Author: Rok Klemše, Primož Novak
Venue: Orto bar
Concert date: January 15, 2016
Ticket price: €10/€14
Orto bar is where Črt and Matej – Dirty Skunks, by far the most active concert promoters in the country, who’ve brought countless bands from all kinds of musical corners over to Slovenia in 14 years – started their promoting career with their very first gig. That’s 14 years in the game for the now-expanded crew, and two weeks ago they celebrated the milestone in their home den. Orto bar. With fourteen bands. On three stages!
The Orto hall was deflowered right on the dot by Velenje death metallers Carnifliate. Not many people showed up for them, but the guys and the gal delivered a very fitting warm-up, and frontman Tilen, with his juicy and funny banter (finally a vocalist who doesn’t demand headbanging and the crowd stepping closer to the stage between every single break!), got the hall in a good mood, which carried through the whole Friday night. In a solid half hour the Velenje crew shook the place with thunderous death metal impregnated with grind seed, gurgling cum-vocals that can growl, scream and squeal in all kinds of ways, a fat rhythm section and surgical guitars. Carnifliate were a great kickoff, the record is in the can, and now we’re only waiting for the male half of the band to drop their pants and show Gods Cock.
Ljubljana’s Release the Ectoplasm wrapped the hall stage in very different musical waters, presenting their vision of sludge/stoner metal, which doesn’t stray much from the genre’s guidelines, but the guys know how to sound as greasy as Slimer’s ectoplasm from Ghostbusters. Mighty guitar riffs were nicely complemented by a bass as thick as the genre demands and Jani’s nasal vocals, and even though the songs mostly drifted along dreamily, they also threw in a few surprisingly aggressive excursions. Toward the end the trio got a tad monotonous and repetitive with those long tracks, but the positive vibe in the air, which doesn’t exactly suit this genre, probably had something to do with that.
While The Hoax Program were getting ready on the Kadilnica of Death stage, things kicked off on the Old School stage in the old part of Orto bar, with Trbovlje’s Trifail stepping up first and serving a mix of punk rock, hardcore and metal in a scant half hour. It was clear right away that the cramped space can mess with a lot of bands, but Trifail pulled off their set despite the tiny room to move.
Right after Trifail, things also started on the Drunk in Public stage on the upper floor of Orto bar, where Burn fuse began to play. The band started out a bit sleepy, but as more of a crowd arrived they shifted into a higher gear and presented their take on technical metalcore. Unfortunately the sound was pretty bad and the instruments were fairly muddy, the guitarist’s melodic vocals were nowhere to be heard, and the band’s tightness acted up now and then too. Nothing terrible, though – they pulled off their set anyway. There’s still plenty to look forward to from Burn fuse, since they announced, among other things, that they’re recording a new album.
Genre-wise pretty close to Release the Ectoplasm, but louder and more dynamic, The Hoax Program from the Ajdovščina area brought a bit of Karst bora wind into the big hall and won everyone over in every respect. Even though the guys look like the cast of The Big Bang Theory, the energy coming off the stage wasn’t that of nerdy physicists but of professional wrestlers. The Ajdovščina crew efficiently loosened up eardrums with a real energy bomb of American hardcore mixed with Sabbath-style doom sludge. Too bad the bora doesn’t blow them onto stages more often, because they were without a doubt one of the stinkier moments of the night (variations of this word are meant purely positively in the context of this report, of course).
Between Burn fuse and right after The Hoax Program, In The Crossfire started mercilessly pounding away on the small stage in the old part of Orto bar, taking their metallized hardcore back to the nineties, so there are simply no frills here. Unfortunately the band couldn’t show all their energy the way they usually do this time, since a stage this small forces them to stand still.
Meanwhile, young punk rockers Start At Zero from the Ajdovščina area played on the upper stage, while on the small stage downstairs, Krško’s Final Approach kept the hardcore going after In The Crossfire. Unfortunately, Gužva U Bajt played the Kadilnica of Death upstairs during Paragoria, and a overpacked schedule kept us from catching them. During Paragoria, Backstage also started downstairs, who’ve been serving up punk rock for about 15 years, which showed above all in the fact that the room by the lower stage was so packed you couldn’t even get in.
The wacked-out Jegulja delivered yet another one of their, well, wacked-out gigs. Even though the guys have no bassist, they sound fat even without one, like, uhhh… Jegulja? With their stage attitude, lively and colorfully put-together songs and instrumental chops, the guys manage to win people over and pull them into their weird fish world every single time.
The concert part of the evening in the hall was closed out by veterans Paragoria, who made their debut with (session) drummer Bojan Bebro-Vovk (Thraw) and »delivered« exactly what we expected from them. A tornado of riffs, an earthquake of a rhythm section and monstrous vocal attacks. Sadly they didn’t play any new material, but they proved they’re in excellent form and that Decomposition of Mind is still one of the more convincing releases of the local metal scene. Sadly, this was also their last show of the year, and we’re waiting for them to return to the stages next year with a new album!
The upper stage was closed out by Styrian metalcore band Curse of Instinct, who served up excellent metalcore for a full hour. Even though the band has been inactive for a few years, it would be a shame to let them fade into oblivion. They still put on an energetic show, the crowd in the front rows went wild, and Curse of Instinct confidently presented their material, which stresses the authenticity of metalcore from before it got commercialized and bent toward pop music. Despite the trends, Curse of Instinct kept the authenticity of the style of the early Caliban and Heaven Shall Burn albums, built on punch and melodicism that has no intention of being kitschy. After what we saw, all we can do is hope Curse of Instinct will offer something new, since their first and so far only album came out way back in 2007.
On the lower stage, Panikk were the last to step up, spitting out California-flavored thrash metal, which finally gave those metalheads who swear by old-school metal their due. Definitely the cherry on top of a very diverse program.
Črt, Matej and everyone else on the Dirty Skunks crew – RockLine wishes you from the bottom of its heart that you keep stinking up the place for at least another 14 years!
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