Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Concert date: July 4, 2012
Attendance: 850
Ticket price: €35.00
This year, the real finale of the concert season at Ljubljana’s urban culture center Kino Šiška was delivered by cult British rockers with a cult name! And no, that’s not Blue Oyster Cult, because those guys are American. We’re talking about The Cult. The band, who put out a fresh studio album, »Choice Of Weapon«, this year after a five-year gap, last “terrorized” the Balkan Peninsula on tour in 2009, when they hit Zagreb’s small hall at Dom Sportova at the end of September and filled it to the brim. This time the new tour gravitated toward the hot summer. On this new concert epic, The Cult came up from the south of the Balkans to Ljubljana, after shows in Belgrade (Belgrade Calling Festival) and, the day before Ljubljana, in Croatian Split. If this were the eighties, we could have just rebranded the whole thing a mini Yugoslav tour.
One of the most controversial British bands, who had the real potential to become one of the biggest rock acts of all time and missed it by a hair, invited along the dirty, hard-kicking Scottish hard rock brutes Gun, who made it big in the first half of the nineties and were all over MTV in 1994, for instance, with the single Word Up, a cover of the original by the “vanilla-sweet” Cameo. That was their third album, »Swagger«, and Gun were really flying high back then, but after the 1997 album »0141 632 6326« they fell apart pretty quickly and almost unnoticed stopped functioning. The charismatic Mark Rankin is no longer on vocals; in today’s incarnation of Gun only the brothers remain, guitarist Giuliano ‘Jools’ Gizzi and Dante Gizzi, who has taken the vocal duties back on, while bassist Derek Brown and drummer Paul McManus round out the quartet.
In a good half hour, the band played an energetic set in front of an almost empty Kino Šiška hall, one that kicked up every last speck of dust stubbornly lodged in the hall’s most hidden corners. No question. Authenticity and a genuine knack for rock n’ roll swagger have never been something this band lacked. They used their allotted minutes to present their comeback studio album »Break The Silence«, playing four tracks from it: the opener 14 Stations, Butcher Man, Lost And Found and the title track. Naturally Word Up wasn’t missing from the repertoire, tucked in toward the end of the set list, and the rest was rounded out by older rockers Better Days, Don’t Say It’s Over, Steal Your Fire and the closer Shame On You. The band is tough as nails. You can tell they came together in the late eighties and that these are seasoned old cats who get the principle of rock culture, which makes it a real shame that, thanks to their long absence, they’ve been forgotten and, as a result, unfairly overlooked and missed at Kino Šiška that night. But that’s how it goes. Let’s hope they win back at least a sliver of their old recognition, if they aren’t destined to be crowned with some smash mega hit, since their golden days of commercial potential are behind them.
The Cult are, of course, a whole different song. Even though this is a band marked by a career of ups and downs, their collection of cult classic albums and ultra hits is the launchpad, really a catapult, from which The Cult always spring back among the most prominent rock acts of our era. The mini Armageddons are well known: the band has been plagued throughout by disagreements and squabbles, and by long stretches of total non-communication, especially on the vital Duffy-Astbury axis, so eccentricities have never been in short supply for The Cult. How much these kept the band from reaching the league of the biggest rock acts is for everyone to decide for themselves, but this side of their character gives The Cult a special status and a place as unpredictable devils you can never guess what they’ll get up to or how they’ll shock you.
However I look at it, the band’s new album is simply excellent. »Choice Of Weapon« is an exceptionally noisy record, not meant for the wavering, but for lovers of solid, erotic rock rhetoric veiled in gothic, mystical doom, which has always crowned this band’s musical character. Of course, times have changed, and a new album like »Love« or »Sonic Temple« can’t be expected, let alone demanded, from the band.
The whopping 40-minute delay wasn’t the product of any egotrip whims from the band’s members, but of an unfortunate incident: on the way to Ljubljana from Split the band got into a crash, as the bus driver reportedly nodded off for a short but unwelcome nap and ran into a bridge. Given the band’s reputation, we were honestly even glad in the end that The Cult showed up at all, and that the band, thrown into such an ordeal, even made it onto the stage. Before that, the jam-packed hall literally howled with indignation, and the human body itself added its share of “grumpiness,” coping poorly with the unbearable conditions dictated this time by the scorching microclimate of the hall.
The agonizing minutes of waiting sank into oblivion in an instant as the band started blasting its cult classics early in the show, kicking off with Lil’ Devil from the third studio album »Electric«, and immediately drew return salvos of ecstasy from the boiling crowd, which made no secret of its total delight.¨
The band’s stage setup was standard! The ever mystique-shrouded Ian Astbury stood center stage, this time wrapped in a jacket trimmed with imitation fur from a giant Persian cat, or maybe some desert fox, not exactly a smart choice for summer, especially considering that Ian wore it for the whole hour and a half at CUK Kino Šiška! Dark shades were mandatory, perched on his nose, and his hair had grown back with a vengeance, so the man combed it tightly back and tied it in a ponytail. To his left stood guitarist Billy Duffy, sunk into the corner of the stage; to Ian’s right stood bassist Chris Wyse; John Tempesta was pounding away behind the drums; and onstage the foursome was also kept company by a quiet fifth member in the shadows, who has accompanied the band as an extra live rhythm guitarist since 1999! His name is Mike Dimkich. Early on, The Cult quickly fired up the crowd when Rain rang out, followed right away by Nirvana and Fire Woman. In the opening stretch the repertoire alternated between new and old songs. The audience swung accordingly during the performance, a kind of hot-and-cold correlation. The mood wavered, but the band didn’t show a single flaw all night, cutting through the set with full commitment. Good thing too, since it was proof that The Cult are extremely happy with how the new album turned out and that they enjoy playing its songs on concert stages!
Astbury, who is famous for his stage reserve, for warming up very slowly and opening up to the audience even more slowly, managed a bit more talk with the crowd this time than three years ago in Zagreb, where he was completely silent. Admittedly, he only greeted the congregation for the first time toward the end of the regular part of the set, but still. Duffy kept to himself again, apparently that’s just his way. Not once did he look out from the stage at the audience. The whole time he was hammering away at a Gretsch guitar, a white hollow-body model with “f-holes,” shaped much like the Gibson ES-335, the same kind used by Charlie Burchill of the legendary Scottish rock band Simple Minds. After the new The Wolf, the band hit the gas and pounded out nothing but classic after classic, the mood kept rising, and the atmosphere turned into a “Cult planet,” something only this unique band can conjure.
Yes. Still. And more convincing than they’ve been in a long time. Today’s The Cult shows can’t be compared with the days of Matt Sorum, but The Cult work brilliantly on stage for the new era. They keep their unique look pure and untarnished. And that’s the essence of it. Their untouchability, their reserve, their unpredictable reactions, where you never know when and how they’ll strike. Astbury really did resemble some kind of priest. That motionless, cool stance, the seasoned musician’s sex appeal, was of course also exploited by the former members of The Doors a few years back, when they invited Ian to step into the role of a stand-in for the stage reincarnation of the untouchable Jim Morrison. Astbury is an exceptional stage figure and without him there is no The Cult. That’s a fact, and we got that confirmation again this time at Kino Šiška. The man does now keep some distance from the highest vocal registers, which of course comes with age, but otherwise he carries himself with confidence and plenty of credibility in his vocal interpretation.
The Cult proved at Kino Šiška that they’re still true stage preachers, rock sorcerers to whom every mystery is plain and revealed. Year after year, their defiance and their mastery of the rock occult only deepen, and its magic touch spreads wider. After an hour and a half, the band closed the show the way they started it. With the »Electric« classic Love Removal Machine, they sent the packed Kino Šiška hall off full of delight.
Setlist
1. Lil’ Devil
2. Honey From a Knife
3. Rain
4. Lucifer
5. Nirvana
6. Embers
7. Fire Woman
8. The Wolf
9. Rise
10. The Phoenix
11. For the Animals
12. Wild Flower
13. She Sells Sanctuary
—encore—
14. Horse Nation
15. Spiritwalker
16. Love Removal Machine
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