The Hellish High of the Lesser-Known (2013)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba

Venue: Klub Grmki, Metelkova, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Concert date: 12.09.2013
Attendance: 30 – 40
Ticket price: free admission

Some gigs come along where I can’t find the right opening line without coming off as blatant, pretentious or just plain pointless, so I’ll start this write-up with the honest fact that on the eve of Friday the thirteenth of September I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I took over the foyer of Klub Gromki. Most of Slovenia was at home trembling for our great hopes at EuroBasket, while us sports blasphemers slowly crammed ourselves, a little after ten in the evening, into the tight front-of-stage area of one of Metelkova’s less-sung gig spaces. I came mainly out of curiosity about how the Slovenian primal stoner outfit Voodoo Mule sounds live; everything else was just a bonus to the evening, and expectations were anything but sky-high. The heavy air of ever-thickening tension was rinsed away with a sip of beer, while the speakers wafted out a choice selection of more modern, metallized doom, stoner hybrids and, above all, more underground death and thrash, until the sleepy tempo of the night finally shifted up a gear.

First on stage were three youngsters decked out in old-school leather uniforms and the kind of trimmings you could find in the eighties on every last representative of true-believer metal. Ljubljana trio Hellsword swear by the rustic principle of orthodox speed, doom and even blasphemously darkened black metal. In an age when metal’s standard-bearers lose their identity by hybridizing with a multitude of more fleeting subgenres, or are more preoccupied with their pose, imagery and whatnot, substance, essence and the quality of the music served up have suffered, and everything has started to sound samey and boringly monotonous, despite far more polished production. Behind the drums sits Mark Massakre, to whom bassist and vocalist Mike Manslaughter gives a few pointers, while on the right side of the stage the visibly hyped Ironfist finally gets his Stratocaster tuned, and the stampede begins. After four years of honing and concentrating the distilled tincture of old-school Venom, Bathory, Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, the lads, armed with the demo EP Blasphemy Unchained, have carved out a sound of their own that is closer to the speed metal beginnings of the early eighties, or a more brutalized version of Mötörhead, than to the demonic obsession of black metal. The trio sounds confident, while stage acting and posing, thank the lucky stars, isn’t their strong suit. I came to listen to music, not to grade drama. In the predictable Unholy Reich, Mike and Ironfist prove themselves the main carriers of the melody, Mark serves up solid drum metrics in a rudimentary, uncomplicated way, and Hellsword somehow, in a bizarre way, even conjure up the early Metallica of the Kill ‘Em All era, early Exodus and even the first Slayer recordings. Probably it’s down to the unpolished patina of the sound, built mainly on the whetted, close-shaven vintage Marshall tone and Ironfist’s carefully sanded-down run of riffs, and it’s precisely those that this night quite thoroughly drown out Mike’s vocals and his lines about the great ruler of hell. A dose of newer material and the announcement of the new studio release, the EP Sounding Of The Seventh Bell, come via Rip Through The Night and the solid zombie romp of Graves Of The Damned, where the recipe stays the same: besides rhythmic know-how, the well-schooled but visibly tense Ironfist has to show off his solo talent. The well-executed collage of old-school rhythms and sounds at times falters because of the weak PA, while the trio on stage gets good support in the front rows from the evening’s fourth member – a crowd that was a bit sleepy at first but in good spirits. The ominous chase for speed records continues in the manner of Lemmy Kilmister with Marching Towards The Heaven (Satan, Death & Fear), but what really grabs my attention is Burn The Chapel, which has more structure and a really solid solo section. The rest of the dosing and seasoning of the evening with naive portions of already outlived, though certainly fun, occultism a bit past its sell-by date was a smidge too little to make all the passions boil over and let you dive confidently into the pit for survival, and the more static crowd kept lowering the temperature in Gromki, which was otherwise soaked in sweat and pheromones. Sore necks and a change of tack aren’t delivered even by the closing covers of the night. First to rumble out of the speakers is a well-timed cover of Swiss legends Hellhammer and their Messiah, onto which, like dad on mom, lands a bit of sprinkling from the golden era of the first wave of British heavy metal – Witching Hour by the infamous Satanists Venom. Welcome to Hell? Absolutely! Hellsword wrap up their package of fun in style, but without the standout moments that would let you pin medals on this otherwise talented, true-believing trio after just one listen. Passion is definitely a factor you can build something nice and good on, and the lads certainly aren’t short of it, they just can’t quite show it on stage and pass it on to the crowd, I think, as the lightning changeover on the stage boards begins.

That we’re staying loyal to the number three is proven, after a short break, by the rest of the night too. A more stoner-fatefully sounding prospect is offered by Ljubljana’s defenders of the smoky garage, Voodoo Mule. The gig kicks off spontaneously and without much pomp. Three young men step on stage, put on a mask of total relaxation and start their treatise on primality in harmony with their animal nature. Behind the drums, next to bizarrely pulled-apart cymbals and a set of toms, Fabijan ‘Hippo’ Purg lets loose, countered with rhythm by the heavily distorted bass of Iguana, unburdened by rules, commandments and structure, and it’s all centered around the melodic interjections and baton of guitarist and vocalist Jagnje. A proper zoo, you’d think, and sonically the servicing of this herbal three-leaf clover consistently follows the principle of unbridled primal lust for rhythm and melody. Long squeals of distorted feedback morph into the sludgy, filthy intro of Honeyland. Jagnje sounds brutally dirty, and Iguana glues his bass nicely to the concrete foundation of Hippo’s slightly sloppy, willfully scattering drums. The repetitive thunder-oratorio of slightly softened Electric Wizards doesn’t veer this time into the tripped-out waters of any Monster Magnets, but with their stage presence and medicated blend of simplified stoner and sludge, Voodoo Mule are closer to Posavje’s Grrizli Madams than to some Jimi Hendrix. There’s a lot of stretching and drawing out of feelings, which sits right on a stoner base. Jagnje vocalizes just roughly enough over the monstrously muscular rhythmic repetition of drums and bass. That there’s even a touch of Primus to be felt throughout is proven by Tophat Black, which sneaks a bit of unpolished blues into the set, grinding under tons of screeching guitar phrases its way into the hearts and souls of an ever-denser crowd, who aren’t bothered by the slip-ups in rhythm and the nicely worn-down tones. It’s all about feeling, and Voodoo Mule aren’t carriers of aesthetic beauty but of true calibration to the frequencies of unbridled drowning in the momentary, instantaneous inspiration. The songs sound more like jam sessions, sonic experiments, and the chemistry of the Ljubljana trio has, despite the total mess, something miraculous and beautiful, almost sonically erotic. Forget the avant-garde line of well-learned lines. Voodoo Mule are dadaists, dosing out their herbal esoterica in big doses with broad-stroke repetitions of what’s been heard, on an epic scale. Every song passes the five-minute mark, and an almost progressively sprawling unconcern with form fills the vaults of Gromka with dirt, noise and addictive uncomplexity. Rationality gets switched off, and Voodoo Zoo becomes the sonically accepted diktat of anything but sentimental, soft punchiness. There’s room only for irritating sonic purists, and the songs are here merely as an excuse for noisy domination over tidy thoughts, with a greasy substrate of heavyweight garage. Like listening to Horn Of The Rhyno, only instead of Spaniards, this time the bringers of pleasure are native shamans of rudimentary Black Sabbath chants on a very dark and brutal trip. Sexy! Despite the recently released album, the trio doesn’t indulge the daydream that there’s soon nothing left to add, so the big closing act of the night was a lengthy reckoning with the church snake; with ringing ears and happy smiles, after the big, unbalanced finale, we could head off toward new challenges.

This is also where thanks go to the organizing crew at Klub Gromki, who gave two young, talented bands the chance and the space to get tempered on stage, though they still need practice. The reconceptualization of what a trio means on stage got, through the presentation of two separate takes on what true-believer music should be, a lovely complement that needs no concrete, final value judgments. Both bands devotedly squirt blood and believe in their postulates of existing and creating, and primality is the connecting link both can easily sign off on. The quality of both is that they don’t bow to fashion trends and commandments, and it’s a matter of taste which dose of happiness you’ll reach for first. Personally, I’m closer to Voodoo Mule in soul and mental endings, because I grew up on the sounds of ragged grunge, and I wasn’t ready to give up the psychedelic delirium of Kyuss, Fu Manchu, Queens Of The Stone Age and similar uncles either. Fuck it, tastes aren’t worth arguing about, but I’d bet my hand that both Voodoo Mule and Hellsword, steeped in a hellish, blasphemous »No!« to norms and church commandments, will live up to their unpolished potential. So an opposition to the miserable norms in Slovenia does exist, and I hope true-believer garage never bows to trends. It is, after all, the last bastion of real rock’n’roll against commercialization and a complete hollowing-out in the name of capital, success and bigger record print runs, which has nothing to do with the real concept of alternative, metal, stoner or whatever label you can think of. Despite everything, youngsters like Hellsword and Voodoo Mule need more chances to sow their organon of noise and rebellion among the masses, live, with no middlemen, since both undoubtedly need the stage practice. You know how it goes: the master makes the practice, practice makes the master, and you can’t, and mustn’t, sleep on old glory and laurels!