Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Tolmin / MINK / Slovenia
Concert date: 24.03.2017
Attendance: 20
Ticket price: 2,00€
Edge Of Sins are a Slovenian heavy metal band blown together from Idrija, Ljubljana and Novo mesto, rehearsing together in Cerkno! The band has been around since 2012, but it went through a whole series of lineup shuffles in a fairly short time before reaching the stability it found in 2016, around the time its debut was taking shape. It started working on the studio debut in 2015, and it came out last August, with the band naming it »My Escape«.
Tolmin. The third decade of March 2017! Ten o’clock at night. A frozen, stiff, borderline “deadened” town, and not exactly a fitting showcase for the capital of Northern Primorska. Only two spots are lively. Well, at least to the eye and ear. The Kovačija and the hotel pub above MINK. “Why don’t all these people just move over to MINK?” was eating at me. Okay, the customs and habits of Tolmin folks are still an absolute enigma to me. We had to wait at least another hour and twenty minutes for the club to fill up with at least twenty people (preferably fewer), and well past eleven the band finally stepped on stage and started presenting their studio debut.
The Edge Of Sins lineup is represented by the Hadalin brothers: guitarist Blaž, who also handles the contrasting vocal growling, and drummer Nejc. They’re joined by bassist Anže Javoršek and singer Matic Pavlin, plus a new addition on second guitar, Mile Vrbica, who replaced Jure Flander in the band’s lineup at the start of this year.
As expected, the band played the material from the album »My Escape«, and the guys stuck hard to replicating what’s on the record. The sound in the venue was very solid, except for the vocals, which were pushed a bit too far into the background of the mix and often didn’t get to really shine.
What works for Edge Of Sins is that the band has no patience for kitsch or glitter. There are no keyboard arrangements either, and stylistically they lean on the old-school heavy metal tradition, where many a riff nods to Iron Maiden (for example, the excellent opening riff in the song Dying…). Edge Of Sins get their punch and thundering fullness of sound from a lower tuning, and their language is distinctly dark, although moments of harmonic passages bring a touch of the epic and bombastic. But the emphasis on darkness is a strong counterweight to all of that. Partly thanks to the tonal specifics of vocalist Matic too, who, with his clean, melodic voice, stays mostly in the mid-range.
That night, at a dismally attended MINK, Edge Of Sins delivered an optimal performance. For anything more, there would have needed to be more people in the club. The band played a decent set and, in the same spirit, gave their studio debut a decent showcase, which, by the way, is a concept album. You can tell the band is just getting started, though, and needs as many gigs as possible to build up confidence and develop more dynamic payoff from their shows, especially in the stage-theater department. For now the members are fairly static on stage, and it would definitely be more than welcome to adapt the studio originals »for live use«. What does that mean? Upgrading the originals by working in extended outros, because the guys, wanting to get a version that follows the original as closely as possible, end the songs (unintentionally) »chopped off« and »abruptly«. When you listen to the album and follow its conceptual flow, it’s totally credible, but at a concert the whole thing can cut both ways. So the vibe of the stage show doesn’t yet have quite the right effect. But experience will bring the upgrade, of course.
I know I’ve over-philosophized and am looking for a needle in a haystack, so I’m wrapping up this report from Tolmin with the following realization. The guys deserve congratulations for their focus, dedication, hard work and defiance. Above all, for the enormous amount of willpower they showed in getting through playing in front of an almost empty club, and still delivering the desired optimum, confidence and absolute credibility. Edge Of Sins is a band whose development will definitely be worth following closely in the future.
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