Location: Tolmin / Sotočje / Slovenia
Date: Wednesday, 07/23/2014
On Wednesday the weather finally took pity on us, so cooling off by the Sotočje with an ice-cold beer in hand and topless badminton going on in the crowd was a perfect fit. The ideal solution for a steady supply of cold beer this year was also the Mercator tent right at the festival grounds. When the news was announced it set off no small amount of controversy, but the idea turned out to be a great one and, if it sticks around, it will surely be developed and improved further in the future. The offering on the beach has also grown with a smoothie stand, and the veggies were once again nicely taken care of, not only with the kiosk on the beach but also with Indian food, which this year was joined by Mexican across from it by the small stage.
Between the two, the first act on the second stage on Wednesday was local band Cordura, who earned their spot at the festival by winning the vote on Facebook. Cordura also played at the official warm-up party at Orto bar, where they were plagued by technical problems, which sadly repeated themselves this time too. For most of the show the guys again played without the second guitar, but still managed to keep the red thread going to the end. The technical death/thrash metal that Cordura play is definitely not easy listening, but the guys managed to keep the crowd’s attention. Even though they still lack a ton of mileage, Cordura stand out with Tim’s pissed-off soloing, a varied and dynamic rhythm section, and Nejc’s ever-improving vocals, which work well in both growls and clean singing.
The honor of opening the action on the main stage on the third festival day went to the Slovenian power metal stallions Space Unicorn On Fire. They deserve congratulations for earning their main stage slot through diligent festival ticket sales. The guys, who already played at Metaldays last year on the small stage, were supposed to deliver an upgrade to the stage presence that showed them in a promising light last year. But this time the gigantic stage structure literally swallowed them up. They didn’t find their footing on it, even though we’d have wished that for them from the bottom of our hearts. It showed in the limping coordination of the crew on stage, especially in the vocal harmonies, which kept wobbling slightly left and right of the main melody. An enviable number of curious folks greeted the band in front of the stage, and the band had a really nice chance to present themselves to the world in miniature at full swing and win some new fans. The element of lucidity that they somehow always work into their shows never really came through. It seemed more like a hindrance than a help. Despite the unsuspected musical talents of the individual members, there was no real stage chemistry to be felt during the performance. Sadly. We believe it’ll be better next time. Just a little more practice and stage experience needs to be added to the mileage.
How to serve up a proper note of lucidity or sarcasm by making fun of yourself was something Space Unicorn of Fire could experience firsthand when a troop of garden gnomes, pardon me, buzzing hairballs called Valient Thorr, took over the stage after them. Only the singer actually gave off the garden gnome vibe, thanks to the bright red “dancing” booties he pulled over his tight black leggings, which only added fuel to the fire of the band’s theatrical grimacing. Of course, this whole wacked-out orgy, for which the quirky vocalist is responsible with his running around the stage, dropping to his knees and drumming on his ample beer belly, is fully justified in every dose. Valient Thorr are the right address for a stunningly tangible ceremony of authentic rock’n’ roll chaos, generously dosed with a touch of punk filth. The band closed their far too short set, full of outstanding rock ‘n’ roll rascality, with the song Tough Customer, a rock ‘n’ roll moonshine of a track that opens by borrowing a verse from the AC/DC classic Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap. Staring straight into the blazing sun, Valient Thorr delivered one of the highlights of the festival’s third day, such was the energy they produced with their show. A performance that draws out a whole bag of heartfelt fun from the brilliant sense of humor of these totally wasted American “bushmen”.
The rest of Wednesday also had the stage painted in Slovenian colors, as the heroes of the local heavy metal scene Black Diamond, after several months of concert inactivity, returned to the stages. They’re still flying high on the wings of their phenomenal debut Last Man Standing, which was received excellently by critics and fans alike. Black Diamond showed up this time in a slightly revamped lineup, as Klemen Markelj was replaced behind the drums by the well-known Marko “Soki” Soršak (Elvis Jackson), and Urban Medic on bass by Primož Pavlin. Because of the rather stingy time slot (and, of course, the epically long songs), the guys played only four tracks, adding the new single Endless Road to the trio from the debut. The relative live drought does show, as there were quite a few mistakes and slip-ups (especially in the admittedly extremely intricate interplay of guitar riffs and solos), but Black Diamond made up for the flaws with Žak’s breathtaking vocals, which shine live at least as much as on the album, and an outstanding drum performance from Soki, who has already completely mastered the band’s drumming moves in a rather short time. During the epic choruses the band had no trouble drawing in the crowd, and during the closing Dreams of Tomorrow, especially in those fantastic choruses, the horns went up on their own. Guys, we need more of your gigs, and I also hope Endless Road means a new record is on the way!
Legendary Danish thrashers Artillery got an early slot. At last year’s edition of the Bang Your Head festival in Balingen, Germany, they played at just past ten in the morning. So, a lesson from the Scandinavian veterans of Euro thrash metal, whose reins are still held firmly by the brothers and guitarists Morten and Michael Stützer. Peter Thorslund, who joined the band back in 1989 when Morten switched from bass to guitar, is still on bass. The lineup is rounded out by the younger members, drummer Joshua Madsen and vocalist Michael Bastholm Dahl, who after a few lineup shuffles in the search for the right singer finally proved himself for Artillery as a man made of the right stuff. Michael confirmed that with an excellent performance in Tolmin too! The new album “Legions” came out last November, and the band served the crowd, in (whoa!!!!) still sunny weather, the title track, then the opening Chill My Bones (Burn My Flesh) and God Feather. Of course, the connoisseurs got their fill in the rest of the fantastic 50-minute show, when the band fired off a few classic projectiles from their seriously hefty discography! After that we enjoyed sharp, uncompromising machine-gunning as the band raged through 10.000 Devils, By Inheritance, When Death Comes, Khomaniac, The Challenge, and wrapped up the set (somewhat predictably) with the infamous shrapnel bombs Terror Squad and The Almighty. Venomous and destructive! Even in their golden years, Artillery remain a mad blood-thirsty beast!
“You can’t stop thrash,” say our veterans Sarcasm, and boy are they right! After the crazy Danes of Artillery, the small stage was reduced to dust by American Havok, whose set in a jam-packed audience had mosh and circle pits with no end in sight, and the security guys earned their pay many times over with countless crowd surfers. True to their name, the Americans wreaked real thrash havoc as they tore mercilessly through the destructive thrash anthems D.O.A., Covering Fire, Unnatural Selection, Give Me Liberty… Or Give Me Death, Point of No Return and Time Is Up. Thanks to the excellent sound, the guitars cut like helicopter blades, the dynamic rhythm section roared like a jet engine, and David Sanchez’s vocals snarled like a madman. If the thrash “revival” is indeed practically dead, a band like Havok gives hope that the standard-bearers of the thrash movement won’t be only old-timers like the Big Four, but also young blood hungry to prove itself. And Havok prove it again and again. “Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war!”
Shortly before eight in the evening, an eight-piece band called Saltatio Mortis took the main stage. Translated from Latin, the band’s name would be “dance of death.” Fair enough, but the band’s musical ID card leans more toward joy than mourning. Germany offers a strong palette of bands that bring the melodies of medieval troubadours into metal, and almost as a rule that comes with ancient medieval instruments, dressing up in kilts, studded leather and other jingly clutter of bronze and iron. Saltatio Mortis use two sets of bagpipes in the lineup, and occasionally there can even be three bagpipes on stage. A whole array of different whistles and flutes, as well as a tamburica, accompany the otherwise classic metal arsenal of electric guitars, bass and drums. The band’s frontman, Alea der Bescheidene, in great spirits, kept the crowd fired up with huge commitment the whole time. He even read a few sentences in Slovenian off a cheat sheet, persistently and very effectively, which instantly won him a ton of sympathy. Even from those who were watching the band from further away, just out of passing curiosity. Besides, the swarm of festivalgoers found in Saltatio Mortis a true savior and an alibi to dress up in all sorts of archaic costumes and drag the craziest props human imagination can produce in front of the stage, to complicate their lives as much as possible. The band plays great, the sound was venomously well calibrated and Alea’s vocals worked optimally. The band delivered a truly optimal performance, and the thoroughly packed meadow in front of the stage, toys and all, experienced real delirium. In fact, at that moment there wasn’t a single German citizen who had come to Tolmin for the festival who wasn’t at the Saltatio Mortis show. The band presented their current studio album “Das Schwarze Einmaleins”! The evening’s show was accordingly opened by the new song Früher war alles besse, followed by Idol, Satans Fall, Prometheus, Uns gehört die Welt, Eulenspiegel, Wachstum über alles, Nur ein Trau, Koma, Sündenfall, Falsche Freunde and the closing Spielmannsschwur.
After the thrash bomb, the second stage was wrapped in depression and nihilism by Italy’s Forgotten Tomb, proof that you can find excellent bands among the Italians too. Forgotten Tomb stepped in at the last minute for the sadly cancelled Cattle Decapitation, which turned out to be a great move. Just as night was falling, the Italians created a mighty atmosphere of doom under the tree canopy, which they pulled off perfectly with their unique blend of black metal with elements of gothic and doom metal. Slow, mighty riffs and the raw, suffering vocals of founding member Herr Morbid, who started Forgotten Tomb as a one-man project, sent the crowd into a real trance. This time only the music did the talking, since nonsensical banter didn’t interrupt the atmospheric flow, and Forgotten Tomb wrapped the fairly sizable crowd (I’m hinting at the fact that the Italians play a pretty specific genre that doesn’t draw the masses) in darkness, solitude and depression without any trouble.
Most of Metaldays was anxiously awaiting the show by Finnish metallers Amorphis. Plenty of people had come to the festival for just one day, with the basic goal of seeing Amorphis. From an early death metal outfit, the band has gone through a radical transition over the years, building a real genre fusion into their musical dossier, which today, alongside a restrained extreme side, tips the scales largely toward elements of symphonic power metal as well as traditional folk melos and even progressive metal! A growing level of broadly accessible musicality and the combination of growling with clean singing widened Amorphis’s fan base, especially after the album “Skyforger” (2009). The main magnet of Amorphis’s stage show is of course vocalist Tomi Joutsen, who this time didn’t have his “strange device,” generally known as a microphone, mounted on a stand. A few times, looking at that particular contraption, Tomi fleetingly seemed like he was drying his hair with a hair dryer. Joking aside, the little wild man, whose dreadlocks hang almost to the ground, once again proved himself a great frontman. Especially thanks to his huge charisma and skillful use of the spacious stage, which the high-spirited vocalist ran around theatrically throughout the show. “Circle,” that is the band’s current studio album, opened the show with an intro and the new song Shades of Gray, and otherwise the band kneaded together a repertoire from a bunch of older songs, in which those who like to remember Amorphis as one of the most interesting death metal bands to appear on the planet in the years soon after the genre’s birth also got their fill (for example the performance of Into Hiding right after the instrumental Thousand Lakes, and right at the end Black Winter Day). The band didn’t skip the debut album either, tackling Vulgar Necrolatry in the second half of the set, while hearing a song like My Kantele from the album “Elegy” (1996) live is always a unique experience full of true atmospheric perfection. The band is in excellent form. You can tell Amorphis play and perform a huge amount, and that they have yet another of their many tours behind them, which the current summer festival run is wrapping up. The crowd was literally eating out of Tomi’s hand. Amorphis left the stage in the glow of exceptional execution and perfection. Given the later debacle of the “Elvis metallers” Volbeat, Amorphis actually took the title of winner of the main stage on the festival’s third day.
This year’s festival was slightly more tailored to death metal fans, as by Wednesday we had already enjoyed excellent shows by Mephistophelian, Grave, Aborted, Immolation, Obituary and Vader, but it seemed the true peak of death metal only arrived on Wednesday (and then again on Friday), when two legendary bands took the small stage one after the other. The first shot came from Dutch death/doom veterans Asphyx, one of the first European death metal bands, sowing horror and death since 1987. It seemed that with the very first note of the classic The Quest of Absurdity, the sky over Tolmin turned into the threatening red horizon of war, because that’s the effect of total war that the apocalyptic riffs, the sick vocals of Martin Van Drunen (who already wrote himself into history with his screeching on the first two cult Pestilence albums) and the cannon-rattle of the destructive rhythm section have. Bombs fell in every direction as Asphyx lined up one destroyer after another, from the classics M.S. Bismarck, Asphyx (The Forgotten War) and Vermin to brutal slaughter from the album Death… the Brutal Way, Scorbutics and the title track, and killers from the current record Into the Timewaste and Deathhammer. The crowd ate out of charismatic Van Drunen’s hand and the chaos beneath the stage didn’t let up until the last note of the anthem Last One On Earth. An Asphyx show has a kind of effect like standing in the middle of a field of napalm. “This is true death metal you bastards!”
After Amorphis’s superb show, the space in front of the main stage filled up even more for Wednesday’s headliner Volbeat. The Danes have in recent years broken through to become one of the most in-demand bands, so a slot at Metaldays was no surprise. But sadly, not everything went to plan. Volbeat kicked off the show with the punchy Doc Holiday from the current album, and continued in the same style with the older Hallelujah Goat and Boa [JDM]. The danceable Lola Montez followed, where the singer’s frequent coughing already hinted at trouble. The acoustic guitar on stage then meant only one thing – Cash’s legendary Ring of Fire with the crowd below the stage roaring along, followed by Sad Man’s Tongue, dedicated to Cash, probably the band’s biggest hit. Sadly, it became clear here that Michael wasn’t able to drop into the vocal depths the way only he can, and during Sad Man’s Tongue he even skipped the high parts, and during the guitar solo he went backstage. The hope that everything would be okay was lit by Michael’s return to the stage, but sadly, after just a few verses of Heaven nor Hell, he vanished from the stage again, and the rest of the band finished the song as an instrumental. Instead of one of the band members, it was one of the organizers who apologized to the disappointed crowd on stage, which left an extra bitter aftertaste. The band’s official statement is that Michael lost his voice due to a bacterial infection of the vocal cords, and that they promise a quick return to Slovenia.
The perfect finish to the third day, after the Volbeat debacle (because of which the organizers made a nice gesture and extended the validity of Wednesday tickets by one more day), came from the legendary Possessed, probably the biggest treat of this year’s festival. Possessed are a band formed in 1983 that forever wrote themselves into history with the cult debut Seven Churches. That legendary debut also has the track that gave a name to a whole genre. Death Metal! What Venom are to black metal, Possessed are to death metal. Van Drunen also paid his respects to them during the Asphyx show, and names like Chuck Schuldiner and Death, David Vincent and Morbid Angel, Cannibal Corpse and many others list them as an influence. During their run, Possessed also released the album Beyond the Gates (1986) and the EP The Eyes of Horror (1987), then broke up in 1987. The members went their own ways (guitarist Larry LaLonde, for example, now plays in Primus), and in 1990 vocalist Jeff Becerra was shot and has been paralyzed from the waist down ever since. Even so, in 2007 Jeff summoned incredible courage and iron will and fired up the Possessed machine again with friends from the California death metal band Sadistic Intent. Possessed are a cult, and accordingly the area in front of the second stage was jam-packed, with the crowd exploding for the first time already during the ominous intro. The Possessed delivered a good hour and a half of evil, occult and satanic death metal at truly hellish volume levels, and the death metal shot didn’t let up until the last second of an outstanding show, ruled above all by Becerra as an example of incredible will and optimism, with which Jeff inspires in conversation too (you’ll be able to see an interview with him soon). Jeff proved not only that his vocals are excellently preserved, still brutal and raw, but he also kept urging the crowd on the whole time, headbanged non-stop himself and used the stage as much as he could. Through the immortal classics Pentagram, Evil Warriors, Seven Churches, Twisted minds, Evil Warriors, The Heretic, Tribulation, My Belief and The Eyes of Horror, the band tore and raced like Cerberus, with none other than Nick Barker as a special guest bestially smashing it behind the drums, and they also presented a new track, The Crimson Spike, which will also be on the upcoming comeback record. Without a doubt one of the best (and at the same time most sincere) shows of this year’s Metaldays, one that can serve as an example to all the bigger bands who, with their behavior, have lost touch with their fans and with the very essence of metal. Possessed could only wrap up their set one way, which was also the perfect finish to the day – Death Metal!
Nina Grad (photos): Cordura, Valient Thorr, Black Diamond, Artillery, Havok, Saltatio Mortis, Forgotten Tomb, Asphyx, Possessed
Sebastijan Videc (photos, videos, Volbeat text): Space Unicorn on Fire, Amorphis, Volbeat
Aleš Podbrežnik (text): Space Unicorn on Fire, Valient Thorr, Artillery, Saltatio Mortis, Amorphis, Volbeat
Rok Klemše (text): Cordura, Black Diamond, Havok, Forgotten Tomb, Asphyx, Possessed
