this photo.

Zaca's new band Promises played their first show.

Adrian Kelly joins merch band I Exist as the touring guitarist, and 7th member. While Aaron was teaching Kelly the songs backstage Matt Fox of Shai Hulud decided to learn '333' and played it with the band two hours later on stage at this show, I didn't take any photos of this but video of it will show up at some point.
Jake Willoughby generally refuses mic grabs, but it's not uncommon for him to just walk away when over powered by a group of kids singing invert the sun.

Shinto Katana

Shai Hulud 

This show was the worst of the tour in my opinion, not a horribly bad show, but compared to the rest it just wasn't as much fun, mainly because of the lack of crowd participation during Shai Hulud.

End of Tour


The tour was great. Every band killed it every night. Final show at the Sando sold out and was one of the best. Obviously I didn't put up many tour blogs, finding time and decent internet wasn't as easy as I'd hoped, so over the next couple of weeks or so I'll hopefully get all the photos from all the shows up. A couple of people had
to leave before the crew photo was taken; Jake Willoughby and Josh Nixon, and probably some others I've forgotten, sorry.

I Exist - Tour blog 2


Ollie sings for Fixtures and is on the tour selling merch for Shai Hulud and just being a creep in general.
 But seriously Fixtures are really good, especially for a bunch of high school kids.

Hand of Mercy 

Before Josh 'JJ LaWhore' Nixon joined I Exist he was used to playing to bars full of drunken death metal fans in Blood Duster and Pod People, and I doubt he had ever actually played a youth centre show before. I've since been told Josh played to 1000 kids at civic youth center in 1990, when I was only four years old, so what would I know. Over these years he has honed his sarcastic metal stage presence to a fine art, something which went over the heads of most the underage crowd. "Who's this old dude flashing the horns all the time?" Josh went home after this show, he doesn't usually tour with the band so it was cool for him to do these shows, he'll be playing the Queanbeyan show on the 19th of May.


Jake was nice enough to let a small child named Caed sing the "woman" lines in the song 'Temptress'.

Shinto Katana had two car crashes this day before the show, no one was hurt, but they were all pretty pissed off as you'd expect. This didn't affect their live show, playing as heavy as they usually do and getting more kids to mosh than any of the other bands.

Shai Hulud are some of nicest american's I've ever met, I haven't really met many americans, but they're definatley not arrogant rockstar stereotypes.

The first show at Hot Damn was great and this show was just as good, different crowd, different atmosphere and the audience was really into all the bands. Shai Hulud ended their set by telling us they would play a Miles Away cover, but then playing Linoleum by NOFX, funny guys.

During this show while some of the other bands were playing Aaron took some time to teach Adrian Kelly, Phantoms guitarist, how to play a bunch of the I Exist songs. Kelly was jumping in the van to come along to the Queensland shows and Aaron had a spare guitar so why not teach him a full set in one night and expect him to play two shows the next day. It was hilarious watching these two play un-amped electric guitars outside under some trees lit only by the moonlight. Immediately after the show we drove overnight to Queensland.

Before the show I Exist wandered around a bit in newtown and went to a guitar store, then played some frisbee. We didn't do much at all this day.
Jake took this photo

 Jarred took this photo