Author: Rok Klemše, Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Nina Grad, Jerneja Jerak
Location: Tolmin / Slovenia
Concert date: 07/22/2013
Attendance: 15,000
Nine (circles of hell above paradise) are done and dusted, and after nine comes ten. Yep, for the tenth year in a row, blackness has descended on Tolmin. And not the kind that comes from clouds, but the human, metal kind. The jubilee tenth edition of the festival brought plenty of changes, the most obvious being the new name. Metalcamp is dead, long live MetalDays (which, thanks to the staggering number of dudes in thongs, bodices and pink stuff, quickly earned the nickname MetalGays too)!
The name isn’t the only novelty, though, because the festival went through numerous other, less visible but definitely important changes. The biggest and most welcome one was that the second stage was taken over by local live-show stormtroopers Dirty Skunks, who delivered a fantastic and varied lineup that easily held its own against the main stage (or even outdid it). On top of that, long-time festival partner Rock the Nation is gone, the one that year after year kept shoving bands from its “roster” down our throats until we were all properly sick of them. There’s more new stuff too: drinks and food are no longer paid for with annoying paper vouchers that ended up floating in both the beer and the Soča, but with handy payment cards that sped up buying things quite a bit. The beer hall with a selection of foreign beers was welcome too, along with more variety in the food and the festival’s overall relaxed, eco-minded vibe.
A week of getting out and escaping reality actually kicked off before the official start of the festival, since the warm-up nights with local bands were already held on Saturday and Sunday. Despite our best efforts to catch the Sunday warm-up show, well… acclimatization took its toll. Driving past the beautiful Most na Soči and into the center of Tolmin, already swarming with metalheads, is unforgettable every single time, and Tolmin and the festival always conjure up that unmistakable feeling of home.
The second stage offered a hefty bundle of interesting acts this year. First to wrap us in a old-school revival storm of old school heavy and Euro thrash metal (Paradox and/or Vendetta come to mind) were the Greeks Chronosphere. The Athens quartet of Spyros Lafias (vocals, guitar), Panos Tsampras (guitar), Kostas Spades (bass) and Thanos Krommidas (drums) isn’t nearly as generic as, say, their countrymen Suicidal Angels. The band isn’t reinventing the wheel, but with an untamed half-hour rampage through their own Hypnosis, War Infesction, Light Leading Maze and the title track of the album »Envirusment« they pleasantly surprised us and showed that with this kind of drive they can deliver many more quality stage shows and original music to the masses in the future.
Next up were Bosnian symphonic power metallers The Loudest Silence. The Sarajevo crew, fronted by singer Taida Nazraić in a bright blue neckline, served up original material that, as expected, leaned now toward Epica, now toward Within Temptation. You can tell the band lacks mileage and badly needs gigs like this one, on the second stage of MetalDays. Bold on stage, but already heard and very generic. Anyway, congrats to the band for the heart! Still, the first two bands honestly hadn’t managed to grab the real attention of our RockLine expedition to MetalDays 2013 yet! That only happened with the next act.
This year our crew got deflowered by locals, the young Tolmin hopefuls Agan, who managed to draw a nice crowd on the second stage in the early afternoon under the shade of the treetops. Agan play atmospheric/folk metal drawing mostly on the beauty of nature, and judging by where the young band comes from, they won’t run out of inspiration anytime soon. The lineup, whose members average a mere sixteen years of age, got through its half hour tightly and without major problems, helped this time by experienced bassist Mitja Usenik from local folk metal veterans Brezno. Agan create a somewhat more mystical atmosphere through generous use of keyboards and growling vocals, and what stuck with me most was the epically sinister Tema. Considering their youth and the fact that they already had a ton of original material right from the start, Agan have a bright future ahead of them.
Then came a sprint (and there were more of those this year than before because of a few awkward overlaps, though that’s also the price of an excellent lineup) to the main stage to catch Portuguese heavy metallers Attick Demons, who were making their Slovenian stage debut. The Portuguese took the main stage in the worst heat, yet still flung a dose of positive energy off it, mostly thanks to the quick-moving, good-humored vocalist Arturo, who filled the stage from the first note on, and there was no shortage of glammy moves à la jumping off the drum riser with legs spread wide. Attick Demons released their debut studio album Atlantis in 2011, successfully blending heavy metal strongly influenced by Iron Maiden with power metal close to American outfits like Pharaoh and Cage, and in a good half hour the sextet played a nice chunk of the album. That’s right, Attick Demons is a six-piece with three guitarists who (commendably) don’t just play the same guitar lines the whole time but manage to surprise with a few tasty tricks. Unfortunately the third guitar acted up and the sound was poor, but Arturo’s excellent vocals still boiled to the surface, often recalling the greatness of Dickinson’s voice.
After promising Slovenes Agan, the front of the second stage was taken by Croatia’s Avicularia. These extreme death metal brutalizers delivered a mix of technically demanding original songs where the clanging of bloodied knives from their meat grinder doesn’t hide a great deal of compositional enthusiasm. The compositions are dynamic and tastefully tied together, and with original songs like Anthem To Arms, our southern neighbors prove too that the standards of bands from Immolation to Quo Vadis are no longer out of reach. That’s also confirmed by the band’s debut »Born To Be Vile« (2009), which was very well received in the international metal community.
Considerably less interesting was the follow-up from epic melodic death metallers Darkest Horizon from the area around Frankfurt, Germany. An almost cinematically directed, fairy-tale-draped odyssey of ultra-melodic arrangements where riffs are matched by keyboards and “mangled” by death metal growls. You’d say Darkest Horizon are a band that will mostly warm the hearts of freshly baked metal enthusiasts. Feeling rather cooled off, I moved over to the hot sun of the main stage instead, where Australian thrash metal revivalists 4ARM were raising hell. Without any creative peaks of their own, with a mix of Machine Head and Trivium influences and the occasional dash of Teutonic thrash, they presented their current studio album »Submission For Liberty« (2012) with songs like My Father’s Eyes, Blood of Martyrs and The Warning.
Kissin’ Dynamite is a quintet of potent stallions that RockLine has been following since 2009, when they first appeared at the big Bang Your Head !!! festival. Incidentally, back then the now “miraculously everywhere” pirate bush-dwellers Alestorm played in the morning slot of the festival right before Kissin’ Dynamite. At the time, Kissin’ Dynamite presented themselves as typical revivalists of old German-school heavy metal, both in the style of their song arrangements and in their looks. They’re a crew from Reutlingen’s neighbor Balingen who, going by their birth certificates, have barely passed the age of 20. Johannes Braun (vocals), his brother Ande Braun (guitar), Jim Müller (guitar), Steffen Haile (bass) and Andi Schnitzer (drums) are a true phenomenon in that regard. The band, which changed its name from Blues Kids to Kissin’ Dynamite in 2008 (after an AC/DC song), made its premiere not only at MetalDays but in Slovenia with their third studio effort »Money, Sex And Power« (2012), with which they firmly stepped from the genre field described above onto sleaze territory, giving the metal they play that extra element which, especially thanks to the new Scandinavian wave of bands, is once again hugely popular in Europe. Kissin’ Dynmaite dolled themselves up as a sleaze rock outfit and delivered an outstandingly dynamic show in the middle of the scorching early afternoon heat, with “topless” vocalist Johannes Braun keeping the good vibes going the whole time. He treated us to some ear-piercing screams in the highest registers. With Kissin’ Dynamite, MetalDays brought to the Tolmin meadows an act that departs substantially, in both genre and character, from the basic metal mission dictated by the former Metal Camp. An excellent gesture by the organizer, and hopefully other hot sleaze rock or glam metal revival bands will follow Kissin’ Dynamite in the future, if, say, some rock ‘n’ roll dirtbags like Airbourne are too expensive.
At the same time the small stage offered a completely different musical experience, as local heroes The Canyon Observer stepped onto it from another dimension and plunged us between high tide and low tide, a glass-calm surface and the merciless raging of hurricane nature off Cape Horn. The band kicked off its half-hour set with calm, melancholic and ethereal guitar sounds accompanied by Hopsy’s siren vocals, but they didn’t leave us rocking back and forth in meditation for long, erupting instead in brutal volcanic ash that turned the crowd from dreamy zombies into headbanging animals. A prime example of this duality was the epic And Drift Away, where mystical riffs, sawing chords and brutal, raw vocals complement each other perfectly. The whole thing was filled out brilliantly this time by fantastic drumming (thundering), and Hopsy’s writhing and epileptic frenzy across the stage adds its own touch to the show, while the band’s atmosphere also benefits from the lack of needless chatter between songs. With The Canyon Observer the instruments do the talking (and the vocals, of course), and without a doubt their set was one of the first highlights of the festival, looking and sounding like a musical setting of a heart arrhythmia – calm and dreamy one moment, brutal and adrenaline-fueled the next, and onward in that (dis)rhythm.
Meanwhile, on the main stage the slicked-up Germans Kissin’ Dynamite were just wrapping up their set, and looking at the Mötley Crüe/Poison-styled, underfed singer, I was glad the sounds of their cliché glam/hard rock didn’t drift over to the other stage. It was a bigger pleasure to greet Swedish heavyweights Soilwork on stage, who with their freshly released, well-received double album The Living Infinite got closer to their roots. The Swedes took the stage in the worst afternoon heat, which showed especially on Björn “Speed” Strid, who was sweating and turning red after the first few notes, but in that hellish heat we were sweating even when standing perfectly still. Speed also proved he’s still in great vocal shape, though for my taste he overdoes the gentler clean vocals. Soilwork gave a pretty solid push for the new record, playing four tracks from it, and sadly went furthest back only with the album Natural Born Chaos and the ultra-hit Follow the Hollow. A great performance and an energetic show go hand in hand with Soilwork, but if anyone truly blew us away, it was the extraordinary drummer Dirk Verbeuren, who took our breath away with inhumanly precise drumming full of gorgeous transitions, snapped-off moments and countless fine touches (no wonder Devin Townsend took him on for his Deconstruction record). Soilwork closed their set with the hit Nerve, and after that scorching show (one way or another) cooling off in the emerald beauty of the Soča was more than welcome. This year the program at the “Beach stage” impressed with greater variety too, with topless badminton (yum), men’s beach volleyball in thongs (not so yum), a fiery evening show and the obligatory striptease. The music program was more varied too, and thank God didn’t hammer us with countless repeats of the Metalcamp anthem this year, while as for weirdos, there are always more than enough to choose from at Sotočje anyway.
Nottingham thrash metal revivalists Incinery were almost overlooked, since most people were busy chilling on the meadow in front of the festival’s main stage, where Soilwork were offering them their “metal reconciliation” hand. It was actually a very decent and confident set from a band that’s only four years old, even if it was for a dozen listeners. Incidentally, they’re tight as the devil, though devilishly hard to listen to! Bad luck hit the interesting Slovenes Neurotech right after them, who had to end their set after a measly 10 minutes. One of their computers had died. Experimental metal backed by lots of programmed sequences simply can’t function on stage otherwise. So we’ll have to look forward to the band’s next gig. Winning more sympathy and my patience on the second stage later in the program were American post metallers Mouth Of The Architect from Ohio. The quintet, with its richly layered sonic backdrop, successfully hypnotized listeners with its vision of esoteric drifting in a pool of hefty guitar effects, backed by numerous delay tricks. A colorful plume of sounds and sonic solutions. Songs like The Other Son and Sharpen Your Axes, among others, kept up a restorative atmosphere that turned the mood for half an hour into a completely different musical dimension. One that would be right up the alley of fans of Isis, Cult Of Luna, Neurosis and/or Pelican.
Plenty of younger visitors with painted faces made it clear early in the afternoon that Monday would also bring a show by the heroes of “teenage” metal, Finland’s Ensiferum. It’s incredible how strong a fan base this band has, packing the meadow in front of the main stage right at sunset and drenching the youngsters who go crazy for them. You can’t accuse Ensiferum of a bad show by any means, since it was extremely energetic, warlike and excellently played, and charismatic bassist Sami and Petri’s growing beer belly added their bit, but apparently I’ve become a hardened metalhead and just can’t find anything more worthwhile in Ensiferum. The guys and a keyboardist who was at least easy on the eyes played the standard hits Guardian of Fate, One More Magic Potion (with a snippet of Metallica’s classic For Whom the Bell Tolls woven in), Lai Lai Hei, Twilight Tavern, finally satisfied the kids with the classic Iron and then handed the stage to the legendary veterans of New York thrash metal, Overkill.
Before that, half an hour on the small stage was reserved for Israeli death/thrash metal outfit Hammercult, where unfortunately the most interesting thing was that vocalist Yakir wore a shirt of cult American band Manilla Road. Hammercult rose among the more visible acts from the Middle East in 2011 by winning Wacken Metal Battle, but their debut Anthems of the Damned is a weak, poor copy of the likes of Dew-Scented and similar bands. The Israelis mostly served up generic riffs and boring, predictable songs, and Yakir was at times an overly puffed-up frontman who couldn’t get out anything more than monotonous screaming.
Overkill drew a special guard of fans to the front of the stage. Somewhat more mature. Less naive. True to their thrash metal birth certificate. With exceptional seasoning, Bobby Blitz tamed the audience and led it as if hypnotized. The crowd obediently fulfilled his every wish. Bobby is an outstanding frontman. He doesn’t lack charisma and knows how to put it to good use. An incredible leader and a man who knows how to pick the right words at the right moment. Of course, behind him stood the loyal machinery of the instrumental side of the band, which approached the festival gig as if in a trance. With a generous dose of fanaticism, even though for a band with this kind of mileage it’s all “school drill,” passion, joy and the great pleasure of performing still blow from every riff and every move in 2013! Overkill are an incredibly convincing live act that can’t miss. Red-hot heads in front of the stage and a hefty catalog of studio releases calling back to the golden days when metal was still young, authentic, untamed and rebellious guaranteed another unforgettable adventure with a band that kicks and bites in only one direction, irrevocably, leaving no survivors behind. Even the combination of the opener, the new Come And Get It from the current studio album »The Electric Age« (2012), followed right away by Rotten to the Core – a classic from the debut »Feel the Fire« (1985) – played out in just such a fashion, and Overkill only escalated their deadly march through an hour-long set toward the tail of the setlist with a series of demanded and expected staples from their ironclad repertoire. A show, then, executed in the manner of the best live acts in the world of metal!
The first awkward and unfortunate overlap of this year’s festival happened while New York thrash dirtbags Overkill were tearing up the main stage and British death metal veterans Benediction took the small stage. In the past they’ve had the likes of Mark “Barney” Greenway (Napalm Death) and Dave Ingram (ex-Bolt Thrower) growling for them, and since 1998 the vocalist spot has been held by Dave Hunt of Anaal Nathrakh, who took the same stage three days later. The phenomenal sound wasn’t the only highlight of the British death metal legends’ set, because they were in great spirits, brutal and fucking loud! Benediction plunged us for an hour into a whirlwind of devastating death metal, full of classic death metal riffs (ennobled by occasional hc/punk elements that set Benediction apart from most death metal bands), solid and varied drumming and Hunt’s brutal growls. With Benediction he stays within the genre’s guidelines, since his growl is deep and raw and he doesn’t throw in high screaming lines like in Anaal Nathrakh. But this time everything clicked for Benediction, not just the vocals – the guitars were fat, the riffs diabolical, the bass deep and Motörhead-like in its rumble, the drums tight, clear and grooving, their crushing power a solid foundation for the guitar riffs. It was all packaged into a perfect whole by Hunt’s brilliant, unrehearsed and (drunkenly) intelligent banter, and with that Benediction climbed to the top step of the Monday podium, and it seemed they’d manage to hold onto it too. (Organized) chaos!
Closing out the main stage on the festival’s first day were veterans from Swedish Gothenburg, In Flames. They feel at home in Tolmin, and this isn’t their first MetalDays performance on that very site! In Flames are a well-oiled machine that burst onto the festival stage with full force. Given that the album promotion has been running worldwide for a solid two years, and that we caught In Flames at the start of that same tour in the middle of CUK Kino Šiška at the end of September 2011, we could hope for widespread changes to the repertoire. But we got precious few changes. »Sounds of a Playground Fading«, the band’s tenth studio album, got another stage realization, with In Flames igniting the stage straight away with the album’s opening title track. The show took place under extremely strong spotlights, blinding really. There’s no doubting the quality of the performance. In fact, with hardly any effort In Flames burned the first-day grounds to the ground, and the fanatical crowd ate out of their hands no less fanatically. Anders Fridén (vocals), Björn Gelotte (guitar), Daniel Svensson (drums), Peter Iwers (bass) and Niclas Engelin (guitar), who permanently replaced the burnt-out Jesper Strömblad in 2011, routinely scattered napalm through a phalanx of newer anthems, and the whole festival moved onto a kind of grooving tarp in front of the stage, whose springy suspension followed in sync the band’s firm rhythmic grip. The mix of solid rhythms backed by a plethora of trendy breakdown loops and a combination of melodic sequences with guitars in thirds and riff aggression once again proved a winning and tried-and-true move, with which In Flames easily justified their role as festival headliner. Unfortunately, their set also suffered from flaws in the sound system and a lot of murkiness in the riffing of both guitars, but the whole phalanx of bands playing the main stage before In Flames had been burdened with similar mishaps. In Flames didn’t conjure up much more than a feeling of routine. Anyone who hadn’t seen them yet could enjoy it without a care, anyone who loves them enjoyed it even more, and anyone who’d been “snooping” around them many times got what they expected. From In Flames in 2013, plenty of modern and little, if not nothing, of the classic. Even old classics like The Hive sound completely different in the new In Flames than in the golden days of their melodic death metal pioneering. Nice, decent, but without peaks and in line with expectations. The main thing is that the crowd got their heads thrashed to the max, and that was the band’s basic purpose anyway!
The honor of closing the first festival day went to the right hands this time. For the first time in their long career, American veterans, the legendary Pentagram fronted by the iconic Bobby Liebling, took our stage. Pentagram were until recently almost a forgotten and obscure band, rescued from oblivion by a harsh documentary about the band’s leader and only original member, vocalist Bobby Liebling, Last Days Here (I strongly recommend watching it). The band started out only a short time after Black Sabbath were formed and is thus considered one of the pioneers of doom metal, and in the seventies it already had an enviable and visible “underground” status. But Pentagram were always just one step away from big success, and time and again Liebling himself ruined it, having been a heavy drug addict for decades. Bobby recently shook off his demons (at least enough to still be alive at all), pulled the band together again and the year before last released the excellent “comeback” record Last Rites. Pentagram’s MetalDays show was thus quite an exclusive and one of the biggest attractions of the year, and the band lived up to its reputation from the very first notes. The band got a fantastic, clear, loud and crystal-clean sound, thanks to which every instrument shone, along with Bobby’s vocals, which hold up surprisingly well considering everything. Pentagram were a real time machine back to the past, already because of the appearance of their leader alone – Liebling strode onto the stage with his trademark disheveled gray hair, a shiny shirt straight out of the seventies and bell-bottom pants, and despite everything he’s put into his body over the decades (follow RockLine, an interview with him will be published soon) he evidently still has a splendid ear, because he’s gathered excellent musicians around him. One of Pentagram’s more important players, guitarist Victor Griffin, is sadly no longer in the lineup (but do check out his In-Graved), yet in his place stands the convincing and outstanding left-handed guitarist Matt Goldborough, who impressed with accurate, precise doom riffing and spectacular soloing (during which Bobby always writhes unforgettably), and the incredible drummer Sean Saley took our breath away too, his drumming a real feast for the eyes and ears – varied and diverse fills, generous and thoughtful use of cymbals and even the occasional bout of double bass pedal raised eyebrows. And Bobby? His speech between songs is hard to understand and mumbling, but he held up damn well during the songs! Mighty, reliable, convincing and sexy, Bobby thundered through the verses of immortal classics Sign of the Wolf (Pentagram), The Ghoul, Forever My Queen, Relentless and the closing 20 Buck Spin, while crushing tracks from the current record Treat Me Right, Everything’s Turning To Night and 8 are proof that Pentagram are nowhere near ready for retirement. An outstanding end to the first day, its peak and one of the best moments of this year’s festival!
Rok Klemše:
– intro
– main stage: Attick Demons, Soilwork, Ensiferum
– second stage: Agan, The Canyon Observer, Hammercult, Benediction, Pentagram
Aleš Podbrežnik
– main stage: 4ARM, Kissin’ Dynamite, Overkill, In Flames
– second stage: Chronosphere, The Loudest Silence, Avicularia, Darkest Horizon, Incinery, Neurotech, Mouth of the Architect
Setlists
THE CANYON OBSERVER:
1. Part I: As We Surrender To Lust
2. Part III: We Can Descend Into the Unknown
3. Part IV: And Drift Away
4. My Will
SOILWORK:
1. This Momentary Bliss
2. Weapon of Vanity
3. Follow the Hollow
4. Tongue
5. Spectrum of Eternity
6. Let This River Flow
7. Rise Above the Sentiment
8. Stabbing the Drama
9. Nerve
ENSIFERUM:
1. Symbols/In My Sword I Trust
2. Guardians of Fate
3. From Afar
4. Burning Leaves
5. One More Magic Potion (w/For Whom the Bell Tolls)
6. Lai Lai Hei
7. Ahti
8. Twilight Tavern
9. Iron
OVERKILL:
1. Come And Get It
2. Rotten To the Core
3. Wrecking Crew
4. Bring Me the Night
5. Electric Rattlesnake
6. Hello From the Gutter
7. Ironbound
8. Old School
9. Who Tends the Fire
10. In Union We Stand
11. Elimination
— encore —
12. Coma
13. Fuck You
IN FLAMES:
1. Sounds of a Playground Fading
2. Where the Dead Ships Dwell
3. Pinball Map
4. Alias
5. Trigger
6. Embody the Invisible
7. Cloud Connected
8. The Hive
9. Only For the Weak
10. Ropes
11. Fear Is the Weakness
12. The Quiet Place
13. Delight And Angers
14. All For Me
15. The Mirror’s Truth
16. System
17. Deliver Us
18. Take This Life
19. My Sweet Shadow
PENTAGRAM:
1. Sign of the Wolf (Pentagram)
2. Wheel of Fortune
3. The Ghoul
4. Treat Me Right
5. Forever My Queen
6. Review Your Choices
7. Everything’s Turning To Night
8. When the Screams Come
9. 8
10. All Your Sins
11. Petrified
12. Relentless
— encore —
13. Be Forwarned
14. 20 Buck Spin
Photo Gallery
