Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: MC Jedro / Medvode / Ljubljana
Concert date: February 8, 2014
Attendance: 150
Ticket price: €3
In a week when Slovenia was wrapped in an icy embrace like none we can remember, my mind involuntarily drifted back two years, to when Siberian temperatures gripped our beloved homeland in the days before the Medvode festival Lipstikk N Leathür and, like it or not, hit attendance too. Winter is merciless and often takes its toll, and this time the weather wasn’t ideal either. Still, a nice crowd of heavy rock fans gathered at the Jedro club in Medvode for the new edition of the naughtiest festival under Triglav.
The night was opened by Ljubljana hard rockers Black Dynamite, with whom we didn’t have the best experience when they first showed up in our pages. But in the end you can’t blame the youngsters, since they’re still maturing and looking for their place in the sun. Black Dynamite build on the legacy of the eighties hard rock school, flirting here and there with the sound of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal and even having a fleeting fling with the blues in the instrumental passages. Last fall the guys put out a self-titled demo with six tracks, which they unleashed right at the start of the evening on a Medvode crowd that was already in a good mood. Even though Ljubljana’s Dynamite is still in its development phase and the guys are still searching for their own songwriting voice, they got off to a low-key start but staked out a solid position. Frontman Žiga has all the makings of a charismatic leader, but sadly only drummer Tilen joined him on backing vocals at the choruses. If they want to build on killer choruses, they should think about filling out the vocal lines as fully as possible. It’s commendable that, despite their inexperience and stage shyness, they put the set together almost entirely from original material, slipping in only the G ‘n’ R classic Night Train, (mostly) at the request of guitarist Izzy, whose fingers on the guitar neck no doubt slide along Slash’s textbook instructions. A pleasant rock’n’roll buzz, but Black Dynamite still have a long road of racking up mileage ahead of them. For starters, I hope that in the last few months they’ve figured out what a band’s promo photos are usually for.
Second up were Tomcat, old acquaintances of the crowd along the stretch from Ljubljana to Kranj and everything in between, where they’ve played most of their shows since they got their live machine rolling four years ago. Tomcat spiced up the pre-show fever with the premiere screening of the video for Adrenalin, without a doubt their most mature song so far! They kicked off their set in a haze of fog, with frontman Denis looking to the crowd like David Coverdale in one of his videos, while drummer Žiga was even more cut off from the action on the already elongated stage. Šujo’s bass was far too cutting from the start, but the people at the mixing desk quickly found the right sonic balance. Ever since Tomcat imported Greg as their guitarist, their expressive potential has grown even more! Greg cultivates a guitar approach of technical perfection, which he proved again and again with solo spots right at the edge of the stage. His predecessor Rok, by contrast, was a rock’n’roll »bad ass« with charismatic stage presence, so we can already look forward impatiently to the second half of the year, when Tomcat will (supposedly?) start performing as a five-piece. A testosterone-fueled ride through last year’s debut peaked with the live version of Adrenalin, where Denis proved he’s improving in vocal technique too, even if his performance this time (because of the home crowd?) came across as a bit casual at moments. Despite the occasional rhythmic slip-up, Tomcat keep steadily maturing, and if two or three years ago we were still writing that they need more mileage, maybe the time is approaching when Tomcat will leap onto the airwaves… if they just keep heading in the direction of Adrenalin!
Almost exactly two years have passed since I last saw Broken Arrow. That was at the same scene of the crime as this time, only at that edition of Lipstikk N Leathür festival they weren’t the headliners, as they are now. A lot has changed in the meantime. First of all I mean, of course, the recent release of the long-awaited debut »Feel The Arrow« (review here), whose presentation was the central thread of the evening with the rockers from Brežice. Although rhythm guitarist Bor was missing because of his studies, Broken Arrow routinely filled the gap with a backing track, and the guys (and two girls!) made up for the barely noticeable lack of organic feel with an enviable stage show, with frontman Matjaž in the lead role. The sonic building blocks formed a carefully shaped whole, resting on the clockwork-tight rhythm section of Jani / Rok, and the band’s main trait is of course a striving for melodic perfection in the manner that young Scandinavian hard rock bands revived in the previous decade. If I were nitpicking about Broken Arrow’s set, I’d point out that the lovely backing vocalists were hard to hear, so the vocal harmonies didn’t explode in all their playfulness. The Brežice crew surprised with a rendition of the Martin Krpan song Kar je staro se novo zdi, and the choice alone nicely shows that in searching for and defining their own character they’ve drawn on a colorful mix of musical role models. They also seasoned the set with some older songs that never made it onto the album, such as Zdaj ko si sama and Sanjam jo, but the current material dominated, and Matjaž’s interpretive vein throbbed strongest during it. How could it not? It’s visible from space that the guys are proud of the album, and rightly so! The studio drops of sweat are in the past, and it’s time for the Brežice crew to sweat it out on stage too!
Setlist
1. Feels Alright
2. Tonight We RNR
3. Have A Little Love
4. V8 Serenade
5. In These Arms
6. Hold Me Tight
7. Zdaj ko si sama
8. Holdin’ On
9. Kar je staro se novo zdi
10. Can’t Tell If You Know
11. Sanjam jo
12. We Ride
13. Supersticious
14. Fight Fire With Fire
15. Hit The Streets
16. Lavatory Love Mahcine
Photo gallery
