Venue: Rock Cafe / Postojna
Concert date: 06.01.2010
Attendance: 0
Ticket price: free admission
The Epic RockLine Contest caravan doesn’t give a damn and stubbornly rolls on into 2010. The third act of the festival for unsigned bands at Rock Cafe in Postojna was christened with a metal rattle-fest from three promising outfits: Sagaris, Brezno and Eternity. It was a splendid evening that served up sturdy demonstrations of three different strains of metal, and it confirmed the old rule that the most loyal souls, the ones ready to back their favorites at any moment, are hiding right in the metal phalanxes of music enthusiasts!
SAGARIS
Despite their youth, Sagaris proved they’ve got the metal mentality studied down to the last detail. With intense stage action and a shameless way of communicating with the crowd, the guys quickly soak up a good dose of sympathy. The fire and uncompromising attitude of these youngsters blends perfectly with the youthful determination in their eyes, and the result is a textbook case of unspoiled idealizing of metal folklore, that unforced, wholehearted surrender to the music that all too often slips away these days. Sagaris’ biggest trump card is guitarist and vocalist Luka Žnidaršič. The popular “Lux” likes to flirt with fast-fingered exhibitions that, while fueling the fervent youthful rush, often come across as forced, or maybe better said overdone, though they only bother the most nitpicky. Sagaris don’t let grumblers like that get to them and instead charge briskly down the road of harmonic death metal. Armed with a “Stasi-like sense for finesse,” they deliver wound-up guitar manipulation of fairly basic riffs that lovers of distorted massacring gladly settle into among the glittering layers of ear filth. The tight, well-wound rhythm section did, thanks to drummer Tilen Volščanšek, drop an eighth note or two here and there, but there’s no doubt the potential is plentiful. It shows mostly in the unexpected complexity of the original ideas on display. Sagaris are probably even too mature songwriting-wise, so, as is fitting for “milk-teeth” bands, in the live execution they come off noticeably soft on the technical side, less individually than as a unit. Put plainly, the guys are definitely aiming in the right direction, belted with bandoliers of much-needed arrogance and disobedience, which regularly takes its toll in the form of needlessly cluttered stage action, in which many a well-conceived motif soon loses its original punch. A “problem” Sagaris will no doubt fix soon enough with regular gigging and the experience that comes with it.
BREZNO
Metal, as one of the more uncompromising forms of musical expression, has over the years learned to overcome the ossification of its original genre frameworks, and in its later incarnations, in the name of survival, learned respect for musical styles that were once not exactly acceptable. As prejudices disappeared, it became inseparably intertwined over time with the roots of genres once often despised.
An evolutionary “boom” like the one described above, metal growing into once-unthinkable spheres, also happened to folk metallers Brezno. This is a six-piece that has effectively fused recognizable elements of metal with the basic characteristics of folk music. But watch out: unlike a plethora of genre-related crossbreeds, Brezno look mostly eastward for creative inspiration, digging through the mythology of our Slavic brothers, which is certainly a welcome novelty on the home music scene. Brezno got the job done convincingly, despite some truly annoying problems with irritating squealing from the amps at times. The sextet bets on a fairly basic approach that doesn’t skimp on inventive arrangements, a textbook demonstration of great tightness, and decent harmonization when handling dynamic leaps. While delivering catchy melodies, those leaps build on the colorful ambient sonic dressing, where the striking sound of the flute and singer Inez’s “falsetto” only underline the presence of the epic element. The girl moved, as expected, in the upper vocal registers. The strenuous task, even for a ¾-hour set, did knock a noticeable chunk of tuning off the lead vocal in places, but no worries. Brezno stay superbly backed vocally thanks to the backing voices of keyboardist Katarina and occasional vocalist Mitja, who is actually a bassist by trade.
Bands that cross over with the tradition of folk music rarely offer anything surprisingly new these days. With Brezno, what saved us from slapping on the label of stylistic exhaustion, at least to some extent, was the use of the Slovenian language, which makes the whole thing come across as all the more genuine and accessible.
ETERNITY
The closing act of the third night of the Epic RockLine Contest served up a colorful demonstration of yet another genre subvariety, this time symphonic gothic metal, or rather its softer offshoot. In search of their place under the metal sun, Eternity boldly turned their sails in a different direction, toward sugary melodies that, as a rule, stay wrapped in thick layers of suitably rough-edged distorted guitar buzz. The fighters from Nova Gorica evidently lean on elements that have, one way or another, been recast from the expressive building blocks of the Scandinavian music school. For the most part these are thoroughly chewed-over trendy tricks, which Eternity decided to spice up with a heaping helping of stage showmanship and, of course, the excellent vocals of Jasmina Lozar, who nevertheless remains rather lonely in the fight for the audience’s hearts. Adding a backing voice seems almost essential, not so much because of the lead vocal, which is assured in every respect and rightly carries the bulk of the band’s recognizability, but mainly to fill out the sound more solidly, an often shifting but splendidly polished sonic picture that seems tailor-made for testing the singer’s interpretive range. With it, Eternity hit on two fronts. While along the entire length of the first they deliver a mighty riff cannonade from a freshly drilled guitar tandem, on the other side melodic instincts pile up that are closer in origin to popular musical approaches. Of course, these “metamorphoses,” with which Eternity deliberately reach as wide as possible into the musical space, demand a heaping helping of compromise maneuvering, and that can be a double-edged sword. Especially with a crowd as intolerant of “musical selling out” as the metal one.
To close, I feel I have to shake out a few critical thoughts about the showmanship mentioned earlier. Eternity certainly don’t lack courage (they confirmed as much with the use of pyrotechnics, which kindly tested the responsiveness of Rock Cafe’s fire alarm), but the guys and the girl still, to put it mildly, overdo it with the pompous show. Their choreographed bits come across as theatrical, to some extent even arrogant, and in the eyes of the true-believer metal “crowd” definitely rather tasteless and off-putting.
Photos: Mojca Perdih
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