Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Trainstation Squat, Kranj
Gig date: 15.11.2014
That miserable rainy Saturday was calling for a »couch potato« night and some quality time with Walter White (yeah, yeah, I know, I’ve been living under a rock), but good old Slovenian curiosity won out. Noctiferia were stopping at Trainstation Squat in Kranj on their PAX tour, where they’re presenting the upcoming album, out in two weeks, and giving us a first taste of what the new record sounds like.
First on stage were Kill Robot Kill, the foreign guests of the night, who hail from Villach, Austria. Honestly, and sorry to any fans out there, it would have been better if they’d just stayed there. They may have a better standard of living, higher salaries, Mozartkugeln and Wiener schnitzel, but Austrians still just can’t do metal. The band has no fewer than six members, and they really proved that quantity doesn’t bring quality. Kill Robot Kill are cemented in the most clichéd, generic standards of deathcore, complete with a dismal image that neither the drummer in the Exodus shirt nor the guitarist in the Behemoth shirt could save. In a good half hour the Austrians dumped a pile of awful dual vocals, boring riffs and a heap of breakdowns on us, which lodged in my ears like a rotten egg in the digestive tract. The good side of Kill Robot Kill? Uhhh… They had nice flags?
You only had to move a little south of the Karawanks and the sound flipped a full 180 degrees. Kranj’s Armaroth were once again playing on home turf, where they always get a great response from the crowd, whose death metal darlings they’ve become, but not just because of their local status. Despite more technical problems, the guys proved that their death metal still flows like a river of magma and rumbles like an earthquake. The EP False Vision and its tracks have already settled nicely into the ears of the local crowd, and this time Armaroth put even more emphasis on the new material. Even with somewhat worse sound, the dynamic rhythm section stepped to the fore again, nicely complementing the slicing riffs of the Govekar/Martin duo and Fifs’s animalistic vocals. In my opinion, Armaroth are only missing one thing to bring them closer to their studio recordings live, because I still reach for the EP, which still hits harder than the gig.
If anything, Noctiferia are without a doubt veterans of the local metal scene, both in years and in miles on the road. And what’s more, despite the genre slalom that probably doesn’t please fans of the old material all that much, they remain convincing and above all true to their vision. In the band’s second era that vision is mostly experimental, which Noctiferia proved by breaking out of the death/black metal shackles with Slovenska morbida (2006). Death Culture only confirmed the band’s evolution, and the fifth studio album PAX is just about to drop, with Noctiferia presenting it on their current European tour. Last Saturday the tour stopped in Kranj too, where the guys offered, alongside material from the last few years, a first look at PAX, which will obviously keep the pronounced social critique of existing systems, be they political, religious, pop-cultural or otherwise. Accordingly, Noctiferia played a furious set marked by excellent sound and an outstanding performance from a well-oiled machine, the embodiment of professionalism. Gianni skillfully guided the not-too-numerous and somewhat anemic crowd through Demoncracy, Holymen, Deluders And Followers and Demoncracy, while the promised unveiling of the new songs drew the most interest. Of those, there was the already familiar single Gaga People, a bold and different take on the sheep led around by pop culture trends, but Sleeper Is Awake and Rudra the Roarer were more convincing, the latter with the Nardin/Fileš guitar duo reaching for eight-strings and breaking up the rhythms in true Meshuggah style. So Noctiferia keep walking a clearly marked path, and judging by what we heard of PAX, it promises a better, more varied and bolder follow-up to Death Culture. Even with their eyes on the future, though, Noctiferia don’t forget their past, as the closer, the ever-unforgettable crusher Fond of Lies, proved. PAX comes out on December 5th, when it will be officially presented at Mostovna in Nova Gorica, and the tour wraps up on January 22nd at Kino Šiška in Ljubljana.
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