r/Karnivool

Picked in London signed in Manchester

I bet some of you have way more!

Themata and New Day were an absolute endorphin rush. I can't believe someone actually got on here the other day to complain about the crowd singing lol

So I know vools eu tour is coming to an end, but I wanted to share an experience I had surrounding our show in Norway at the beginning of the tour. I haven’t shared it online since It’s a long story, but I think you guys in the vool subreddit might appreciate it. This is all a 100% true story, and I wanted to give my best retelling. My names Nate and my DMs are open if anyone wants to chat!!

So my friend and I live in the states, about 45 minutes outside of the Boston area. Karnivool has been my favorite band for around 15 years. Im sure its similar to a lot of you here, but life throughout my fandom has been filled with alot of ups and downs, and Karnivools music has always been able to “have my back” regardless of how life goes, and has always kind of defined some major life events. Seeing them live has always been tough being American, but I previously had traveled to Europe twice to see them in the past (Stockholm in 2023, and Cologne in 2024). Now along with In Verses being released, a major dream of mine has always been to visit Norway and travel across from Oslo to Bergen. So as Karnivool announced the date in Oslo very close to my birthday, we decided it was time to make the journey.

We planned and booked the trip very quickly, roughly 3 weeks before our flight was scheduled to leave. The game plan was to fly into Oslo and arrive on a Tuesday, with the show being on the following Thursday. Now while I travel often for fun, but this trip was strange because we didn’t know a single person in Norway to guide us around. Luckily, around 2 weeks before take off my friend managed to get in contact with a girl living in Oslo through some mutual friends of his. She reached out to me through instagram and we began chatting, and talked very often. Our conversations started very “hey what to do you like to do so I can help guide”, then began to get more deep and introspective. We started sending each other the occasional video/voice message sharing things about where we lived and how our days were going, several life stories, and a fair amount of deep introspective chats. Overall while she started by just trying to be a helpful tour guide, but we quickly began hitting it off and becoming closer and closer leading up to leaving.

So finally the day comes to fly to Norway. I was a bit nervous because I hadn’t gotten much of break from work leading up to leaving. While heading to the airport to meet my friend, I was talking to the girl in Oslo to put together a plan. We would be landing in Oslo at roughly 9:30am Tuesday morning, so she suggested she would meet us at the airpot, guide us into the city to get settled and explore, then Wednesday she would cook us dinner at her house, then Thursday would be Karnivool day before setting off for the rest of Norway. Of course the plan was perfect for us. My friend and I went through the airport, got on the plane and got ready to leave, all while still talking to the girl in Oslo. As we were getting ready to take off I sent a message saying “hey were taking off now, but well see you in the morning when we land. We’ll text you when we land! Looking forward to finally meeting” To which she replied “sounds great! Cant wait to finally meet you guys!” From there I shut my phone off and began the 8-9 hour travel time.

After one quick layover we finally touched down in Norway. Deliriously tired, I turned my phone back on sent a message to the local girl telling her we landed, and we made our way to the front of the airport to meet her. We looked around the empty front entrance and couldn’t find her. I could see that the message was never read (her read receipts were active), so I tried calling but no response. My friend and I waited in the front lobby for her for about 45 minutes, but at this point we were so hungry and tired from traveling that we decided to just take the train into town and head to our Airbnb. Once we were on the train I sent one more message saying “hey sorry we missed you. We need to head into to town to eat and check, but please feel free to come meet us when you can as wed still love to see you”. Once we got into town we checked in, ate dinner, drank a couple beers, explored the city a bit, and then passed out for the night.

The next morning we woke up and realized she still had never texted us back. We thought it was strange as leading up to traveling we talked VERY often, but suddenly she was completely silent upon arriving. We both assumed at this point she maybe was just busy, and would eventually call us, especially considering that night we had plans to go to her house for dinner that night. As the day went on my friend and I did some more exploring, before heading back to the Airbnb to relax at roughly 3:00pm. I then realized I need to run to the store to get a couple things, so I ran out by myself to shop and I eventually walked past the venue that Karnivool was playing the next night noticing their bus had already arrived. Seeing the bus suddenly made it sink in that I was seeing my favorite band again soon in such a cool city made feel a pretty heavy sense of excitement, so I made my way back to our place to meet back up with my friend (also assuming maybe he had heard from the local girl). When I walked in, my friend says, ”hey man I’m on the balcony, we have to talk.”

“I just got off the phone with (friend who introduced him to the local girl). She passed away yesterday evening” he told me. “They’re not sure what happened at the moment, but he managed to get in touch with other people close to her who broke the news”. From there we were just completely in shock and heartbroken. Although at that point we haven’t met, I still became pretty close her leading up to this point. We also came to the chilling realization that she had to have passed shortly between after we had taken off from Boston, and landing in Norway. From there we sat quietly talking about what to do next. We honestly began feeling like we didn’t want to be there anymore, and kind of wanted to just go home, but we just decided that we remember that girl being really passionate about wanting us to love Oslo. That really fueled us to say, “we should really head out and enjoy the city, it’s literally all she wanted from us” so we packed up and head out for a couple beers. While walking down the street still in a pretty rough headspace, I noticed Steve Judd (drummer of Karnivool for those not familiar) hanging outside the venue. I was a little nervous from everything going on but I decided to go introduce myself anyway.

Steve could not have been cooler. I remember him being genuinely happy that we had travelled out so far to see them. After talking to him for a bit some members of the crew came out and joined us, who also were so cool. After talking to them for a bit they mentioned they’re gonna be hanging at this arcade bar down the street and we were more than welcome to join up later. So we thanked them for the offer, and went out to grab a bite to eat. After eating, we went to the bar. From there we met several of the crew guys, Steve (drummer), Jon (bass player), and Hoss (guitar player) and we essentially spent the entire evening all hanging out, playing (loosing horribly) at shuffle board, and various other arcade games together for the entire evening. Finally the guys all needed to head to sleep for the show tomorrow so we said our goodbyes and they headed off to sleep. After that I remember reflecting how insane things just were. From hearing about a friends death leaving us with no contacts in a foreign country, to then hanging out with my favorite band who’s music was so essential to my life was so absolutely surreal. Like I still cant fully articulate how crazy it all felt. After several more beers, and a 7am bedtime, we finally made to show day.

They sounded and played absolutely incredible. Im sure you all have seen the videos from the shows on this tour but they’re just crushing it. Setlist was incredible, new songs sounded great, the classics sounded massive. New Day has always been one of my favorites and live was just incredible. The most surreal moment however came at the end. I think it was the weight of everything going on the past couple days, as well as back home, but Opal into Salva was the first time I’ve ever teared up at a show. Lyrically those two songs just hit so many soft spots and that moment of them playing them and such an incredible energy. I still am having a lot of trouble articulating that moment, but god it was so healing and incredible. After the show we said goodbye to the crew guys we met up with the night before, wished them a great tour, and then prepared for the rest of our Norwegian journey.

So basically in the end, thank you Karnivool for being so awesome to us, and putting on such a great show. It meant the world to us after getting such eerie and tough news. Y’all are legends. Hope to see you guys in the states soon.

And of course,
Rest in peace Rose 🥀

Chuffed to bits, what a cracking show

Hi all, I’m fairly new to Karnivool, but I absolutely adore them! Last night was my 3rd show in 2 years!
Just wondering if one of you awesome people could tell me whose signature is whose on this poster I bought please? Many thanks 🫶🏻

I tried to report it but as usual Instagrams features literally don't work.

Had this ad show up today, has anyone been to something similar, and know if it'll be good value? Set list looks decent!