Author: Rok Klemše, Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Komen on the Karst / Slovenia
Concert date: 26.08.2008
Attendance: 600
We finally made it! Metal Mania Open Air 2008, without a doubt the most anticipated metal event of the year for the Slovenian metal crowd. This time the organizers got a lucky break with a public holiday landing at just the right moment, so they could stretch Metal Mania to three days for the first time, August 14 to 16. The small, sleepy Karst village of Komen was once again overrun by metal hordes, and three days of boozing, passing out, headbanging, moshing and everything else that even faintly smells of metal played out in front of a thousand-strong crowd.
Even though the first day of the festival was more or less painted black metal, we still had to wait a bit for the head-on-a-stake impaling, the worship of that thing the by-now-legendary interview with Gaahl goes on about (“Satan!”; by the way, shame on Gorgoroth, who canceled their festival appearance and soon after the whole European tour too. Apparently the true, necro, grim and kvlt Ghaal would rather dawdle and cuddle with his sweetheart in the studio…), and the sodomizing of corpses and virgins. So the honor of kicking off the festival went to Thraw, the young Carinthian hopefuls of Slovenian thrash metal. In just under a year of existence, the five-piece has conquered Slovenian stages and the hearts of Slovenian thrashers with excellent, adrenaline-soaked thrash metal that now and then gets spiced up with a death metal move or two. The boys nailed the job of opening act in dazzling style and once again won over the crowd, which, despite the early hour, had already gathered in nice numbers in front of the stage. Although the tempting half-price beer during the first band’s set probably helped, Thraw got the reaction they deserve. The fact that Metal Mania’s mascot, Gardko (R.I.P.), lost his head within the first few minutes of the festival says more than enough. Aleksander “Mrtva reka” Smode and his crew aren’t resting on their laurels either, since they mostly played new tracks that sound damn promising, which makes the next sentence more than appropriate. Where the hell is the demo!?
Thraw setlist:
1. Beats Of Aggression
3. Condemation
4. Injecting Hate
5. Angeleater
BRUTART:
The festival carried on with Brutart, standard-bearers of Slovenian death/doom metal, in slightly different colors, but no less quality for it. The guys are still presenting their current debut, the thoroughly outstanding release Mimic, and the setlist was made up of tracks from the album, with the exception of the fresh Towards the Never. The Brutart machine once again pulled off a superb set of just under an hour, and the crew proved at Metal Mania that they’re breathing with full lungs, whether we’re talking about Blaž’s growling or Sebastjan’s out-of-this-world drumming. Brutart are without a doubt one of the most original and interesting bands we’ve got, so comparisons to Gorefest are completely off the mark as far as I’m concerned. Mimic sounds even better live than on record, but that record is a must for every shelf anyway.
Brutart setlist:
1. Fabric of Illumination
2. The Vere
3. Immigrant
4. Materia
5. Towards the Never
6. Termites
7. Fade
NIBIRU:
Around seven, with the sun setting, it was time for the first black metal band, the Sumerian warriors Nibiru, who rose from the ashes of the legendary Magus Noctum, which broke up in 2004. Those guys put out two cult releases of the Slovenian metal scene, Guardian of the Desert and Fall of Shin’ar, and were on the verge of success on a wider level, but sadly called it quits too soon. Well, the band’s mastermind David Kiselič is back, reinforced with members of Magus Noctum and Mortifixion, and Nibiru are already conquering Slovenian stages. You can tell David is a seasoned veteran of the local metal scene, since he’s been around practically since its very beginnings, and we may remember him as the first vocalist of Noctiferia. But Nibiru go beyond everything he’s done so far, because they can without a doubt be counted among the peaks of Slovenian metal music. Raw vocals, mystical keyboards, aggressive drumming and fantastic Sumerian/Mesopotamian riffs are more than enough reason for success, and as far as I’m concerned this is the most anticipated album in Slovenian metal. Not Fall of Shin’ar, but Rise of Nibiru!
STORMWARRIOR:
The first foreign band to have the honor of taking the Metal Mania Open Air stage were the German power metal raiders Stormwarrior. Stormwarrior formed in 1998 and released their self-titled debut in 2002. They came to Slovenia to promote their third studio release, “Heading Northe” (2008). The Slovenian metal community may be highly educated and always superbly well-versed in metal trivia, but it obviously wasn’t all that familiar with Stormwarrior, so the guys were something of a mystery to the audience on stage, and when they stepped up, the front of the stage was sadly sparse. The opener, “Heading Northe” from the current self-titled new studio album, followed by Metal Legacy, drew a decent bunch of curious folks to the front, and they didn’t stay indifferent. Judging by a few misplaced shouts of “He-llo-ween, He-llo-ween,…”, the people who greeted the band that way clearly meant it as a nice compliment, and it was more than just nonstop machine-gunning of power metal riffs peppered with extremely fast triplet harmonies, backed by the ultra-sonic gallop of double bass drum pedals.
Stormwarrior differ from run-of-the-mill power metal acts à la Freedom Call, Nocturnal Rites or HammerFall in that Ramcke has a very obscure, caustic voice that even recalls Kai Hansen, bringing to the band’s otherwise extremely melodic sound the dramatic element that heavy metal needs. Without it, the trivial power metal template gets boring fast, but with Stormwarrior there’s no need to worry about that. Lars has learned to play guitar excellently, and he also has an authoritative and convincing voice that puts him in the position of Rock N’ Rolf (Running Wild) or Kai Hansen (Gamma Ray), and now Stormwarrior, with Lars at the helm and in the company of experienced Danish bassist Jens Leonhardt, drummer Falk Reshöft and guitarist Alex Guth, offer a reincarnation of the Hamburg power metal that was brought to popularity in the second half of the eighties and at the turn of the nineties by bands like Helloween, Gamma Ray and Running Wild. Perfectly decent and thoroughly convincing. Their songs fight the battles of brave warriors, and the guys mostly draw inspiration from Germanic mythology. Poems in honor of the Vikings, then.
The crowd visibly got into the hot beats of the power metal drive, and Stormowarrior showed remarkable toughness and stage tenacity. During the show they gave their new studio album “Heading Northe” the heavy treatment, proving they put real faith in the new material. It’s a step up in quality from the previous two albums and truly deserves all the attention.
The guys mixed material from their entire discography into a repertoire of 12 songs. We got to hear Heading Northe, Metal Legacy, Signe Of The Warlorde, Heavy Metal Fire, Valhalla, Revenge Of Asa Lande, Lindisfarnel, Ragnarok, Thunderer, The Axewielder,…
A tight, mature performance flew by incredibly fast, and Stormwarrior, as the only real power metal band in the three days of the festival, made for a bold and welcome change of pace. Above all they pleasantly surprised everyone who didn’t know them before, because after the show most people didn’t hide their excitement over the newly discovered band that sounds damn close to angry Helloween or Gamma Ray.
URGEHAL, MAY RESULT, SOMRAK:
After the fairy-tale heavy/power metal stretch with Stormwarrior, it was time for a thoroughly black metal close to Thursday night. First to bring the plague to the stage were the Norwegian horsemen of the apocalypse Urgehal. The band, formed in 1992, created a proper atmosphere and played a demonic setlist covering tracks from the debut Arma Christi all the way to their “satanic black metal” creation from two years ago, Goatcraft Torment. Beer: €2, festival ticket: €35, black metal gimp on guitar: priceless! The satanic revelry went on late into the night with Serbian black metal giants May Result and local black metal heroes Somrak. Krieg!
Running Order
17:00 – Thraw 17:50 – Brutart 18:40 – Nibiru 19:50 – STORMWARRIOR 21:30 – URGEHAL 22:50 – MAY RESULT 00:00 – Somrak
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