Omen (support: Granica Normale)
Sunday, 24 May 2026, from 9:00 PM to 11:45 PM
Zagreb / Hard Place / Croatia
Omen! Legends of old-school American heavy metal. A quartet that has weathered countless highs and lows throughout a long career dating all the way back to 1983, when they were founded in Los Angeles, is now marking the 40th anniversary of their second studio album “Warning Of Danger”. The cult American metallers have decided to celebrate with a short May tour through Europe, named after this highly revered studio record. The routing makes for particularly interesting reading this time around — venues strung in sequence with gaps of up to 1,000 km between some stops. The tour stands out for another reason too: two-thirds of the dates are in Greece (with two in Cyprus). It was therefore nothing short of remarkable luck that the band slotted Croatia into the remaining handful of European stops, making their debut visit to the country at Zagreb’s Hard Place club. You couldn’t get much closer to Slovenia. And that epic day — specifically 17 March 2015, when Omen made their first-ever visit to Slovenia for a show in Kranj — still feels very much alive. In the intervening years up to 2022, though, the band went through drastic transformation, so today’s Omen operates with a lineup headed by the indestructible Kenny Powell on guitar, while the remaining three spots are filled by: Greek vocalist Nikos Migus A. (born Nikos Antonogiannakis), drummer Reece Stanley, and bassist Justin Riddler, who joined in 2022.
The eighties are iconic! For metal and for Omen — there’s no debating that. Their catalog stands shoulder to shoulder with the most prominent names of the classic metal era. Omen remain Omen. And so this visit was a genuine privilege for Slovenian old-school metal devotees — a rare chance to catch the band live.
The opening set belonged to Istrian act Granica Normale. The band was founded in 2011 in Pazin. The quartet, which has settled into the lineup of Dino Sergo (vocals, guitar), Ivan Miljavac (guitar), Ivan Mijandrušič (bass guitar), and Fabio Lukež (drums), plays a direct, bold, and sharp heavy metal style with a noticeable nod to punk rock garage sensibilities. They took the stage for 40 minutes in front of a sparse crowd (most of the audience was outside at the time, paying their respects to various alcoholic beverages), and they went at it completely unleashed and supremely confident. You can tell that clubs are genuinely their home turf and that they play out a lot. Tightness is not something they lack. Fronted by an angry, authoritative vocal and convincing lead work across a solid 45 minutes. They’ve also accumulated enough original material to eventually push out a debut studio album. If you find yourself wandering around Istria this August, you can catch them (alongside fellow locals Keops) on 8 August 2026 at a show in Pazin.
Omen took the stage at ten in the evening and thundered on for a full hour and forty minutes. Before the show, you could catch the band members out in the club’s foyer, killing time with the crowd over a drink or two. That included the extremely approachable band boss Kenny Powell himself, who was generous with hugs and handshakes for his fans — meaning you could get all your selfies done and collect the band’s autographs before the show even started. Priceless.
The band is phenomenal on stage! This club gig too just hit hard and fired on every right cylinder — by any measure, it belongs among the sweetest concert memories. Not just the quartet’s killer performance, overflowing with confidence and seasoned ease, but the whole vibe. The crowd packed the small club space, and the band lit them up right from the off with two Warning Of Danger classics (Termination and Ruby Eyes of the Serpent). The first two albums dominated the setlist in a massive way, with “Warning Of Danger” pulling slightly more attention than “Battle Cry”. The cult classics, in other words. You can’t do better than that. Nikos delivered a phenomenal frontman performance, constantly reaching out to fans in the front rows — a department in which the utterly likeable bassist Justin was every bit his equal. And Kenny? Hard Place was full of Kenny that evening. Hard Place? Try the whole avenue outside! During Road Warrior he stepped off the stage and played through the crowd, and it was a close call that he didn’t march straight out of the club — all the way to the street. The band delivered a stunning atmosphere. Sure, there were the occasional flubs — there always are. But that intensity, that genuine emotion and passion — that outweighs everything. That’s what it’s about. And no big venue can touch a club show for that kind of authenticity. This was simply, once again, one of those unforgettable concert experiences.
The band had constant drum problems throughout the show. They were using the house kit, which buckled miserably under Russell’s massive strikes and the relentless barrage of overheated brutality, keeping the tech busy patching things up on the fly throughout the set. At one point during the concert, the double bass pedal even flew apart.
For the grand finale with the classic Battle Cry, the entire room carried Kenny on their hands. The man pulled off an epic crowdsurf adventure, from the stage all the way to the merch table on the other side of the room and back again — on the hands of a crowd gone wild.
An Omen concert remains a singular experience. It shakes you, pulls you in. Eleven years ago in Kranj, I walked away from my time with the band with much the same feeling. The timelessness of those classic guitar riffs — riffs that belong to the world canon of metal lore — and all that energy when they come alive on stage. It’s hard to put into a few words. You simply have to experience it. The question is how many more chances like this will come around. But one thing is certain: Kenny and his crew, even after all these years of defying the odds, have not lost that genuine concert dynamite that puts a spell on you. Let’s hope, then, that this tour is not the band’s final cry — a last goodbye to the stages of the old European continent.
text: Edita Klemen & Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Granica Normale – setlist:
1. Not Afraid
2. Knowing On One
3. No Soul “Or Sound”
4. Breaking The Law
5. Die In Fear
6. Life Story
7. Cultural Collapse
8. Anabel
9. Pakal
Omen – setlist:
1. Premonition (intro)
2. Termination
3. Ruby Eyes (of the Serpent)
4. The Axeman
5. Make Me Your King
6. Red Horizon
7. Don’t Fear The Night
8. V.B.P.
9. Die By The Blade
10. Hell’s Gates
11. March On
12. Death Rider
13. Teeth Of The Hydra
14. Be My Wench
15. Dragon’s Breath
16. Road Warrior
17. In The Arena
18. Warning Of Danger
—encore—
19. Battle Cry
