The room is dark and roasting hot and smelling of sweat and spilled beer. 60 people are crammed into a space meant for 20, carrying Killtribe’s guitar player Malik on their hands while he’s playing. A moment before that Gacy’s Threads made singer Thomas drain a whole pint of Guinness, but he keeps on shouting into the faces of the crowd with only a little unsteadiness. It looks like a very good last show as I’m watching it from the safety of the merch stand.

A couple of hours before that we had crawled from blankets and sleepings bags and blinked into the light of a rainy Sunday afternoon, regretting the Jägermeister we have had in Fibber Maggees the night before. The tribe assembled in my living room, and as the Gacy’s had an equally alcoholic night (I personally saw pictures of singer Vance passed out and decorated with Gaffa tape, an Irish flag and having a empty beer box balanced on his head), we had a late start to the destination of the last show of the tour, a gig in Baker’s Place in Limerick, which at the same time was to be the last ever show played there. Multiple Kiltribe-members had told me about their hopes to trash the place…

Upon arrival we were warmly greeted by co-organiser Martin (who also plays in supporting band 3 Hour Ceasefire), who showed us round the 1-bar-and-2-clubs-complex that is Baker’s Place. The one club where we were to play is the one underground/alternative venue in Limerick offering slots to newcomer bands, so it’s very sad that the place was closing down. After a delicious dinner of (again) burgers and chips we set up our little merch marketplace, enjoyed the performances by Shardborne and 3 Hour Ceasefire who warmed the 150+ crowd up to the highest level, and startet plotting our traditional end-of-tour-shenanigans. We finally settled for wrapping up Gacy’s Threads in toilet paper, making Vance wear a pink Killtribe-shirt and shower them with confetti, which all worked out perfectly to the amusement of the crowd and us during the final energetic performance of the 4 boys from Belfast.

Then it was time for the last appearance of Killtribe on an Irish stage. I was a bit disappointed, as except a handful of hardcore moshers in front of the stage the rest of the crowd only nodded their heads in approval during the first three or four songs, but suddenly it seemed they Limerick people realised that it really was their last chance ever to party in Baker’s, and hell broke loose. Killtrieb finally got a wall of death with more then five participants, women in short skirts and high heels dancing along (and singing the lyrics!) to “Shine”, crowdsurfers and three encores as booker Johnny, driver Dean and I breakdanced behind the merch stand while selling CDs and shirts. Mission Ireland accomplished.

After a long final fotoshoot, a long goodbye and a long prank we played on Malik the whole German/Irish tour tross set of to the hotel, we were kept discussing the tour and toasting ourselves for not loosing too much money and only half of out sanity, while Thomas was sitting in the middle of the room, naked to the waist and grinning like an evil Rock’n'Roll-Buddha.

I’ll try to come up with a better reflection on the tour later, but for the moment I’ll conclude with a limerick (!) that Killtribe came up with. Slán.

»There was a young band called the Tribe,
Who went over to Ireland to ride
the back of the drummer
oh what a bummer
Not all of them could fit inside.«