So, it’s 11pm Thursday night and James Sherry, Alan Christensen and I are speeding on the M1 heading North to Donnington with the i-POD on shuffle providing us with a magnitude of good tunes such as the new Finch and Hundred Strong albums, We Are Scientists, Interpol, Ween, Circle Jerks, Quasimoto and many more… but we were also hoping that some serious rock would spring up as the thought of watching Black Sabbath on Saturday night made us salivate during the entire journey.
As we checked in and hit the hotel bar that was stuffed full of pro skaters and PR liggers, a haggard blonde geezer going by the name of Billy Idol comes up to the bar where we are standing and says “alright lads, do you mind if I join you?” Pints of cold Murphy’s flowed, pics were taken, and then he promptly fell asleep with his head down in the dregs on the table which brought out bare arses and camera phones in their droves! Have you ever heard the words “It’s Only Just Started?”…well you have now!
Last year, Snickers really went for it and constructed this monster bowl inside the Download Festival and although the event and the skating was electric, the area that it stood in and the set up itself was always going to have to be changed, so what did they do? Well, for starters they dug a monstrous pit that could have housed a demon and then dumped a kinked vert bowl in the middle of it that had its own stage! There was a riot brewing and it was fuelled firstly by legendary skaters such as Mike McGill, Steve Olson, Duane Peters, Kevin Staab and Tony Alva. Caballero did not make the trip due to an accident which was a bummer but with these guys and the entire World Cup Skate crew, it was all set for some serious sessions.
The practice runs were amazing to watch in this bowl. Andy Scott was like a fish out of water and Jeurgon Horrworth’s and Renton Millar’s style is something that you just cannot NOT talk about. These riders have something most skaters’ dream of. But when you are stuck in one area inside this mammoth festival it’s easy to forget that once you are able to switch off the decks, stop DJ’ing and get amongst the metal mania, there is an entire world out there full of people who want to rock with their cocks out all night long until they puke, until they are seriously hurt, and until their ears bleed! Shame that our old bar mate Bill could not come up with the goods live. White Wedding was a blast and we danced like crazy but then new songs and a version of Jump by Van Halen was too much for someone who wants Slayer and Motorhead, so Napalm Death were next in line and that is where we bumped into Powley, Munson, Potter, and G-Money who were holding drinking comps from a 2litre bottle of diet Pepsi filled to the brim with a £6.40 a bottle of cheap as fuck Horsemen Whisky…it is here that the Horsemen of the Apocalypse was born!
Now, for those of you who like to party, you may well have come across Aftershock. This vile looking stuff is potent and is almost an instant party once it gushes down the back of your throat. The tent they sponsored had all sorts of drinking games such as a rodeo lamb, motorised porcelain toilets, sumo wrestling and a crap DJ that we would have burnt off the stage within 2 songs given the chance but this place was electric anyhow. The shots flowed and Powley started getting on one! He was next found at midnight on stage at the comedy tent after booing the paid fella off the stage and taking over the proceedings that the crowd was totally down for!
The 2 litre bottle of Horseman slowly disappeared with most of it down his shirt and the raucous throng egged him on even more. I mean how can u get up there and open it up with…. A bloke walks into a pub with his mate and proclaims: “I could fuck any bird in here I want to!” He’s mate replies “How the hell are you gonna do that then?” “It’s easy, I’m a fucking rapist!”. How the hell he got away with that is anybody’s guess, but with boozed up metallers wanting a sacrifice, he was the lamb to the slaughter!
The Saturday morning was the biggest hangover you could have dreamt of and there is nothing like trying to cue up a record whilst live bands are sound checking their drums and guitars whilst you are trying to hold back the puke! There were a lot of hangovers here, but somehow people were shredding this bowl like it was a mini ramp. The longest grind comp saw a 28ft 5-0 from the ever impressive Brian Patch through a corner of the bowl to scoop $5000 followed by Omar Hassan’s huge maydays.
In the legends session, Steve Olson threw mad carves and power slides in a war helmet, Tony Alva slashed at the coping in his crazy Dog Town style, Duane “Master of Disaster” Peters threw sober invert to smiths, roll in reverts and more proving that he is better in the flesh than in videos. He won $1000 just for being him which will come in handy with new kid with Corey Parks who is in the Die Hunns band with him. Mike McGill brought his classic McTwists, Sean Goff packed Todd Twists and McGill even asked to learn them after seeing Sean rip it up!
Nicky Guerrero picked up on sad plants that he has not done for years, Tomas Madsen skated better at other events, but impressed, Tomas Kring is really starting to push his game forward, he is one to watch for the future with frontside ollie to nosebonks from low to high on extension and amazing fs smiths around the corners of the bowl. Jim the Skin “the man with the best lien to tails in the business” put Cov on the map, 14 year old Ben Raemers stunned the entire platform with a Mute 540 on his second run!
Munson, John Nixon, his best mate Wingy and Blackwell ripped it up with and Benji Galloway’s kick flip indys, and back tails round the bowl corners, crazy bonelesses and tech wizardry won our hearts over. He is officially now riding for Crossfire Clothing. Not bad for our first rider knowing he is the WCS Number 1 right now…stoked on Benji, check the interview on our site this month with footage at Rom, it will blow your mind!
Hey James, what was going on outside of the Snickers Bowl? Well, aside from all of the drunken chaos, lunatic skateboarding and general bedlam, there are some awesome bands playing over the course of the weekend from the hottest new rockers to a handful of absolute legends of rock. Saturday morning I left Zac to DJ and headed to the main stage to check out punk nutters The Dwarves. First time I saw this band the gig ended after five minutes when the frontman Blag was punched into the drum kit and the whole gig ended in a hail of flying instruments. These days their gigs last longer, in fact today they refused to get off stage and just kept pounding out the hits until they cut the power. They’ve got ex-Queens Of The Stoneage beardy bassist Nick Oliveri back in the band and they showed the metal kids exactly how punk should be played.
Later in the day legendary eighties thrashers Anthrax hit the stage and took the older audience members amongst us back to our distant youths with a set of metal classics with vocalist Joey Belladonna back in the ranks. They played fierce and furious renditions of all their best tunes, slaying the audience with the likes of ‘Indians’, ‘Caught In A Mosh’ and ‘Medussa’.
Of course, Saturday was all about Black Sabbath. The greatest band in rock bar none. The true inventors of heavy music. Still the fucking daddies. But first, rock hags Velvet Revolver pump out some of their own tunes whilst most of the audience waited impatiently to hear some Guns n Roses classics. They didn’t let us down, saving the best to last as they hurtled through ‘Mr Brownstone’ – still the best song about drug abuse ever. And then there was Sabbath. 
As the sun came down and the opening slow doom chords of ‘Black Sabbath’ rained over the crowd there was a real moment.
Donnington is right near an airport and the planes come down really low over the crowd day and night. Just as Sabbath hit the opening rush of their self-titled anthems, two planes roared over our heads, the whole audience exploded and the hairs stood to attention on the back of our necks! It was a magic moment and from then on they played classic riff after classic riff, carving through the likes of ‘Into The Void’ and ‘War Pigs’ with the power of men half their age. These guys are nearly sixty for fuck sake! Younger bands watch and learn! Sure, Ozzy’s voice may have been a little off at points but this did nothing to detract from the awesome power before us. All hail the metal kings! Zac will tell you what mental stuff happened next!
Well, how do I explain the carnage that reigned after this gig? We left Dave Duncan and the lovely Jen, and headed for the Aftershock tent with 20 UK peeps, who were all blagged in through the back door to avoid queuing, and 10 aftershocks later, The Horsemen were ready to fully Riot! My shirt was ripped off my back as Powley hung from the tent poles! The DJ was abused so much to play classics, he was forced to find a Slayer record and we started the biggest mosh pit going!
Shirts were all ripped off as The Horsemen charged over 1000 people that spilled drunken bodies, drinks and teeth everywhere. Munson’s voice roared “Keep on going Horseman!” as we flattened anything that moved in sight until the entire tent realised they were out of their depth to 6 of the finest from The Apocalypse! We even bare-backed a fat metaller who hung out with us all night! With his shirt ripped off his back, he thought he was in the club whilst Powley snogged his bird for a photo and then let himself down by pissed himself at the bar without even knowing about it! (I am crying with laughter as I write this!) All I can remember is chants of “This is the early night we all wanted!” from James, and “Let’s burn the tent down!” from Alan.
But it all came to a sudden end when I managed to find a Jacuzzi in the tent full of semi naked people and went stumbling over to check it out in disbelief! I was hovering gently over some ply wood that covered the other half of this bubble fest and was about to fall just as a security guard dragged me in time before I plunged into the dirtiest, festival filled dirty water that would have taken me out! I was of course ejected and all I can remember on the way out was Powley in his piss soaked jeans crying, “will someone please kick me in the bollocks!”
We left that tent in ribbons and somehow a beautiful blonde stranger in a sports car magically appeared and picked us up and dropped us back to the hotel where Tony Alva was fighting off the Law brothers for the second year in a row! Don’t ask me how that happened, I guess it’s what happens when you are a Horseman. James ended the night by spewing up a tasty mixture of spicy Mexican Pringles and After Shock in our sink and I pissed into a fire place at the bar.
Sunday was obviously a bigger mess! We are all pickled to the bone by now with 6 hours sleep across 3 days! Put it this way, if the lights in the bowl had blown, the comp would have been saved by the shining red colour from Sean Goff’s eyes! How he skated on Sunday was beyond explanation! The best trick comp was won by Jeurgon’s fakie 720, the same best trick as 2004 mastered by PLG. Omar came second with a massive fs double heelflip fs air over the elbow, Andy Scott threw in fs tailslide shuv in and a bs tailslide shuv in, in the same run but came 3rd with an Alley oop kickflip board varial.
Renton alley-oop kick flip 5-0’ed. Dave Allen’s alley-oop eggplant on the extension was monstrous and got him into 5th. You are a beast Dickie, that was the nuts mate! Mattias Nylen pulled back smith shuvit, and a meat grinder (where you pop out, spin your board from your wheel and pop back in fakie) I’m sure he was taking the piss but the Swede won dollars for this show! Overall, Jeurgon took all 3 main prizes with highest air at 11.5ft including the main £10,000 pro bowl prize, he cleaned up this weekend and the best thing about it, is that he is a Euro rider. Its awesome news for everyone really but with style like that it was always gonna be that way. Omar came 2nd, with Renton 3rd for the main event. Hey James, what was the highlight of Sunday for you?
Slayer. Say it again, except this time scream it…..SLAYER!! Feels good doesn’t it? Now throw your head back, hold your arms in the air, do the metal salute with your fingers and scream Fucking SLAYER MAN!!! While Sabbath are the masters of slow doom, Slayer go to the opposite end of the spectrum and hurtle along at an almost inhuman speed. There’s something not quite right about drummer Dave Lombardo. The sheer speed and power he can conjure up behind the drum kit propels Slayer faster and harder than any other metal band and this afternoon (Slayer should have been headlining!) they prove themselves to be true legends of metal with earth-shattering renditions of ‘Angel Of Death’ and ‘War Ensemble’. It’s little surprise that Slayer are still the skaters metal band of choice. Skaters like it fast, and it doesn’t get any faster than Slayer. We missed Motorhead but Pritchard & Dainton said they were awesome, lucky gits….
So, to cap this off, you will not find a better skate and rock related festival this year in the UK as this was The Daddy of them all without a doubt. No extreme bollocks, fruitbooters, or happy sac idiots, just plain gnar. If you missed it, then you will have to wait until next year. It will take us that long to recover! Well done to Snickers who provided massive VIP treatment all weekend and worked hard to get this to a superb level. I got home to find slapped man-hand marks all over my body! Thanks Munson you Essex munkey!
Like tattoos they left a mark of The Horsemen clan that would never be removed – and as the saying goes….”We Take No Prisoners and No One Gets Left Behind!”
Zac and James
It was a question of checking in, having a wash and off to the supermarket for a cheap continental breakfast. The meeting place for most of the trip was the infamous Macba. After hooking up with everyone, I was amped on a skate and Fondo was on today’s menu. It was just a good as I remember it! It was a relaxing skate until everyone got hit by the Ben Jobe affect. He surprised all with some unusual skill and his random conversation. We was having a great time til some undercover agents ran the spot down and confiscated a few skateboards. Most of us got away, but a handful got caught and fined. “Oh well, back to Macba it is then!!!”
Las Ramblas was heaving with some of Spain’s most amazing Export material and this meant getting your party shoes on. After a crazy evening of hooch and spading, it was time to head back to my room before I get arrested. It had suddenly occurred to me that I had over done it with the hooch, because I was sporting the shoeless look in search of a kebab at 4am?!? Yep, retard!!!… The morning after was a bad one, but I made it down to Macba with the alcohol pumping through my veins and bloodshot eyes. Got a little lost on the trains as we set off to meet at a spot outside of the City.The urge to get a T-shirt printed with ‘Special Needs’ on the chest was getting stronger by the second as we spent 3 hours traveling in all sorts of directions. It ended up being a good session and the teenage mutant ninja kids, killed this spot. Ross, Rory, James and Josh were on it and it was great to watch them skate this place.
It was heavy to take all of this in, but once back on the streets I was more amped on skating than ever before. James, myself and Tom got a cute little breakfast once we got back to our hostels, followed by a short power napp. We made the most of our last day in Barca and went mad on filming. We covered all the well known spots, where you are allowed to skate and sneaked in two lines down by the Port. It was a good day and I was enjoying my freedom. We had spent about a week in Barca and it was one trip that I’ll remember for as long as I shall live, not cause I got locked away, but because I was given my life back. So if you fancy a trip to skateboarding’s most rinsed out city, head down to LLukemajor Metro Station and hit up them rails outside on a nice little quiet Sunday afternoon… It’s worth it….
Ed Templeton has been in the forefront of the skate industry, blood sucking the kids across the planet with his company 
Let’s talk about the content of your photography. Some of it is quite full on with erections and soft porn etc. When taking photographs at what point would you feel that you had crossed the line in your observations of someone’s private moments? 
What criteria are you looking for when you hook up a new rider to Toy Machine?
How do you keep all of this together? 
It has snowed all fucking week and the North is apparently hit worse than the South as per usual, but screw the reports, we wanna skate that bowl that everyone has talked about for the last 6 months. It’s called the Mantub and we want some of it! It’s 1o”clock, Saturday 26th February and we are all waiting in a freezing van whilst Zorlac lays a cable that would have put BT out of business. It’s a much lighter drive for the van with this mission completed and thankfully now underweight, 8 skaters are on the M1 in search for Heroin, addicted to the smell of freshly burnt urethane and shaved wood. Passenger list: Driver: Zorlac Shotgun DJ: Zac Filmer: Alan Christensen Punks: Louie & Brandon Steeze: Seth Leathers: Damian Fartbox: Stu Cantellow. I didn’t get wood on this trip as I was up front manning the stereo, but I bet the younger punks in the back of the wagon had to move coats to get rid of the evidence, as this was getting exciting and with a soundtrack of The Hunns, Dead Boys, Ramones, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Adolescents, Spandau Ballet, T”Pau, Devo, and a million odds and sods 80’s artists, we were fucking motoring!!
Why is motorway food so expensive? Why does it taste like crap? Why do they only offer you the worst food you could possibly find? I dunno but we all fell for it, but one thing was clear, the vegetarian food is always cheaper.add a fat filled sausage for an extra £3.cunts! Dying for a drink and ushered into the park entrance by Wingy who rolled up alongside us in his van, we could hear the Dead Pets on the side of the bowl destroying vocal chords and fingernails by the second. Apart from the Punk rock, it was much quieter than we thought. Had we missed the event? Was it over or just beginning? Where was Howard Cooke? In fact, fuck asking questions, look at that bowl! It is called Mantub for a reason, a stupid one but here it is: One day a local was so pissed looking into the deep wooden hole with metal round the rims that he shouted “Mental” “Mental!” but it sounded like Mantub cos he was so pissed, and it stuck, so there!
The Kill City team where loving it to with Dainton carving it up, Little Nicky and Cashman flying everywhere. It was a good session. So what did we get up to. We just skated with all of this lot and drank into the night until it was time to rock up and get the hell out of there. Louie pulled the best tricks out of all of us. Foz seemed over the moon, Heroin product filled the skies whilst kids gathered bag fulls of stickers, boards and t-shirts and no one had to be carted off to the hospital! Even pizza’s were delivered by bike. Come on! 
It’s not everyday you get to travel South Africa, but we looked at the flights and decided to ignore the bad publicity the country seems to get and in no time we were on a plane to Cape Town on Christmas Day and up for getting some bloody sunshine! Hire cars are fairly cheap to rent, about £10 per day so we picked one up and drove down to the beach where we had booked a 5 double room house at Milnerton, Table Bay, a wonderful spot where the beach has incredible views of Table Mountain and sunsets to die for. We had landed so next thing was to get to the skate parks. Cape Town has a park called Century City in a shopping centre. The locals there are super friendly and welcomed us in for nothing, but I would have paid 10 Rand for a session if they would have asked for sure! When you have 10 Rand see, you can do anything! There is a guy at who skates this park called Christy (pics) who skates like a Californian pro, he is amazing and seems to land everything in sight. The park is quite small and does get really hot when the sun is peaking, usually about 32′ but it has a mini ramp, loads of street stuff and large BMX stuff to. The scene out there is friendly and wherever we went we would meet people who would wanna talk and hang out, which is great when you are out somewhere you are unfamiliar with. We found a ditch that was fun. It was fucked up and had been there a while but we sessiioned it anyway (below) and then we found a little spot behind the Newlands Cricket ground which was unfinished due to the council being robbed by local builders, and met some locals who were chewing gum and hanging out on BMX bikes. The coping stuck out but was fun, it was much more fun than the snake run we found right near it in the same park, that was hilarious!
There is a really cool bunch of bars in Camps Bay as well, and no it is not a gay beach, it’s just called that, but if you want to swing your axe in a gay fashion just go to Clifton beach as it will serve you well!
On a wildlife tip there’s loads to see in the ocean. As the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic it allows many different species to breed on this coast like Whales and Dolphins and especially Seals. Where there are seals there are Great White Sharks and we managed to get on a trip on the day of New Years Eve to cage dive with these beasts in their natural habitat. It was mental as you will see in the video! The week before we got there, news reports had reported that a local old granny had been eaten alive whilst swimming on this beach we were at. We asked a local about it and he said, “She swam there every day for 40 years and did not give a hoot about the warnings”. I asked him “So what made this shark eat her then?” and he said, “Well, you know what, the old bag probably just smelled of fish!” Haha!
We flew to Durban where we suddenly realised that the fresh air had been replaced by humidity and it was suddenly really bloody hot! The first day we arrived we went to the Wavehouse skate park 
Durban City center is run down and it seems that most folk have moved out of town to Umhlanga. We took a Helicopter ride over the skate park on North Beach and the beaches around the area looking for empty pools and had a great time. This concrete park is the local for DC Shoes and Death Skateboard’s rider Snoopy. It’s a concrete park that looks great from the air and when you get down there it’s not as smooth as you would have thought. The coping gets sticky in the sea air but it was fun to skate for a while, even though the humidity makes you wanna puke! We gave a local kid called “Talent” a full brand new set up at this park and he was stoked! He had just been kicked out of his mothers house at xmas, was 13 years old and ripped at skateboarding with nollie flips and a stylish street prowess. He thought we were gonna kidnap him as we all looked at each other and said “are you thinking what I am thinking?” – you have never seen a kid so happy! To be honest we left the park feeling choked. We were chuffed we could help him and he was over the moon!
The nightlife in Durban was also fun, we got wrecked at a club called “80’s” where they played all the classic cheese from that era and got into a slanging match with a local arsehole who thought it would be funny to take the piss out of one of us not realizing that we were actually 4 people. He went for a gun in his truck and our cab driver who was about to take us home grabbed his gun fro the boot of his car and told the due to piss off! It was mental! The cab driver Russel was a man in his 50’s who looked like a yeti that had just come back from Brighton pier via Vietnam! Russel saved our skin and he turned into our cab driver for the next 3 days. He was hilarious! You could hardly hear what he was saying as it was so muffled but he loved Man Utd and thought Wayne Rooney was the best thing since the 10 Rand coin!!
After partying our asses of here, we then went on Safari with our guide Bert for 3 days and my brother Nathan got sick so he had to get a shot in his arse at the doctors for possible Salmonella poisoning…….of course we all roared with laughter and sang Ring of Fire all day whilst his stomach made more noise than the elephants outside the window!. Hippos and Crocs were scene from the boat trip went on and it was incredible to be that close! These beasts are responsible for the most deaths in the world each year for humans, you would not want to fuck with one, that is for sure. We then hit Umfolozi national park where we spent the entire day looking out of the van window at wildlife that included Rhino, Giraffes (that were like 10 feet away), Impala, Lesbian Zebras, amazing Eagles, Hawks, and those rad looking Warthogs (one chased me in a car park, I shit my pants and ran for the hills!). No Lions or Cheetahs but Buffalo and Wilderbeast were everywhere this time for us so the Big 5 were not seen on this trip but 3 of them were added to the list, better luck next time! A canopy forest tour was also chucked into this trip plus a visit to the Zulu place for some cheesy history before we set off back home with our guts full of South African food and an empty bag of the local Swazi weed which is the best ever! In fact we laughed for days on end!
Well, Sunday morning’s are hardly on the weekly menu in this part of the woods, but we just about made it up to Victoria in time to pick up DJ Sami, his bird, and Crossfire filmers Guido and Alan.
I managed to burn all my skin off my elbow after realising that there was a hole in that bowl, thanks for that Epic! Hiding Placeplayed whilst kids moshed and as it was the first time I had seen this band live, they do rock, it was a good show and they were mobbed afterwards for free t-shirts and stickers. I guess having free goodie bags is just not enough these days, but that is why we had a raffle for a board, and as one lucky winner managed to claim a free deck, there were 2 losers who were caked!
When we got back to the park, there was a queue of about 200 kids going mental! By 2 o’clock they charged the park and 100 of them got in courtesy of Snickers and 200 got goodie bags, so all was on course. Both Alan and I managed to kill ourselves on the mini ramp as soon as we got there! The ramp was covered in dust and it nailed us! My ass was bruised and his pelvis almost cracked! The skating was set to be high today with or without hangovers and it kicked off big style. 
Once the rain passed, it cleared up allowing Ged Cullen and Greg Nowik to rip the mini ramp outside whilst the other South Coast brothers Marc and Paul Churchill serviced the street course. Marc nailed a 540 flip on a snapped board, huge fs grabs over the ski jump, and smith grinds and front and bs slides on the rail. His brother Paul managed to annihilate a young local as they clashed in the heat of it all and he hucked out a fat kickflip indy over the ski jump and also a sturdy frontside rock on the vert wall.
Kids were even asking us for our own shirts! Afterwards, we headed for the boozer where Powley had pre-organised a chilli and chips meal and pitchers of beer. The chilli was so damn hot that steam exited from Ross McGauran’s ears but no one puked! Local M.I.L.F entertained our video cameras and Marc Churchill ended up getting a slap in the street once the pub closed!
The Calow Brothers and Lee Blackwell were already there sessioning when we arrived which was a result. Ronnie was nailing massive backside 180’s over the driveway whilst brother Danny added a flip to fakie over the vert wall gap to his bag of tricks. The band and the full Death team were both late due to traffic so we got a best trick comp going on the driveway and witnessed locals chucking down all sorted of stuff for about 30 minutes and then we threw a highest ollie comp wher one local rider raised the stakes to take on Danny Wainright for the record and won a full Birdhouse set up donated kindly by a local skateshop in Skegness.
The dark forces that lead Lee Blackwell to skate like a man possessed were evident. He threw in a nollie fs 180, a fakie indy grab caballerial and an ollie to tail on top of vert wall. Have you seen the size of this wall?He also made blunt fs 180 on that beast. It was sick. Dan Leech turned up to the park as well. He has the smoothest style and completed a fs board slide 270 out, switch back lips, bs 180 fakie nose grind 180 out, and kickflip front board slides on flat bar, nollie bs nose grinds on ledge, and bigspin flips on quarter pipe!
It was an excellent way to finish these dates, and in true style London came out to party! Over 500 people came theough the doors to wreck the place with us. The jams for kids took place and people won boards, shoes, and one gnarler took an xbox for switch trickery.
The mini ramp jam was won by Greg Nowik who is probably the best mini ramp skater in the country.
Zac hooked up with Natas Kaupas at the Marseille Bowlriders 04 and instead of going for the traditional swim in the Mediterranean; they exchanged socks in a tent, and this is what went down!
So what are we to expect? How is it gonna work? Who have you got in your sights?