Total Sonic Landing and Salvation from the South Bank of the Kolpa (2014)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Sandi Sadar Šoba

Venue: Klub Gromka, AKC Metelkova, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Concert date: January 16, 2014
Attendance: 60 – 80
Ticket price: €6

The Croatian scene is home to a ton of potent, talented musicians, yet the sounds of tough Croatian alternative only rarely flood over the banks of the homeland and reach the ears of listeners on this side of the Kolpa too. There are exceptions, of course. I won’t waste words on the mainstream names, they’re everywhere, but a rare few – Father, Chang Ffos, Hesus Ator, Overflow and maybe another name or two – are acts we’ve been able to mainline into our systems in recent years as something noble, narcotic and addictive, without hearing their creations on the radio every single day. And there’s clearly no shortage of action south of the Kolpa, as proven by the already third Kroejšn invejžn at Ljubljana’s Klub Gromka, where at the start of 2014 the organizers lured four standard-bearers of the lesser-heard sonic avant-garde from the south. Truth be told, of the names on the bill (Stonebride, Fall Out Trio, Mokre gljive and Drone Hunter) I only knew the Zagreb stoners, the headliners and the evening’s star, the sweetly intoxicating Stonebride, and even them only superficially. The other three were total strangers to at least my pair of ears until that night, so the challenge was all the greater and the invitation all the more irresistible, despite the fact that the day before the end of the work week is a tough one for staying out late. The next day, if you’re lucky enough to have a job in these times of general recession and hopelessness, you naturally have to show up fresh and rested.

Despite the promise that things would kick off at nine, it was clear shortly after ten that the whole invasion procedure would start rather late, and the first to take the stage in a dense atmosphere of total absorption were Fall Out Trio from not-so-distant Čakovec. After a few years away from Metelkova, the lanky, lost-in-thought guitarist Jany Podgorelec, the long-haired gray-maned Marinko Pintarić with a gift for bass-shredding rhythm and melody, and the superb rhythm machine of this remarkably tight outfit, Tomislav Poje, allowed us to smash the boundaries we once thought we knew. There’s not a sample, not a gram of purism in their fractally crumbled web of rhythm, melody, stylistic variety and above all musical tightness, the product of thirteen years of melding together. They open the evening with meditative cosmic communication of minimal squeals of static and digital echoes of a sensually spiced guitar and a bass that’s just loud and fat enough, while the drums are at first there only to add contours, to paint. Pink Floyd once took over Pompeii and immortalized the peak of their seventies in the hiss of poisonous gases, while Fall Out Trio paraphrase the past to build their very own terrain for releasing tension. Pyramid then blossoms into an act of total reconceptualization of rhythm, and besides Vlatko Stefanovski you can feel strong influences of free jazz, Weather Report, maybe Mahavishnu Orchestra, fat doses of funk, ethno rhythms and complete cathartic metallized psychedelia in the interplay of forces. The full dynamic builds without big announcements or explanations. Jany only loosens up, with that lost-in-thought look on his face, after he closes his eyes and shuts out the world below the stage, and Marinko proves that bass can be (like with Les Claypool, for example, or even more so with the superb but sadly departed Jaco Pastorius) a mighty tool for wringing out emotion and building up the sound. The guitar adds digitized layers of electrified eclecticism, and the crown is placed by the supremely precise, surgically consistent sense of rhythm of the great Tomislav. The sound is demanding, with its melding and combination of mathematically hard-to-calculate odd and irregular rhythms, daring dynamic leaps and massive riffs (the daring of the latter was obviously dictated every now and then by some forbidden substance, I suspect, though it’s clear the main musical dictation in Fall Out Trio comes from following their own interests, their own taste, that often-overlooked »gusto« that lets you make music with passion for more than a decade despite its unprofitability and total anonymity. The three-layered play of friends who feel the same thing and the same need for artistic expression and creation is above standard and hard to describe. Fall Out Trio are eclectics per excellence, if I may repeat myself a bit despite the repetitiveness of the term. Sixties psychedelia, jazz, free-form avant-garde, alternative, metal, a funkadelic fairy tale on shamanic substances and narcotics, and in between there’s something ominously familiar too, even folk heritage of the home turf, but with a few more than three dimensions. Fall Out Trio are interpreters of dreams and mental waves. They consistently crush and cross boundaries, and the result is pure unbridled fusion of musical sex appeal, which isn’t for everyone or for every day. After a little more than three quarters of an hour of playing with the audience’s expectations and prejudices, the Međimurje trio wrapped up their story with the arrhythmic farewell of Acrobat and Walking. From what I saw and heard, I can confirm that the Fall Out Trio show was closer to an experience of total transcendence of the senses and a massive modernized discourse of above-average musicality, the kind you’d expect from Brane Rončel in his backstage, rather than on the Gromka stage on a day that would be crowned by stoner outpourings of emotion and glorification of the holy green smoke. We witnessed an experiment and an exegesis of the psychedelic wordless gospel of cosmic fusion, and I believe not everyone got all of it, but simplicity and fast-food digestibility were never the point of this provocative, sweet soldiery of refined musicians. Hats off, Fall Out Trio.

A half-hour break followed to set up the stage for the band that could boast the funniest and most Croatian-sounding name of the night. Mokre Gljive (once also introduced as Polje patliđana) are undoubtedly proof that there’s something radioactive and potent in the Međimurje water, since after the flirtation with ethno in the first quarter of the concert, something similar is promised at first glance. The foursome from Zagreb, Čakovec and Slavonski Brod bring to the stage, besides amps, a rarely seen percussion instrument, pompous djembes, a tamburica (or a really rustic guitar), set their volume, and after a rather lengthy battle with sound problems, the new psychedelic leap into the unknown continues first with a bit of acoustics. They fire up the tamburica and djembes and, with a touch of Balkan flair, get the people below the well-heated stage swaying their hips. Mokre Gljive started their shared path in 2012, when guitarist Vedran Živković, bassist Jurica Pečalat, guitarist Ivan Šaravanja and drummer Nikola Švenda enrolled at university, and instead of pledging their young lives purely to bookworming and study duties, the love of music took care of the extracurricular spice. The muses whisper to them that it’s only decent to abuse the resonance of acoustic instruments alongside electricity, so it’s not unusual for an accordion to start humming from the background next to the djembes and tamburicas. I have to admit that despite the short period of making music together, the guys work confidently and convincingly. The sound does have a few individual shortcomings, which confirm that practice makes perfect and the master makes the practice, but what you hear is at least authentically theirs, not yet another parade of other bands’ feathers, which is almost the rule for a local band with a short track record. Mokre Gljive are original and they hit the mark, though not with quite the extreme force one had initially hoped for. Mamina juha shows that Jurica, Nikola, Ivan and Vedran are partial to both kolo rhythms and slightly more eclectic sounds and content. Mokre Gljive can offer a hefty dose of slick music faithful to folk roots and rhythm, which also sheds its skin and keeps changing. Bakina juha steps onto indie noise terrain, with the two just-right-shaky guitars droning on both sides of the stage, a bass that feels out the pulse of the music with those few tones that make no effort to exceed the horizon of psychedelic meditation, and in the background once again a superb drummer who knows there’s more to life than three-quarter time. From their latest EP Sretan Isus the guys take the material for wandering into the unknown. Bakina juha sounds like a jam session, and the guitar interplay is then upgraded into the far more eclectic post-rocker fairy tale of the song Mantra. The humming echo of both guitars sounds as if the guys were combining the doomy energy of Black Sabbath (their drummer Nikola gives the whole thing accents similar to Ginger Baker in person) with the happy sunny trip, dammit, once again, of Vlatko and his Leb i sol, and over the whole thing a thick veil of stoned cataclysm descends, like some Red Sparowes, except there are fewer dreamy glides and meditative walks along the edges of a post-apocalyptic universe, and the foursome lets itself keep enough juice to make people happy. Mantra builds up to a wildly whirling dervish finale, and then a bit more Deftones-like dreaminess sneaks into the sonic conspiracy of perfect harmony of manifold sounds with the song 33, except that instead of metal the guys draw their energy from the complete density of the northern lights. You can hear Isis, Pelican, the meditative elements of Red Sparowes, the repetitive play of well-tuned effect-laden guitars, explosively moody drums and a sparsely sown bass dreaming up Gromka, and with flickering dimmed lights the event is led into a phase of total calming. Mokre Gljive slowly bring their psychedelic dance of enchantment to a close, putting the cherry on top with a reprise of the acoustics and a renewed activation of the djembes and tambura. With a few bars of »Kratke al’ slatke«, the closing song of the evening, they correctly wrap up, without big outpourings, the get-together of Ljubljana folks (and Ljubljana ladies (and the other international extras)) and this young musical soldiery of purely instrumental squeezers-out of marrow and emotion. From what I saw and heard, I can confirm we’ll surely be hearing a lot more of the foursome, since after a little over a year the contact of the band’s vector sides is strong enough for the guys to offer potent music that lacks nothing. What the band might be missing is just a bit of stage mileage, some projections in the background or at least a conceptual story that could add something extra to their otherwise neat combination of post rock, indie noise and ethno psychedelia and make them more recognizable. Maybe by the next time we hang out.

Midnight had long since struck when, after the lengthy process of setting up a new drum kit and PA, the moment of total awakening and sonic ecstasy arrived. Drone Hunter give the audience bolder tones of juicy riffs that reek of sludgy filth, sweat and the mosher brutality of some early moments of the once-inspired Metallica, Clutch, Audioslave, R.A.T.M. (but above all of extremely potent thrash with modern stoner additions) from the very first listen. Eyes open wide, the heart starts beating faster as the tall, goatee-adorned god of riffs Filip Hajdarović – Fitz takes his position, on the right Luka Klen, bald and without the slightest bit of posing, proves his moments of low-frequency musical inspiration on four strings, and in the background the first drumstick hits on Marko Gotal’s drum heads thunder out. Drone Hunter are more than just another instrumental band that couldn’t find the right singer, because beside the juicy riffs you can feel your own desire awakening in your throat to sing and scream your own soulful lyrics of total sweet disconnection and revolt. Aguamala breaks new ground with the sharpness of a razor, Blood Island, with its more dynamic groove texture of sharper new-school thrash (you can hear Lazarus A.D. beneath the surface, and the new blows of hardcore’s modernized heart), shifts the previously rather static crowd into neck-vertebrae-loosening mode, and my stoner soul finally melts away at the juicy blows of the song The Crow’s Final Scream. You can hear some good roaring in the vein of Phil Anselmo or Pepper Keenan. Down and Corrosion Of Conformity and more. After only a year and a half of existence, the young Croatian trio is smashing the competition on this side of the Kolpa and that one, and despite the late hour the concert gets a shift into the sphere of higher revs. The sexy Twisted Horse Boogie, after the eclectic song The Ram, foams over into the toxically dirty Alice In Chains beauty of the song Backfire. It’s damn easy to hear the voice of Layne Staley over the whole thing, except that instead of the pessimistic undertones of the Seattle sound, Fitz and company reach for the southern potency of primal sludgy concreteness and manliness. Ears full of hard-hitting beauty, I must admit. Not a single verse or stanza is missing, since a real hurricane of associations, metaphors, lyrics and screams of pleasure easily blossoms in your head. Dirty riffs and a full sonic blast of melody and rhythm continue before the big finale, with the song Carving The Current, into the hellishly hot Packin’ Heat. Drone Hunter are a landing unit that completely conquered my little corner of the universe after first contact and first listen, and I gladly predict a brilliant musical future for the youngsters, because it’s perfectly clear that, after what we saw and heard, they know what they’re doing! Hellyeah!

Not long after the exit of the excellent Drone Hunter, the express setup of everything needed for the band that for many was the main reason to come to Gromka even in the middle of the work week begins. Stonebride have been outstanding live news from the south side of the Kolpa since 2005, and with exceptional devotion to the sacred principle of live, sonic and lyrical upgrading, they’ve been striving from day one for originality, an addictive combination of old-school juicy stoner, doom and blues influences, and their own mojo. Somewhere I read that the Stonebride experience is like driving down a supernatural highway of blues-tinged alternative, and if you throw in elements of holy smoke and progressive trance, doom-tinged rock can be really good news for anyone who swears by early Kyuss, by the likes of Lowrider, Fu Manchu, The Clutch, and who’s looking for something more than an MTV instant fix of sounds and wordings. The Zagreb quintet, made up of the tall guitarist Tješimir armed with a white Stratocaster, the good-humored joker Thee Steps behind the drums, Alen a.k.a. Lenny on bass, Krnfa, the main ideologue of the lyrics and soul, at the mic (he also reaches for his Les Paul and expertly complements Tešimir’s dreamy layers of guitar intoxication), and the sonic guru Brle a.k.a. Raw at the mixing desk in the back of the hall, steps resolutely onto the stage, and after a brief check of the settings begins a resolute (and excellent) landing on the Ljubljana audience. And the audience has been falling for their three studio releases for the last few years. I have to admit that this Thursday event left me with a lot of gray areas, patches of truly felt experience mixed with a strong dose of supposition, my own impressions and my interpretation of the evening’s story itself. After the 2007 EP Smile And Shine, Stonebride recorded two full-length albums. After the superb album Inner Seasons they shake their sonic wrath at the mediocrity and drowsiness of the world with the 2010 record Summon The Waves, and the recipe for all of them is always a hard-hitting, potent mixture of the raspy guitars of both guitarists, nicely balancing and interweaving, Steps’s resolute, uncompromising metric of arm and leg muscle power, like the merciless blow of heart tectonics, and finally, over Lenny’s fat bass, Krnfa’s superb vocal lazily pours across the whole rhythmic and sonic structure, once again recalling Staley with ethereal stoner additions. The vocal echoes with just the right amount of stoned, elusive reverberation. Stonebride conjure up the mood with a well-tested meditative recipe, which makes the order of events fade in memory, but leaves anchor points in a complete absolute of feeling. The Amazing Voyagers burrows into the subconscious with the caustic structure of old-school superb stoner, with repeating sounds of guitar salvos and psychedelic soloing, which the Zagreb orators of stoner squeeze out into the karmic airlessness of Gromka over the undeniably compact rhythm. To Follow tears down reserve with its brutal repetitions of ten-tone riffs. In the front battle lines, in their cleansing dance with half-closed eyes, both old fans and visitors encountering Stonebride’s toxic complete heart-beauty for the first time give themselves over to caressing dreaminess. Slow strokes along the guitar necks, and Krnfa with his superb fat voice, which I could easily picture at some desert sessions (Desert Sessions are only the starting point here, which Stonebride recut in the manner of Mad Season and some other otherwise sweet grunge masterpieces, but at revs of more consistent stoner-doom play with the senses. Nothing is left to chance. From the in-between sessions of the album Inner Seasons, Mr. Plow Is Growing Hop weaves beautifully into the whole of the evening, a feature-length psychedelic trip of pure musicality of well-thought-out blues on forbidden substances that works perfectly, stellar and worth sowing and returning into the global consciousness of worldwide consciousness. Stonebride are perfectionists who feel their excellence well, and with it, in complete simultaneous play, in a complete ballet of rhythm and melody in a felt and thousand-times-repeated organic essence, they give the unsuspecting fellow travelers below the stage something to listen to and to try that can only be stamped as perfect music. The complementary factor of the song Drag & Drop continues the thought and melodic thread of Mr. Plow, so it feels like everything is a bit familiar and already heard, perfectly grounded and in its place, yet it bothers in no way. This time, during retrospective rummaging, the mighty ominous tone of the song Phoenix creeps into memory, with which Stonebride give birth to something beautiful and meditatively gorgeous out of the ashes of total destruction. The stoner mantra is fat and fleshy. Everything is subordinated to total oblivion and abandon, and all that counts is always that gorgeous moment of perfect resonance of hypnotic vocals and the superb oily overflow of lovely riffs, which worship the heart’s essence of long-forgotten gods and the aforementioned muses of perfection. »Welcome to the terrace of Hotel Adriatik!« Krnfa greets us, damn lucid and composed, before a further smoky excursion into the world of psychogenically inspired poetry. Mute Heart Rivers stays in the memory thanks to the opening drum play, the tapping of sticks on cymbals and the melodic poetry of existence, of complete feeling, which not even Jim Morrison would be ashamed of on the superb record American Prayer, except that Stonebride are more topical, more fitting interpreters of urban dreaminess for the present dark times. Time and space are relative, and with the suggestive touches of both guitars and the rhythmic breath of the hard-hitting colossus, the story of liberation from the shackles of matter and transience continues nicely, in style and with feeling. Moonrider is better than sex, and in a silver sensation of total dissolving in the cosmic oceans of otherworldly calm, we ripen to the end in the safe shelter of warm cocoons of feeling. Everything happens slowly and grotesquely heavy, yet at the same time so beautifully fluid that, in the contradiction of perfect extremes, the audience falls into a state of complete catatonic elation over the event. And that’s why we could all feel as mighty and beautiful as if we were actually all Titans, the ones Stonebride once sang about. There were fewer salvos of enthusiasm than one might expect, but the glimmers of happiness and pleasant absence in many eyes are proof that the late ritual was unfolding the right way. I don’t know whether it was all so well thought out and planned, or whether we were all actually in complete harmony with the moment of otherworldly divine eroticism, which in a perfidious way took away our will to resist and our critical sense, and, unable to walk in a lucid straight line from point A to point B, we were treated to a truly out-of-this-world show that can easily be greeted only by falling to the ground, by bowing and by an honest compliment that we haven’t enjoyed anything better for a long time on this side of the Alps.

Well past two in the morning, amid wisps of fog and drizzling rain, the crowd of happy recipients scatters along the main arteries and side veins of our capital, and the third attempt at a Croatian invasion turns out to be damn successful and damn sweet. Our southern Slavic brothers can serve up music with balls and without unnecessary cliché filler. Much of what was heard this evening easily satisfies even those hardcore grumblers who are forever looking for something more and something better than what they carry in their own heads and hearts. There were tons of highlights this evening, and I really like that it wasn’t four identical bands on the same drive derivatives, but that we actually got a cocktail of sounds and styles. That meant there was no linearity of emotion this evening, but there were plenty of different feelings and play of the senses, which pleasantly surprised me, at least a little, and filled me up nicely. Kroejšn Invejžn # 3 was a success, and among the evening’s events I wouldn’t single out any winners. In fact, there were no winners or losers this evening. It was one of those moments when everything that counted was actually the music (in the three-part display of purely instrumental power, words became somehow superfluous, and in the final act of the evening with the superb Stonebride, vocal cords become merely an addition, a paintbrush and an emotional valve for spurting inspiration across the thick sky of electrified unpretentiousness). There was no faking this evening. Fashionable balls were replaced by somewhat more seasoned, but oh-so-sweet rustic moves, which I honestly miss in the general lack of good ideas and stage practices. Maybe it’s escapism, but it’s actually quite healthy and necessary every so often to leave solid ground beneath your feet, sit on waves of holy smoke with your cosmic other half, take a fateful hit and say yes to the musical bride of that fateful evening, eat a few mokre gljive, scramble out of your safe shells of inactivity to the post-apocalyptic accompaniment of total fusion, and shoot all the satellites and limiters, all the droneless, bodiless and pointless threats, out of the sky of your own perceptions, and become, at least for a moment, happy and relieved of the everyday worries and shackles of the society we’re rotting in. So a big thank you to our brothers from the south for accomplishing this not-always-easy task. Thanks, and see you at the next siege!