Venue: Gala Hala, Ljubljana
Concert date: 19.10.2008
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: 20€
Well, Dihurčki have surprised us once again and brought two huge names of the old-school death and thrash metal scene to our neck of the woods: the English old-timers Benediction, whose years don’t show (hand on heart, rock to the head), and Germany’s Holy Moses, led by Sabine Classen, who off stage is your typical German metalhead gal, the kind hordes of whom occupy Tolmin every year during MetalCamp, but on stage she’s an animal. On top of that they threw in the Swedish death metallers Nominion (new to me) and a couple of local veterans, Dickless Tracy and Sarcasm. And that was more than enough reason for me and FotoSorči to throw down the hoes, shovels, wheelbarrows and so on (yeah, you gotta lift the roof of the tool shed, because the tractor’s gotta overwinter somewhere, right?), swap our mortar-stained overalls for our Sunday rags and zip off to the capital of our beloved chicken-shaped country.
The show kicked off nicely at half past seven. Before that, the warm autumn weather let us knock back a few beers right there in the parking lot, sort out the photo gear and hit the road. The local duo Dickless Tracy/Sarcasm (half an hour each) warmed up, loosened up and made the friends gathered below the stage laugh. The Tracys just played their thing, short, punchy, cheerful grind/death hoppers, totally decent. In my opinion their main problem is that they mostly play in front of friends, so they don’t know exactly how to get the crowd a bit more involved during a gig. Hey, guys, it would definitely help if you moved around a bit while you play, dammit. Anyway, their half hour didn’t drag, the banter between songs was fun too, and, hand on heart, it has to be said that from the first song to the last the number of people moshing in the hall went up by 100% (during the first song one guy was moshing…you do the math for the last one…), and during the final songs we even saw the first mosh-pit, with (believe it or not) two people in it (and not the two who’d been moshing), which for a first opener that pretty much everyone there had seen for the umpteenth time is totally O.K. And we went for beer number three. As for Sarcasm, despite the gloomy forecasts (Rok, you were wrong), they played lots and lots of old songs, yes, even the “ode to burning assorted individuals on the stake”, in front of a nicely packed Gala Hala. It’s also true that there are quite a few better thrash bands around our homeland, and elsewhere too. My buddy (who was in a very jokey mood that night) said that if Sarcasm were a folk-entertainment ensemble, they’d be in the league of Mrtvo Polje or something. Screw it, that’s just my opinion. If anyone disagrees, we can talk it over a beer. But bring the beer with you. Their half hour didn’t drag either, largely thanks to Mucy’s headgear. As my buddy put it (colorfully, once again) after their set, the effort of both warm-up bands would get the “good effort” label on Eurosport…I think we all know what that means… But I rate their gig positively too, within their means.
And we went for beer number four. Then it started. The Swedish Nominion were totally unknown to me personally, but a quick consultation with Uncle Google (cousin of Google Tina from Črni Vrh above Polhov Gradec, in case anyone doesn’t know) revealed that these guys have been on the Swedish scene since the ancient year of 1993 (back when I still had hair), when they put out their first demo recordings, which only circulated around the Scandinavian scene. Since then they’ve released five albums and countless EPs, mini albums,… played with Dismember and Dissection, toured with Benediction and Vital Remains, in short, these guys aren’t new to this. And they came to Ljubljana to show us. They calmly walked onto the stage, bowed, struck a pose and SMASHED IT. But how they S-M-A-S-H-E-D it. That’s it, my dears. Old-school Scandinavian death metal from the good old days, when the words melodic and death metal were never used in the same sentence. FotoSorči’s jaw hit the floor, and he’s the proud owner of a fine collection of death metal CDs, a good number of them predating 1995, so few death metal bands take his breath away. Personally I let out the scream of a wounded rhino and joined the moshing below the stage, and I’ve got hair that’s maybe 0.2 cm long. Yes, really, these guys knocked my socks off. And the whole Gala Hala too, while we’re at it. I reckon few people there expected what hit us. The mosh-pit reached all the way to the second pillar (everyone who’s ever been to Gala Hala knows what that means), folks were shouting along with the band, flinching at every trick, we all moshed, band and crowd alike, and jumped too. The guys on stage were visibly happy with the crowd’s response and put 110% percent into the gig. I don’t think a single band member stood still for a second. The guys didn’t waste time announcing songs, sometimes they just briefly thanked us between breaks, otherwise they blasted away like crazy. The only pity is that because of how small the stage in Gala Hala is, we couldn’t see the drummer, who was practically hidden behind his gear with his kit. I suspect there were two people sitting behind the drums, or that their drummer is an octopus. Because it hammered away for almost an hour and a normal human can’t make that much racket. But there’s not much more to say. We saw an old-school death metal show that brings the smile back to the face of every true fan, throws a rock at his head, and after the set briskly delivers him to the bar for a beer, and then out for a cigarette. And, yes, we went for beer number five. And of course it wasn’t long before Gala Hala was full again, and on stage were Holy Moses. Veterans and giants of the metal scene who’ve been with us for almost 30 years. Most people know them at first glance because of Sabine Classen, though we all know the thrash scene definitely wouldn’t be the same without them (and her). Years and years of touring definitely show, in an exclusively positive sense. They really are true pros, though it’s also true that when you have a crowd as insane as the one on Metelkova that night, already thoroughly fired up by Nominion before them, you probably shift into a higher gear almost subconsciously. To give you a picture of how it looked: if that night they’d put Sabine Classen on one side of the same stage and the vocalists of all the Italian thrash and death (ha, ha, ha) bands on the other, Sabine would have blown them off the stage in the first second with her growls, screams, shrieks, yelling, hollering, singing, egging on the crowd, … I can just picture the poor things. The girl didn’t give her vocal cords and neck muscles more than three seconds of rest during the entire show, all the other members chatted with the crowd as a team, which of course was dying for it, and the madhouse that was already total during the previous band went up a few more levels. Or down deeper, depending on which side of the pearly gates you’re looking from… Over their career, across eleven albums, plus all the EPs, demos and compilations, Holy Moses have piled up more than enough killers to bombard us from every side in one hour, give us a nice cross-section of the key points of their career, present this year’s album Agony Of Death, and take us to the edge of death and orgasm at the same time. You surely don’t expect me to write out their set list? I was right under the stage, in a fight for life and death. Next time lift your hallowed asses and come see for yourselves what €20 gets you with a band like Holy Moses?! Anyone who stayed home watching Kmetija has only themselves to blame. And, believe me, my dears, there’s no headache that a dose of thrash like this wouldn’t cure. Period. Amen. And, already pretty wrung out and tired (and almost without a voice), we went for beer number six, bloody well earned. But the worst was still ahead of us. During the break the two of us mused that Nominion and Holy Moses had done such a fiesta that Benediction might come off as nice mellow softies. Like they were an acoustic band. And we kept our fingers crossed that we’d be wrong. Sadly, the cruel truth is that everything eventually takes a turn for the worse, no matter what you wish for. What’s true is true. Although, yes, that night things didn’t take a turn for the worse. Don’t give me that crap. When did Benediction ever disappoint? Okay, probably at some point they have, but not this time. The crowd was totally fired up by the previous bands, the positive energy in the hall kept growing, the alcohol kicked in, and then what has to happen happens. And what has to happen when you unleash the English and a wildly drunk-as-a-skunk horde of metalheads at the same time?? A picnic around a campfire? Board games? Hopscotch? Elastic jump rope? Or the mayhem that only good old English death metal can set off? The answer follows… Benediction took us on a trip to the golden years of English death metal, to the times when, besides them, the phenomenal Bolt Thrower were also flattening everything in their path around the world, when Napalm Death were still an English death metal band and not Americanized wimps, and when various non-metalheads ..aaa, pardon, nu-metalheads (isn’t that the same thing?) were still crapping their pants. Yes, our eyes got a little misty hearing evergreens from our youth live again, like: Suspended Animation and Spit Forth The Dead from their debut Subconscious Terror from 1990, Jump In The Shadows and Born In A Fever from the record The Grand Leveller, released in the faraway year of 1991, a cross-section of the EP Dark Is The Season (vintage 92) and the album Transcend the Rubicon (vintage 93) – I Bow To None fucking rules!!!!!!!!, we also heard (among others) The Grotesque, Denial, Down On Whores, Grind Bastard, Easy Way to Die, and a nice bouquet of tunes from the recent Killing Music. The energy didn’t drop for a moment, the mosh-pit was even bigger, faster and sicker than with the previous bands, riffs, blasts, growls, screams, light show, everything flying at us from the stage poured into a total madhouse, the crowd wanted more and more, and since there was no room left on stage, we had crowd-surfing instead of stage-diving. The sound, which had been really perfect all night, got even a little better and of course louder, the band didn’t want to leave the stage, we just skipped the obligatory waiting for an encore, since singer Dave Hunt shrewdly figured out it’s better to play two songs than have the crowd yell for five minutes, only for them to come back on and play just one song. And then instead of two they smashed out three songs. Yeah, screw it, instead of a little after midnight, as announced, the show ended shortly before one in the morning. But if the guys had kept playing, folks would have kept partying. Still, every good thing has to end sometime, otherwise we’d get spoiled… so I think the band was at least as happy with the gig as the crowd. You could see it, too. A few times we were glad the guys have ears, otherwise their smiles would’ve probably spun their heads right around. And we went for beer number seven. Nah, I’m kidding. It was one in the morning. Shift in seven hours. Everything hurts. No voice. Home to bed.
To wrap up, once again we can praise Dihurčki for bringing names like these to our backyard for such ridiculously small money and reminding us why metal is music for the soul. So, for the umpteenth time: Thanks, Dihurčki.
Text: Rok “my ears are ringing and my left ankle hurts” Erjavec
Photo: F.S.
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