Visit from Germany

Mathias from Germany took a couple of days off to come to Denmark and visit me. It was my first meeting with him and he's a great guy!Mathias is working with Christian metal ministry in Germany, so we've got a few things in common. His main event is the "Hard Rock Halleluja" metal concerts in North Germany.

Check it out on myspace.com/hardrockhallelujah1
This year they're having 5 Christian metal events with bands, teaching and fellowship.

Childhood home

This is the view from my window where I grew up. A village right next to the beach and forest area, with a few fields and only 700 inhabitants. A tourist village with 20-40.000 people on a good Summer.My parents moved here to Fjellerup when I was just born. I lived here the first 10 years of my life. Then my family and I moved to Nepal in Asia for 3 years, which was the very best years of my childhood. Now my parents are living in the same house and it's always a blessing to come home and relax :)

Hanging with the family

I'm now in Denmark where I'll be for a couple of weeks until the 1st of November.
It's great hanging out with the family again! I love my family; and on the other hand I'm really glad that I'm going back to the States again because of my the work there with Sanctuary.
I haven't had any homesickness but I especially longed to hang out with my nephew Jonas! We're buddies!

Going home...

Going home after a niiice and blessed week in California...
Coming home to the overview sight of Nashville by night...But the weird thing is that I've now been here in the States for almost 2,5 month!
Next Thursday the 11th I'm jumping on a plane towards Denmark. The 2,5 month seems like 2,5 weeks or less. Hard to believe that I'm already going to Denmark again, but I'm looking forward to hang out with my Danish Family and friends again!

I'll only be in Denmark for a couple of weeks. Then I'll go to Meltdown Festival (metal) outside of Birmingham, England, the first week of November. Then it'll be Nordic Fest (metal) in Oslo, Norway, the second weekend of November.

And then back to Nashville, TN, after a month in Europe.

Cross over road bridges

YEAH! How cool is that! .....?
There's just something fascinating about the creativity if the roads here: In Denmark we use bridges to cross water..! :0) ...Or cross ONE road.

Great days in California

As mentioned before I had a blast staying with the Emerald families! We were 10 people in the house and had a awesome time together. One the picture below we're metal jamming in the living room. I'm playing Davids black old Gibson:
Youth of the house. Andrew is a great musician. He's cool sister on right and his girlfriend from England in the left of the picture. Good to hang out with a European! :)
..Aaaaand the kitchen were miracles are happening. A great place to hang out and talk. And eat!

Larry & Laura

These two beautiful people blessed me SO much during the whole week in California. Pastor Bob and I stayed at their peaceful house from Tuesday to Tuesday. There was a lot of people in the house but it was such a peaceful and blessed time.
Larry is the vocalist for Emerald and a great guy!
You can't mention Laura without mention her amazing cooking!! I can't even describe it with words :0) She is my substitute mother when I'm in California => not bad!

Thanks for EVERYTHING you guys!

BloodGOOD

This band ended the whole festival by closing it at the Sanctuary Stage.

I'm not a big fan of '80s heavy metal with the big tenor vocals like Michael Sweet's from Stryper or Bruce Dickinson's of Iron Maiden, but I respect those guys and bands for what they've done to the metal genre in the early days, and it was very cool to meet a lot of those people here at festival.

This year the theme for the Sanctuary Stage was the old school metal, to celebrate the 20 years anniversary for the first Christian metal festival in world history, that Pastor Bob and Sanctuary put up in California, named Metal Mardi Grass :O)



Bloodgood is one of the first bands on the scenes and is still delivering a great show. ...And I must confess that, of all the concerts I saw at Cornerstone, they did the most impressive show! They are awesome, cracking jokes all the time, great musicians (though it's not my genre), great positive energy all over stage and they reach fare beyond the edge of the stage! The guitar player from Stryper, Ox Fox, is now playing with the Bloodgood which is VERY good. B-)

...And Less Karlsen is in his 60's!! Awesome energy and very animated! He's the "silver"-long-haired guy on the video (shot with my phone..).

Cornerstone California Saturday

This first year Cornerstone California was a two days festival with heavy tunes on 5 stages.
There was a whole lot of great concerts on Saturday as well!

Emerald, the guys I stayed with, did their concert today. I was told that one of the songs they did they wrote almost 30 years ago. That's old school metal! On the picture below you see the guitar player David whom I hung out with the whole week in California:
Once Dead played at the Sanctuary Stage as well, and they were the band that I looked the most forward to see. Aggressive thrash metal done by musicians from Vengeance/Vengeance Rising, who were the first band in world history to record vocal-growl in metal. And they were Christians... Once Dead pictures below:It was also good to meet Glen Kaiser again. Last time I met him was at Sommer Oase in Denmark 2,5 month ago. And cool to see my friend Jim Laverde play with his band Barren Cross. His band started playing heavy metal in the early 80's. Big hair metal!

Besides the bands at the Sanctuary Stage I also went to enjoy some of metal core at the other stages. This day Showbread, Underoath, Project 86, Maylene And The Sons Of Disaster + tons of other bands played. It was the first time I heard Maylene And... and they were really good! Metal core with a crazy live show AS WE LIKE IT :p

Here's a picture of Showbread at one of the main stages: