Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Kompleks / Ravne na Koroškem / Slovenia
Concert date: October 22, 2010
Attendance: 15
Ticket price: €5.00
Grega Habič! Jesenice’s guitar virtuoso, a creative musical genius with his very own musical convictions and vocabulary. Last May, the man put out a new solo studio album, his third overall, titled “Self Destruct Sequence” (2009, RockLine review HERE), and it took him quite a while to work up the nerve, pull together a backing crew and hit the road to play live stages.
Grega is a musician who towers well above the average the Slovenian music world has to offer, with all its seriously schooled players. He’s a complete one-off, plucked straight from outer space. Nobody sounds like him. So putting together a crew that could keep up with Grega on stage was no easy job. And yet. Get a guitar virtuoso like Klemen Gasar (Game Over) on board, plus drummer Blaž Soklič (Game Over, Dusk Delight), keyboardist Robert Humar and a bass wizard, the barely 23-year-old Matej Sušnik (MetalSteel, solo), and you’ve basically built a supergroup that has no equal in Slovenia in the genre it cultivates and develops. A supergroup equipped to win over not just Slovenian stages, but the whole world! If I may oversimplify, Grega Habič is Slovenia’s answer to similar takes on instrumental guitar rock, à la Paul Gilbert Band, Devil’s Slingshot (MacAlpine / Sheehan / Donati), the Croatian Damir Šimič Šime, and I’d better not go on… Grega is a perfectionist who develops his own approach and walks his own path.
Events like this deserve a big welcome and a deep bow. After all, instrumental rock in Slovenia is still in swaddling clothes. There’s Uroš Planinc Group, and then it’s more or less over. Slovenes’ interest in this kind of music is just as meager, which reflects our own stepmotherly attitude toward progressive forms of rock and, frankly, our own musical narrow-mindedness, which clearly won’t end until human civilization collapses.
Grega Habič Band stopped at Ravne na Koroškem too on a short October tour. Until 20 minutes past ten at night, there were just 10 people sitting in the hall. Count the two sound techs and you get 12. The organizer, indestructible metal enthusiast Tilen Hudrap, then the band’s manager, two journalists, a photographer, both sound techs. Only the remaining six in the club could really be counted as actual concertgoers. What a miserable showing from the public. It also turned out that promotion for this gig in Styria and Carinthia was extremely meager. In fact, there was none. At the same time as the Grega Habič Band show, a few local shindigs were going on, and the locals evidently preferred tipping back mugs of boozy liquor in their tried-and-true local dives, soundtracked by the usual “brilliant” feats of “artistry” from Slovenia’s quasi-rockers of party music. In short, a sorry picture.
Grega Habič Band played it like the true pros they are, shrugged off the fact they were playing to an empty hall and hit it full throttle. A mix of fired-up metal riffs and cruising from melodic perfection through intense jam interplay on the Habič – Gasar line to the unexpected breaks from Blaž Soklič, with its influences and excellent grounding in jazz tunes quietly woven into the noisy tradition of cranked-up shredding, took your breath away.
Habič let Gasar stretch out on two numbers too and show off his skills. Let’s be honest. Grega Habič is the guitarist everyone would want in their band. I won’t be lying if I say that if Grega is the first pick of any popular band, Klemen is right behind him. Second pick! Then there’s Matej Sušnik, a youngster who has everything ready for his solo studio debut. It’ll come out before the year is over. Grega offered him the chance to present himself on stage on this mini tour, and Dr. Bass was Matej’s solo adventure. Matej put the crowd in a good mood by implanting Michael Jackson’s Billy Jean bass line and a superbly reworked Zdravljica for bass guitar, a one-of-a-kind specialty à la Matej Sušnik. None of it would have been possible without the lively, adventurous drumming of Blaž Soklič, a seasoned matador of the drumming fortresses, while yet another musical master, Robert Humar, vehemently covered the ambient backdrop with his dynamic use of the keyboards. In short, we enjoyed every second of this brilliant mix of unique vocabulary, spontaneity, shock therapy and top-notch execution, which had no shortage of breakneck acrobatics and virtuoso wizardry, including sequences of the most complex tonalities that looked and sounded impossible to get through. The guys mostly played material from the current studio album “Self Destruct Sequence” (2009), mixing in material from the previous two studio albums “Catharsis” and “Rebirth”. They closed the intense show with Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World, following the method of Joe Satriani. Matej Sušnik handled the lead vocals on this one. Finger-lickin’ good!
In short, all you gourmets in Styria and Carinthia missed a top-notch gig that day. For practically nothing, too. You could’ve had a beer and opened your eyes. But hope dies last. The next day the band had a gig at Ljubljana’s Orto bar, which gives the Slovenian audience yet another chance to atone for its original sin!
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik (except photos no. 25 & 26.: Robi Lipej)
Setlist
1. Intro 2. Razor’s Edge 3. Voodoo Sex Thing 4. Alyx 5. Self Destruct Sequence 6. Beyond Redemption (sample 1) 7. Scars 8. Dr. Bass 9. Io 10. A Little Love Song 11. Crying Out Loud 12. Catharsis (sample 2) 13. Magid Fingers 14. Rebirth 15. Revolution (sample 3-4) —encore— 16. Through The Gates Of The Unknown 17. Rockin’ In The Free World
Photo Gallery
