Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: MC Pekarna, Maribor
Concert date: 31.05.2014
A year and a half ago, Ljubljana’s Orto bar hosted a tour called And Now For Something Completely Different, which brought together… well… different bands. Bands that don’t bow to genre boundaries and whose common denominator is bold, no-holds-barred experimentation. Krakow and Virus won Orto bar over, while Norwegian theatrics merchants Vulture Industries once again proved why they became darlings of the Slovenian crowd and our stages. This time the Norwegians came back as part of the Branches tour, promoting their latest record The Tower. As it turned out, the title was more than fitting, since the roots of at least three of the four bands on the bill wind through countless musical genres, and on the last day of the tour those roots dug in firmly at MC Pekarna too.
For logistical reasons, the running order for the last show of the tour was completely shuffled around, as Vulture Industries still had a long trek to the Frankfurt airport after the gig. So the first on stage, shortly after seven, were Switzerland’s Blutmond, who started out as orthodox black metallers but quickly morphed into something else entirely. Today Blutmond are a thoroughly avant-garde outfit that here and there does hint at their extreme metal roots, but otherwise they’re a band that puts absolutely no walls in front of their creativity. Most of the crowd looked at the Swiss a bit sideways at first, but an opening act hasn’t left such a good impression and such an unexpected surprise in a long time. Blutmond played their set as if it were their last, and the two vocalists in particular threw such kung fu moves around the stage that you were just waiting for one of them to go flying off it. On top of an energetic show that erupted like a volcano, the band won people over with gritty passages that recalled the group’s beginnings, roaring seven-string guitars, rumbling drums, shredded vocals and a saxophone. Yes, Blutmond work the saxophone into their music at least as well as Norway’s Shining. To finish, the Swiss jumped off the stage, and the guitarist went full Spinal Tap and mopped the floor of Pekarna with his own back.
Vulture Industries hit the stage at an unusually early hour, but that bothered nobody, and the Norwegians still drew the biggest crowd of the night. Like the other acts, Vulture Industries showed that this was the last show of the tour and the fatigue was impossible to hide, but that didn’t stop them from delivering yet another top-notch gig. This time the band put most of the focus on the latest album The Tower, and rightly so, since it’s one of the best releases of last year. They greeted the Slovenian crowd once again with the title track, and all eyes were stolen once more by the psychotic vocalist Bjørnar, who simply oozes charisma. He topped his fantastic stage presence with an excellent vocal performance, and once again there was no shortage of fourth-wall-breaking, as Bjørnar jumped off the stage and picked out an innocent audience member to get right up in their face. Sadly, this time he didn’t bring out the gallows rope and the light he slips over his head, but he did drag a suitcase onto the stage, climb up on it and share his Dr. Jekyll / Mr. Hyde views with the crowd. Vulture Industries also dedicated to the Slovenian crowd the eight-minute epic Blood Don’t Eliogabalus, a fantastic »tribute« to the cult band Devil Doll, and during a long instrumental section Bjørnar spun the crowd into a devilish conga line. Unfortunately, logistics took their toll on running time too, and Vulture Industries said goodbye to Pekarna with a phenomenal rendition of A Path To Infamy (schizophrenic dialogue included), though there was sadly no time left for at least Pills of Conformity as well. Still, the Norwegians played a show that will surely be remembered as one of the best around here come the end of the year, and they even managed to make the already eagerly awaited Turning Golem show at Metaldays more anticipated still.
It’s true that anyone going on after Vulture Industries would have had a hell of a time, but Panychida would have struggled to win over anyone even if they’d played first. The Czech pagan metal outfit served up nothing but generic riffs and boring (melodic) death metal that they occasionally »spiced up« with a black metal element or two, and the only reason you could even slap the pagan label on them was a few keyboards and some pipes from a backing track. Panychida, which means a funeral service in Czech and who were otherwise the most out-of-place band on the tour, could have been chewed through, since the instrumental side wasn’t all that bad in the end, but any kind of positive impression was ruined by the hopelessly unlikable vocalist, with his broken English, monotonous growling and the charisma of the suitcase Bjørnar had stood on.
After a longer stage setup and soundcheck, Romania’s Dordeduh took the stage, continuing their journey after the Negura Bunget split. The guys opened their mystical set with the atmospheric blowing of long shepherd’s horns, then soon brought the ambient psychedelia crashing down into raw black metal assaults. Dordeduh got the sound dialed in perfectly, so both the folk/ethnic instruments (some kind of cimbalom, horns and a toaca) and the classic metal instruments were well audible and well mixed. Hupogrammos’s brutal vocal attack stepped brilliantly to the front and shone in the faster parts, while otherwise the band mostly swayed along in slower, almost ambient rhythms. You can’t fault Dordeduh for anything, they delivered excellently, as expected, but this time I just couldn’t sink into their world the way I usually do. Spring fatigue has clearly taken its toll.
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