Author: Rok Klemše
Location: Ljubljana
Concert date: 16.01.2007
Attendance: 300
Ticket price: 20 euros (4792.80 SIT)
The 2007 concert season has kicked off on home turf, at least in metal waters! And right at the start of the year, a proper death metal feast was waiting for us. Master of Metal brought the much-hyped tour of Canadian death metal legends Kataklysm to our neck of the woods, with three support bands in tow – Quo Vadis, Fear My Thoughts and Neaera. Personally, I was most pumped for the kings of technical death metal, Quo Vadis, but I was curious about Kataklysm too. But let’s take it nice and easy, one band at a time.
Quo Vadis:
First up, a few minutes past eight, were the Montreal technicians Quo Vadis. And they more than lived up to their reputation as one of the best technical death metal bands around! Sadly, because the band is still pretty unknown in Slovenia, the hall was almost empty, but Quo Vadis played their set uncompromising, top-notch, confident, FANTASTIC!!! Even though the hall was, like I said, almost empty, the Canadians won over the Slovenian metal crowd. There wasn’t a metalhead in the front rows who wasn’t headbanging, and Quo Vadis play exactly the kind of music that’s made for it. A set polished down to the last detail (even though guitarist and band leader Bart admitted afterwards that he’d slightly screwed up 🙂 and just the right amount of banter from vocalist Stephan Pareja with the crowd stuck with me, at least in my eyes and ears, as the highlight of the night. But Quo Vadis don’t stop at brutal yet excellent growls and unbelievable riffs and solos pouring out from under the fingers of Bart Frydrychowicz and MAG (Marc Andre Gingras)! No, an equal share is delivered by one of the best rhythm sections in the genre, if not in all of metal. What drummer Yanick Bercier does on his kit is already pretty much at the edge of human ability. Technically he’s without a doubt one of the better drummers in metal, and with Quo Vadis he’s also proven himself an excellent writer, since he’s responsible for some of the band’s best lyrics. The other half of the rhythm section is the bass machine Dominic Lapointe on fretless bass! Even though the bass on Quo Vadis’s latest record, Defiant Imagination, was played by the great Steve DiGiorgio, Dominic doesn’t let that faze him and rips through the insanely demanding bass lines like it’s nothing. The only small minus might go to the somewhat weak vocal sound, which at times was a bit too quiet. Quality-wise, Quo Vadis deserved a headliner slot, because a good half hour and five songs is definitely too little for a band like Canada’s Quo Vadis! Still, I can say that for those thirty minutes it was a total victory and one of the best gigs I’ve had the chance to see in the “Coop”! (You’ll be able to read an interview with Quo Vadis on Rockline very soon)
Fear My Thoughts:
The German five-piece recently released the record Vulcanus (you can find a review of it on Rockline too), and a big tour like this one came in handy for them. They couldn’t have wished for better promo. Vulcanus left me personally pretty optimistic, and I was hoping the guys would hold their own on stage too. Partly, they did. Why partly? Mathias Ockl’s vocals were a bit of a letdown. On the record he shows off a varied bag of vocal techniques, from deep growls to screams and clean singing, but live he offered only an average scream, and the clean vocals were barely audible. The sound of the instruments was good, with the guitar lines and the rhythm section coming through nicely. Personally, the new songs got my blood pumping the most, especially Accelerate or Die and Accompanied by Death, while the older stuff left me rather cold. Fear My Thoughts started out as a hardcore band, moved on into metalcore waters, and now they’re closest to the Gothenburg sound of melodic death metal, and I think it’s the newer songs that are the live favorites. It often happens that a band only wins you over live after leaving a bad aftertaste with their record, but this time, for me at least, it was exactly the other way around. Still, it was a perfectly decent show, the guys are just at the start of their journey and have time to polish their stage performance. Fear My Thoughts also wrapped up their first show in Slovenia after half an hour.
Neaera:
In the next few sentences, fans of the German band Neaera will most likely disagree with me, but bear with me for a bit 🙂 What the hell Neaera were doing as a support act for Kataklysm, and how it’s possible that Quo Vadis played before them, is beyond me. Neaera would fit better at some hardcore gig at Metelkova than at a death metal show. Neaera are a very clear proof of how production can patch up the weaknesses of written material. Live, the Germans sounded very muddy, and the vocals never went much beyond screeching either. Neaera were even filming a clip for the MTV show Headbanger’s Ball that night, and that’s most likely why they got such a great response from the crowd. I wonder whether the crowd would have reacted the same way without it. Still, you have to admit that you can see the guys enjoying themselves on stage. Frontman Benjamin also did his job great, urging the crowd to mosh and crowd-surf, and he even managed to pull off a so-called “wall of death”. What got the crowd going most was the title track of their second album (Neaera have recorded two albums so far), Let the Tempest Come. Neaera also have to be credited with getting through their set decently, but I hope that the people who pick the support acts will think twice about such decisions in the future.
Kataklysm:
Around half past ten in the evening came what most of the hall, which had filled up nicely by then, had been waiting for. Up next were the night’s headliners, the Canadian death metal champions Kataklysm. The Canadians have been touring for a good 10 years, and it definitely shows in their performance. At the same time, they obviously love coming back to Slovenia. They played here for the second time in a very short span, and Wednesday’s show turned out far better than the one at Metalcamp 2006. This time Kataklysm set out on one of their longest tours, hitting as many as 22 countries in five months, and they also promised a setlist with rarely played or even never played songs. The tour The Road to Devastation brought them to us too. After the very first song, a proper death metal party was on the cards. Maurizio proved to be an excellent frontman, building a real connection with the Slovenian crowd, who showed why Slovenia is so close to the Canadians’ hearts. Kataklysm gave us a comprehensive cross-section of their whole career, although I wouldn’t have minded a song or two more from Epic or The Prophecy. Still, songs like Illuminati, Ambassador of Pain, Like Angels Weeping, Serenity in Fire absolutely killed live. Kataklysm are real wrecking machines live! I admit that personally I’m not exactly the biggest fan of classic death metal, but Kataklysm won me over.
Kataklysm said their goodbyes with the fantastic, tragic and epic mid-tempo song The Road to Devastation, and announced a special surprise for their next visit. We’ll have to wait a while longer to find out what that surprise is.
The band’s performance in one word? Cataclysmic!
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