Metaldays 2018 (Day Three) – A Never-Ending Sea of Humans at Kataklysm

Greek stoner rockers 1000 Mods brought a very welcome change of pace to the main stage that day. The time slot still wasn’t quite right, though, and sadly they didn’t draw a particularly big crowd. At that hour most people preferred to cool off in the Soča, or over a mug of beer somewhere in Tolmin. The heat was getting more serious and merciless by the minute. Just perfect for the “desert” sound that the stoner rock genre develops. 1000 Mods are a band that works directly. They go at things with no detours, and that’s how the show unfolded too. Song after song they lined up likable originals, and fans of Monster Magnet, Dozer or Corrosion of Conformity surely had to find some common ground. The third and current album »Repeated exposure to…« is an artistic step up from its two predecessors, and the band gave it more attention on stage as well. 1000 Mods are hugely focused. Stage-sharp. Everything is “glued” together really well. From the vocals, which are just “stoned and absent” enough in delivery yet cuttingly piercing in contrast once you set them against the howling, mocking, rock’n’roll-swaggering rush of guitar phrases, to the rolling rhythmic machinery. “Sick” Greek stoner rock!  

Next up were Italian black metallers Selvans. Italy and black metal in the same sentence don’t usually raise very high hopes, but the band, officially made up of just two members, Sethlans Fulguriator and Selvans Haruspex, surprised positively in that regard. Selvans put a huge emphasis on rich atmosphere and folk and pagan elements, which brings them close to bands like Negura Bunget, Moonsorrow or Winterfylleth. Selvans played only a handful of songs, since most of their tracks run long, and most came from their only studio album so far, Lupercalia. Nothing especially outstanding, but surprisingly solid.  

Then a jump over to the Lemmy stage and German metalcore five-piece Any Given Day, who, given their genre, sounded even a bit better than expected. The Germans were completely generic within the genre’s guidelines, but they won people over with an energetic stage show and a strong frontman in Dennis Diehl, who held the crowd in his fist without any major trouble. Of course, it got stuck at the clean vocals, a staple of the genre, which came across as overly whiny and totally at odds with Dennis’s macho image. Any Given Day were survivable, but I seriously doubt I’ll ever put them on my menu on purpose.

After Selvans, the Boško Bursać stage kept going in genre-related waters, with Belgian symphonic black metallers Saille stepping up, the second band at this year’s Metaldays after The Lurking Fear that leans heavily on Lovecraft’s works thematically. Saille aren’t reinventing the wheel in symphonic black metal, but what they do, they do very well. The Belgians don’t overdo the symphonic elements to the point where they’d get annoying. Instead they mostly work on speed and ferocity, which they achieve with tremolo riffs and racing drums, while the symphonic elements take the whole thing up a level. Saille sound like something not that foreign to the cult Enthrone Darkness Triumphant or In the Nightside Eclipse, though it’s true that toward the end of their set, the constant shrieking made them a bit monotonous. Yet another surprisingly good show from a relatively unknown band, and it’s hard to believe how much the quality of the acts on the smaller stage has jumped in the last few years. If in previous years finding good bands on this stage was like looking for a needle in a haystack, today it’s exactly the opposite.

The band Tremonti has released a new studio album, »A Dying Machine«. Its leader, Alter Bridge guitarist Mark Tremonti, adds the role of lead vocalist to his guitar playing, this time around. Mark Tremonti is an exceptional guitarist. Judging by the structure of Tremonti’s songs, that may not be so obvious, since the songs follow ultra-melodic catchiness and groove compactness, while occasionally also radiating a woven-in doctrine of thrash metal legacy. More than that, though, they carry the “alternative” to MTV-ish tone that metal soaked up in the era of the post-grunge boom bands. The band spread out its repertoire and didn’t overdo it with the extremely polished and conceptualized »A Dying Machine« album, instead touching on the whole span of its career. Before his solos, Mark always took a center position. Every time he launched into a solo, he moved away from the mic to the middle and right to the front of the stage. That broke up the band’s seeming stage stasis. Tremonti jumped to Tolmin straight from the Iron Maiden tour, where they’re the opening act. The day before they played in Zagreb, and RockLine had already caught them with Maiden in Trieste, on July 17, 2018. Mark Tremonti and his band delivered a very confident and routinely convincing show. Still, you’d have expected a bigger crowd in front of the stage, especially of Alter Bridge fans. Evidently everyone was saving their energy for the evening shows by Soulfly and (especially) for the main attraction of the festival’s third-day Lemmy stage, the hot Canadian death metallers Kataklysm.

Then came some real exotica from the East, Chinese heavy/folk metallers Dreamspirit, who sound like Nine Treasures on heavy metal steroids. That is, a bit fewer folk elements and a bit more heavy/power metal, very close to European power metal, except that at Dreamspirit it’s generously propped up by atmospheric keyboards and, in places, traditional instruments. Plus lyrics in Chinese. The beginning was still rather promising, but then it all went downhill quickly. The traditional elements were intrusive, the flubs and flat notes were plentiful, and the backing vocals were obviously canned. Amid several technical problems the vocalist entertained with a cappella singing, which quickly became more annoying than a mosquito buzzing in your ear in the middle of the night, and he nagged even more with his nonsensical banter and broken English (»Do you want to dancing?«). Dreamspirit did get the crowd moving without much trouble, and me personally they got moving at a brisk pace toward the third stage.

There I corrected my taste considerably during the show by Brazilian heavy/power metal five-piece Armahda, who on Wednesday took the headliner spot on the New Forces stage. The Brazilians released their self-titled debut five years ago, and in a good forty minutes they presented the bulk of its songs. These are interesting mostly thematically, since they sing about events from Brazilian history, while musically they move in waters close to bands like Blind Guardian and Pegazus, and in the more complex moments they recall their countrymen Angra a bit. At Metaldays they won people over with an energetic show and excellent execution, led by the strong vocals of Mauricio Guimaraes, who in the intro of the current, albeit two-year-old, single Last Farewell even recalled the great Warrel Dane. Armahda didn’t say anything new, but they still delivered one of the better moments of classic heavy/power metal at this year’s Metaldays.

Rage are legends of European heavy metal, as it was brewed in Hamburg in the early eighties! We caught their leader Peter “Peavy” Wagner, who successfully defended himself from the scorching heat with sunglasses in Tolmin, a few days ago with Refuge in Balingen at Bang Your Head!!! (Refuge are actually the Rage lineup from the 1987 to 1994 era). This time the indestructible chieftain of the band came to Slovenian lands with the current lineup of his Rage, which also features Marcos Rodriguez (guitar) and Vassilios “Lucky” Maniatopoulos (drums). Rage, limited on time, opened the show with the »Black In Mind« (1995) classic Sent By The Devil, and then knocked out song after song as fast as possible, so the show also flew by. From the new album »Seasons of the Black« they predictably played both hit singles, My Way and the title track, spiced up the set with Nevermore from the »The Missing Link« (1993) classic, and there was also the (quietly expected) and hugely melodic From the Cradle to the Grave. Then Peavy said the band was entering the era of the show where the crowd sings along too, and hit with End Of All Days, followed by the expected Don’t Fear the Winter and an extended Higher Than The Sky, where Marcos very amusingly chased the immortal figure of Ronnie James Dio, as the band wove in Black Sabbath’s classic Heaven And Hell and Holy Diver (Dio). Rage visibly had fun and visibly enjoyed the show. With all his exceptional mileage, and while eagerly turning the bass guitar, Peavy still radiates real vocal charge and commitment. Let’s hope the legendary German musician keeps pulling the band’s wagon for many more years.

One of the most tempting offers on the Boršku Bursać stage that day, at least for death metallers, was the American outfit Gruesome, who celebrate in a wonderful way the legacy of the godfather of death metal (although he himself never really liked that term) Chuck Schuldiner and the legendary Death. The Death spawn was born as an idea of guitarist and vocalist Matt Harvey (Exhumed) and drummer Gus Rios (ex-Malevolent Creation), who on the Death To All tour got the urge to play the early material of the forefathers of death metal, from the debut Scream Bloody Gore to somewhere around Spiritual Healing. Since that wasn’t possible to that extent within the DTA tours, Harvey and Rios founded Gruesome, whose aim is a complete emulation of Death in chronological order. The debut Savage Land thus imitated Scream Bloody Gore, the EPs Dimensions of Horror and Fragments of Psyche Leprosy, and this year’s Twisted Prayers Spiritual Healing. Gruesome openly admit that their aim is to copy Death as respectfully as possible, and with that they are undoubtedly maybe even the most honest tribute to the late Schuldiner there is. Led by the well-disposed Harvey and his beastly vocals, and with excellent sound, Gruesome wrecked the place with crushers like Dimensions of Horror, Forces of Death, Legal Legacy and Savage Land, and got the crowd moving right away in a brutal mosh pit. The Robin Marzen/Gus Rios rhythm section shook our guts mercilessly the whole time, while the guitars of Harvey and Daniel Gonzalez (Possessed) gnawed, cut and tore like hungry cannibals in the cult schlock Cannibal Holocaust (one of the horror films that inspired Savage Land). One of the best, if not the best, death metal show of Metaldays 2018!

Loudness are legends of Japanese hard rock, and metal too. The long-lived band from Osaka, with the exception of drummer Masayuki Suzuki, is actually in its original lineup, which of course obligatorily includes the super guitar-wizard, a sort of Japanese Malmsteen (and more), the exceptional Akira Takasaki. He’s the main magnet that rock fans of the eighties have always stuck to, globally, all over the planet. The band was in a great mood. They obviously enjoyed the position on the main stage, facing the sun, but at the same time looking at the hilly west of Slovenia, toward Kobarid and on to the Breginjski kot. Nestled in the bosom of the unspoiled expanses of northern Primorska. They radiated a superb feeling. Luckily, that was also true this time of bassist Masayoshi Yamashita, who during the show at Bang Your Head!!! on July 14, 2018 was incomprehensibly reserved. All in all, Loudness’s show came across on a higher level compared with the otherwise lovely performance at this year’s Bang Your Head!!!, and at the same time it was a step up from the band’s show last year, also at Metaldays, when in partly rainy conditions and with plenty of sound mishaps the band luckily pulled off a show on the second stage, that is the Boško Bursać stage! In the front rows there were quite a few followers of the band who came to cheer on their heroes in proper Loudness shirts. Vocalist Minoru Niihara maintains a satisfying vocal presence and the same kind of confidence in the higher and highest registers too. In February this year the band released a new studio album, »Rise To Glory«, and opened the show with the new Soul On Fire (Niihara had that slogan sewn on the back of his leather vest too, which is why he deliberately turned his back to the crowd several times), followed by I’m Still Alive. The crowd truly came alive for the first time at the classic Crazy Nights, and from there on Loudness also fraternized with their classic days, with which they earned great esteem and worldwide fame in the eighties. Akira Takasaki remains the king of the electric guitar. His solos are almost impossible to catch, if at all, and the man belongs in the generational league of the greatest in his business, which includes (not to be immodest) aces like Paul Gilbert, Steve Vai, Chris Impellitteri, and the already mentioned Yngwie J. Malmsteen. Takasaki is a schooled guitarist, his playing full of juicy neoclassical inserts, baroque, almost Bach-like ornaments, and he plays with hellish supersonic speed. Often both his hands are literally “glued” to the guitar neck! During solos he also “shook” the guitar several times, with attractive hanging off the tremolo arm. His playing takes the listener’s and viewer’s breath away. The band also played Like This, Let it Go, The Sun Will Rise Again, Heavy Chains, This Lonely Heart, Crazy Doctor, In the Mirror, and predictably closed the show with S.D.I. Let’s hope Loudness return to Europe again. It would be great if they ever managed to play a club show in Slovenia too. Niihara didn’t hide his enthusiasm and said during the show: »We’ll be back next year!« Let’s hope they really are.   

The Swiss had quite a few representatives at this year’s festival, and after Coroner, Eluveitie, Virvum and Bölzer, Basel’s Schammasch took the stage, mysterious representatives of avant-garde black metal. Schammasch, who named themselves after the Babylonian sun god, would have worked much better at night, since their main strength is a strongly atmospheric mix of black and death metal, close to bands like Behemoth, Deathspell Omega and Triptykon, plus the band’s iconography, dressed in some kind of half-robes, while the vocalist’s black-painted face is hidden under a hood. The Swiss foursome skillfully carries themes of spirituality, the occult and meditation into the music, as it moves nicely from blasts of black/death metal into more experimental and ethereal waters. Another good Swiss show.