Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Tolmin / MINK / Slovenia
Concert date: October 14, 2016
Attendance: 130
Ticket price: €4.00
Rodoljubac are now considered local legends of North Primorska rock’n’roll. They’ve got a long-lived career behind them that reaches back to the early nineties of the last century, and yet it’s only this year that they gave birth to their second full-length studio album, which they gave a direct and very meaningful title: »Rodoljubac«.
Two »sister bands« kicked off the marathon of an evening. The first, Neverend, we missed. The second, Savage Semen from Carinthia, banged out over a decent stretch of playing time an energetically pleasant dose of noisy rock’n’roll with a splash of HC punk blended in, and the odd riff could howl and rumble in a stoner way too. The quartet had some trouble with the guitar sound early in the set, but otherwise we witnessed a convincing baptism by fire for the band in northern Primorska.
Because it was Friday, the day when a person finally, half-consciously, fully switches off, hours and minutes no longer counted. Especially when it comes to MINK, a club tucked away underground, which means hermetically sealed acoustics from which not even the most innocent decibel makes it up to the surface, which means you could throw parties there until the early morning hours, if? If we hadn’t become a police state a few years back, and if everyone with »five minutes too much time« in their life didn’t stick their nose where it doesn’t belong. Into the magic of rock’n’roll (as long as Stane Vidmar has torn the place up in Cerkno and Tereza Kesovija is coming to Tolmin soon, the world will be saved again press). Anyway, the »information service« running along the MINK – Tolmin’s main crossroads – Kovačija route worked flawlessly despite the heavy downpours that evening, and MINK duly filled up at a reasonable hour just before Rodoljubac took the stage. Everyone’s here again, because they know Rodoljubac very, very well. From the first beat to the last struck note the band dictated a wild tempo, the crowd dutifully followed the march, and the bulk of the friends, under a serious dose of alcohol derivatives, benevolently swayed along and lazily took over the very front of the stage.
Rodoljubac are an extremely experienced band. Drummer Rok Peršolja, who recently joined the seasoned rock’n’roll trailblazers Davor, Damir and Domen, brought real freshness to the crew. With the new addition, which includes among other things the more polished technical chops of the new drummer, Rodoljubac have beefed up the rhythmic kinetics of the songs. As a result, the quartet comes across on stage as unbelievably convincing. Damir delivered an excellent performance, and in his gesticulations he owes a nugget or two of inspiration to Bruce Dickinson. Davor cooked up a fat, snotty, ramshackle-garage sound that also leaned toward Phil Campbell’s guitar (Motörhead), with which he covered a huge chunk of the sonic picture (solos included, and somewhere in the first half of the gig he had to swap a cable because his »jack« died on him – what can you do, that’s rock’n’roll). The left side of the stage belonged to the seemingly friendliest member of the band, the reliable lanky bassist with viscously skilled fingers, Domen, who took care of the tight pulsing of the lowest tones. Damir filled the whole stage. He ran from left to right, planted his foot on the monitor, accompanied every sung verse with gestures of his free hand and of course won everybody over with a piercing, uncompromising vocal punch, which on the most punk-driven songs had no shortage of »mockingly clipped barking«.
The band went through the new studio album »Rodoljubac« from end to end. It serves up fifteen brand-new songs of full-blooded authorship and defines the band’s musical stance in 2016. Tracks from the EP »Terrapija šoka« weren’t missing either, and certainly not the classics from the debut »Greatest Hits« (2000) that have long since become folk songs in the Soča Valley, where first place went to the performance of the progressive punk EP Hojak, nor tracks from the EP “Na čelu evolucije (2005) and the album “1713” (2008). It’s an epic moment when the band suddenly slides from a totally Orgasmatron-style Motörhead rhythm into 9/8 time, the kind that would make even good old Dave Brubeck flinch.
For all the truth that gets distilled through the direct bitterness of the cruel reality of everyday rebellious anger in Damir’s poetry, there’s an equal dose on the other side of sarcastic and lucid seasoning, a real sense of humor that has accompanied the very essence of the band since time immemorial.
I won’t ramble! It was an excellent party that didn’t want to end, and afterward the crowd didn’t just let the poor guys leave the stage as they looked for the way backstage. The old school of punk woven into a wild stampede of a primordially furious strain of rock’n’roll is what Rodoljubac’s new studio release delivers to the scene, cementing the unique musical charisma of these first-rate heralds of rebellion, who have been stoking the fire beneath Migovec for 20 years running. Long live Tolmin rock, fermented on home soil!
Setlist
1. Rodoljubac puši
2. Glava / Sam
3. Budala
4. Zakrul & zažgi
5. Odjebi prohibicija
6. Zakon
7. A smo se zato boril
8. V sobi je miš
9. Možeš da pališ
10. Istina je sve
11. Šest cipela izpod
12. Deca MTV-ja
13. Venček punkoidnih
14. Za 1 sat
15. Šok rock / Hojek
—encore—
16. Kralj
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