Location: Ljubljana / Fabrka / Slovenia
Date: Saturday, 17.03.2012
The traditional Saturday metal nights at the Fabrka club, just a stone’s throw from downtown Ljubljana, in the shadow of Ljubljana Castle, gave way to live music this time around. In the run-up to the release of the long-awaited follow-up to the album “Feniks”, Mary Rose came back to the capital: sturdy standard-bearers of the old-school hard rock tradition from Postojna.
Some 50 souls drummed themselves into the club’s miniature interior, and the mature generation was well represented – for a moment I thought I’d wandered into a gig in one of the German-speaking countries, where older generations keep backing rock music well into their golden years, which can’t exactly be said for our neck of the woods. More than the audience, it was the lack of space that tormented Mary Rose – keyboardist Sandi and bassist Mitja were squeezed in on the right, hugging the bar, drummer David had to painstakingly cram his kit onto the floor, frontman Žak worked the show right at the front edge, and then there was the band’s leader, guitar guru Eki, on the left side of the makeshift stage.
The show was announced for 8 p.m., but in true Slovenian fashion I turned up a good half hour late, which turned out to be a mistake. Mary Rose kicked off right on schedule and spent the first half of the gig stringing together original songs from the album “Feniks”. Žak shone in the intimate club atmosphere, draped over a bar stool and keeping the mood relaxed with comic asides. Izgubljen v času, Vse in malo več, Zvezda and the other bangers went down well with the crowd, made up mostly of the band’s friends. Sandi kept things organic with a touch of Hammond organ sound – it was his playing that gave Mary Rose’s sound that old-school kick, like in the outro of the track Križ je s tabo, where the Eki / Sandi duo successfully brought in all the magic of the Purple-style interplay between guitar and keyboards.
In the second half of the show, Mary Rose played a bouquet of covers, served up with their trademark perfectionism. Here I Go Again (Whitesnake), Breaking The Law (Judas Priest), Can I Play With Madness (Iron Maiden), Tako ti je mala moja kad ljubi bosanac (Bijelo Dugme) and other evergreens were pure balm for the ears in the Postojna crew’s hands. Even though guitarist Eki kept glancing at the amp and the mixing desk, showing his dissatisfaction with the sound, the sound picture was spot-on! Frontman Žanil Tataj Žak remains a master of interpretation. Jumping between covers by artists from wildly different genres demands stressful switching of register and vocal color, and Žak delivered again, paying fitting tribute to such great masters as Freddie Mercury, Rob Halford or David Coverdale. But watch out! This time, for reasons unknown to me, Mary Rose completely neglected backing vocals, which turned out to be a big miss – the hole in the sound was more audible in the original songs than in the covers.
Almost two hours of wandering through their set convinced me once again that Mary Rose are one of a kind on the Slovenian hard rock map, and I’m already impatiently awaiting the moment their new album sees the light of day, with which the guys from the Littoral will begin writing a new chapter in their story.
author: Urban Bolta
photos: Urban Bolta
