Ryan can kick Chuck Norris' Ass

Hello!

So we're back home in OC suffering from Jet lag (wide awake at 6 30 am, after only going to bed 3 hours prior) . The past week was simply one of the best in Melee history. We spent three days in Germany since my last post. The days were filled with lots and lots of promotion.

On Monday we went and filmed a commercial for Kabel Eins, cable one, a commercial tv channel in germany. (more info on Kabel Eins, check out wikipedia!). This was our first of hopefully many commercials we get to be in, but it was defintiely a fun experience, full of lots of laughter and us trying to speak in our best pseudo German. We have a clip of the commercial, which we'll post on here soon. The rest of the day was filled with tons and tons of promo. Magazine interviews, radio interviews and acoustic performances for radio stations.. I won't go into detail, because we literally did all this for hours upon hours everyday, leaving us with little to no time to go sightseeing. Which is all good, cuz we still found time to go out and have fun. When we in Baten Baten in Germany, we went out for traditional Bavarian food. Such a cool restaurant, felt like we were back in the 1800's in Germany. Big glasses of Beer, big pretzels, lots of duck, pork, potatoes and amazing dessert.

After our day of promotion while in Hamburg, we went out on the town, taken out by our Warner reps, so we asked to be shown the local places. Actually we first started out at a Smashing Pumpkins concert. I used to be the BIGGEST SP fan growing up, and I have to admit this concert was pretty disapointing. Just didn't seem like their hearts were in it anymore. And of course it was sad to only see Billy and Jimmy as part of the SP reunion.

After, we went to a Metal bar called Lunacy, which we were slightly out of place, but everyone was nice, and had a great time. We then were taken some more places which I will leave up to your imagination haha. All around it was so great to be surrounded by such old architecture. On our drive from studio to studio, we would excitedly see tons castles and old churches. Our last day in Germany was spent at the Warner offices doing more interviews, one I recognized was OK magazine, which is where i first discovered Amy Winehouse over a year ago.

We left for the airport that nite, already so tired, from jet lag, and we had one previous flight to that week, and had driven to five different cities. The airport was pretty cool actually, there's not as much security as in the states, so its a little relieving not having to take my belt off haha.

We've been pretty faithful to only eating whatever city we're in, local traditional food, but when I found a sushi bar at the airport, I had to have some. Oddly enough, as I was sipping on some Miso soup, I got a phone call from our manager, that we got added to Fuji Rock Festival in Japan!! We're so excited to be apart of this after hearing so much the past several years of being a band. It's definitely a dream come true.

We got into Amsterdam in the evening and went and dropped off our stuff at our hotel, which was so cool and had a nice home - esque vibe to it, where the lobby felt like a living room. It was a nice change of pace, since we're in and out of hotels on a daily basis, to be in one that felt like a home gave such a warm feeling. We then went out for dinner in the Light district, for traditional Dutch food, including Bitter Balls, which is the sports watching, snacking equivelent to Buffalo wings. We were then explained the difference between cafe's and coffee shops haha.

Amsterdam wasn't what I was expecting, from all the stories you hear...I had expected it to be kinda dirty and shady, but it was such a beautiful place, again surrounded by beautiful architeture and amazing canals. Everyone was so nice and happy, our in the streets people would be hanging out and kickin around soccer balls. We headed on our way back to the hotel, making a few stops on the way - for some of us - and had a great nites sleep. Although, just a few days ago, we had stumbled upon the Matt Damon and Ben Affleck skits on Jimmy Kimmell and were obsessed with watching them and showing then to everyone we met haha. We got back to our hotel and had to show our friend the videos and of course led to a long nite of looking up funny videos on youtube.

It's such a dream come true to be doing what we're doing, our album isn't even out yet and Built To Last is climbing the radio charts in Germany, Holland and Belgium. Right before bed that nite, Chris ran out of his room, excitedly letting us know, he was watching Mtv Holland's top video countdown and we were Number 1! He even took a picture of it. We all jumped around like big dorks. It's such a weird feeling, but it feels so nice, we have been working so so hard at melee the past several years, that things like this make us feel like kids in a candy store. But it does slightly goes over our heads. Even our Warner rep from Holland said, it's funny, that Melee is the hottest band in Holland, and we don't even realize it. I have to agree because everything feels like a dream and any second I'm going to wake up in the back of our van pulling up to a gas stop on a 12 hour drive over nite to a venue.

We had early lobby call the next morning at 6 30 am and went to 3FM a big radio station in Holland, hosted by a guy named Giel, who is a shock jock similar to Howard Stern.
We then went back to our hotel for many more interviews, and left for the airport to go to Belgium.

Brussels was simply amazing. It was late at nite when we got in and had to do one last radio interview and performance, and then went for a nice, long, relaxing dinner at our hotel. We all went upstairs to pass out, and I laid in bed for awhile just embracing where I was, with the windows open so I could hear the sounds of the city. I had Regina Spektors cd on and fell asleep. (I had never really listened to it before, its so good, definitely check it out if you haven't yet. )

The Next day, was of course full of promotion, and finally our day ended leaving us with our first real nite off to go out and have fun! We went downtown and were in complete shock of everything we saw. It was like we were in medival times. The buildings were so massive and beautiful, it was like a history book had come to life. We picked a local restaurant and enjoyed a lengthy dinner. We then met up with some friends we had made, and went out and bought chocolate to bring back home, which seriously, the chocolate in Belgium is insanely the best ever. I somehow also walked away buying a Belgium flag which is hanging up in my room haha. We next hit up the waffles! So good, unlike anythign here in the states.

Finally ended up at a bar that had over 200 beers. It was such a good time, everyone was hanging out, singing loudly, group chants. We hung out till 4 am, which is completely unlike anything we're used to, because once it hits 2 am, its time to leave the bar.

Anyways, as we were walking down the street, someone came up to me and started speaking spanish, which was really shady, so yelled up to Gabe to come talk to him, and the guy looked surprised that we had someone who spoke spanish, and he ran off. I looked back and saw Ryan struggling with some guy. Ryan said he was holding him down and he could feel him reach into his back pocket and steal his wallet. Ryan then stepping up to the guy and got in his face, which we were all in shock cuz Ryan is the most peaceful dude we know. So he practically pushed the guy to the ground and the wallet fell out and Ryan was still in his face which was pretty bad ass. Chris ran up as well and started getting in the other guys face and thats when Gabe and I saw the guy pull out a knife and we got everyone out of there, and the guys ran off. It was definitely a pretty intense night cap, but we felt pretty alive. And learned that Ryan can probably kick Chuck Norris' ass if he needed to.

We decided to stay up all the way until our plane flight which was at 9 am, but unfortunately our flight was delayed for over 7 hours and we were stuck at the airport. There was a bad storm in Munich , and we even had to go in for a landing twice, because the first time didn't work. So after 28 hours of travel we got back to OC and all passed out.

Here are the release dates for our album in Europe :

March 7th - Holland and Belgium
March 24th - Norway and Denmark
March 26th - Sweden and Finland
April 18th - Germany, Switzerland, and Austria