A few quotes about the Tolmie Hell House

Justin:

New Years party of 2004 was also full of some significant non musical events. Pre party, a chain link gate was bolted into the wall & installed in the hallway. Barbed wire would have been a more fitting decor, but clean up’s a bitch. Some stupid cock kicked a hole in the front door. Run Forest, run! A spitefully tenacious vixen filled 3 empty beer bottles with beer like bodily fluid and left them as strays. Only 1 was recovered. And to top off a night of fun & games, someone turned the kitchen clock radio outside Flee’s room to full volume and set the alarm for 6AM. Sweet drunken shenanigans.

We were having some beers while ripping through a SICK practice & I reached back to the plethora of bottles to grab a swig of Islander. I realized there was a spongy texture I was not expecting in my mouth. I wiped off my tongue on my hand to find a big patch of fuzzy mould. Hell House lesson: It pays to clean out the empties in your jam space once in a while.

Shane:

My main memories of the Tolmie Hell house include alot of blood. First of all would be "Beat your head into a pole guy" from New Years 2000. He spent half of Meatlockers set banging his head against the main pole on the chain link fence. By the time he was done, he had a hole the size of a quarter in his forehead. Afterwards, he went around the party asking people to sew him up.

Another good one was when Cory ran full tilt into the back wall of the house, leaving a dent in the stucco. You could hear the crack of his skull even inside the house. He got up after this, laughing his fucking head off.

Flee:

Probably one of my faves would be on Canada Day 2005. This chick was sitting on top of my neighbours trailer in the driveway, so I asked her to come down off it out of respect for the neighbour. When she was climbing down, the trailer fell over, and she fell down, cracking her head on the bumper of his car. The craziest part was about 10 min later when Mike from Meatlocker came up to me and said "You know, there was someone passed out underneath that trailer".

Another shining moment was from New Years 2000. Meatlocker was on stage, and this guy Claw REALLY wanted to be up there with him. I was standing next to the stage talking to my buddy Luke. So I grabbed the back of his jacket, and for a good 20 min, he kept trying to walk on stage, not noticing I was holding his jacket. The things drunk people do will never cease to amaze me.

But one of the funniest things I remember is nearly being castrated by the chain link fence on Canada Day. About halfway through our set, one of the 1/4 inch supports for the fence broke off, and the top bar swung out towards the stage. About 3 inches different and I would have been singing a few octaves higher that night. Gotta love a mosh pit that can do that.

Evan:

We were recording drum tracks that night but first we had to get the scratch tracks on to the computer. Shane and I started hooking up everything and at one point we needed a bit of light to see behind the DVD player so I flicked my lighter back there a few times. All of a sudden the room is filling up with smoke and I look at Shane just as he says "Whats burning?". There was this cloth underlay just above my lighter that had caught fire and thats the only time I ever thought Shane might lose it. Amazingly enough nothing else got burned.

Luke:

My first time ever playing in front of anyone was at the sick house. Me, Brain, Evan and Bill were jamming on BOS’s gear when they weren’t using it; drinking heavily and butchering some Carcass and Bolt Thrower tunes. We got the chance to run through our stuff after BOS finished their set and took it. Day of, I was sick as a fucking dog and tried to phone and bail. I got three separate people threatening to make my life far more miserable than it already was for the short time it was going to continue. Anyway, I got off the phone, puked, puked again, walked over to Tolmie, sat through BOS, got my dazed ass to the basement and played for the 10 people that were still there without throwing up on any of them. We finished, I walked home, puked, and slept. Fun times.