Pero Defformero – Turbo Folk Metal Madness for the Grand Finale of This Year’s Ortofest (2022)
Venue: Ljubljana / Orto bar / Slovenia
Date: Saturday, April 30, 2022
Pero Defformero, the ever-irresistible parodic crew of four pranksters from Novi Sad, made their way back to Slovenia at the end of this April. After playing to a near-empty club in Mostovna in Solkan the night before — on April 29, 2022, to be exact (it’s pretty clear that the armchair Gorica crowd can’t be dragged out even for a local Avtomobili show these days, let alone for Pero Defformero) — the band had another Slovenian gig to look forward to the following day. At Orto bar in Ljubljana. On the last night of this year’s Ortofest. As tradition has it, the band always draws a solid crowd here. The concert space on the ground floor of the club has recently been expanded. The smoking area has been moved to the part of the club where Orto bar actually started out — its oldest section. This freed up extra space, making the room a bit more elongated than before. Had things stayed as they were — with the smoking area still in its old spot — the venue would almost certainly have been at capacity. As it stands, even with a turnout this good, there was still plenty of room to breathe.
Just after nine in the evening the quintet took their positions and kicked off the show. A lacey “scarf” bearing the Pero Defformero name draped over the drums! The drummer’s granny, however, forgot to embroider the second “F.” Probably more of a Def Leppard fan. With a little imagination — and a distaff thrown in for good measure — the drum kit could easily have passed for an old spinning wheel. Biške — the unwavering champion of the little guy, this time dressed as a black belt karateka (“Kara-te” can mean something quite different in Serbian) — after warming things up with a gloriously cheeky reworking of Lenny Krawitz’s Are You Gona Go My Way, delivered the opening verse of Ferrari: »U dragstoru kupio sam svileni kimono…« Absolutely. No question. The gold chain around the neck was not missing either. Pero Defformero have basically become folk heroes in Ljubljana. The crowd eats out of their hands. The mix of tightly played metal, shameless flirtation with prog, and turbo folk rascality hits without compromise. Truth be told, we’d really been missing them. The wait had been long enough.
In just over two hours the band fired through all their strongest material — the stuff from »Undergrand« (2009) and »JeR to liči na taj način« (2014) — and threw in some new tracks they’ve been teasing a new album with for a good while now. Given that Pero Defformero have been playing this material constantly — and, honestly, there isn’t that much of it for a band with their track record — the arrangements have developed noticeably over time. You feel it especially in the extended transition passages, which the phenomenal guitarist Saša Friš decorates with breathtaking virtuosic flourishes. The same goes for the solos, which have grown substantially too. Well, a player starts to get a little bored over the years, so you’ve got to find ways to keep things fresh. The band is incredibly tight overall. They did fall apart a little in places, but that didn’t dent the overall feeling of boundless, overflowing good vibes that Pero Defformero channel through their remarkable brand of tongue-in-cheek parodic humor. Biške is just a remarkable figure to begin with. When he launches into his mischievous routines — borrowing guitarist Saša to take the piss out of, and making sure the audience doesn’t escape either — nobody comes close in the dark-humor department. And that sharp, limitless wit is always exactly right — never too much, never too little. It’s all balanced out by a phenomenal instrumental performance, both in the rhythm section and in Saša’s already-mentioned guitar work.
The front rows had every word. Every single one. Hands in the air, singing their lungs out. Beer sloshing everywhere, and a total, absolute switch-off of overheated, overstimulated heads. Everything was exactly where it should be. And then some. Aluminium is a metal. It’s also what the pull-tabs on cans are made of. Beer cans, just to be clear. And Izzy — almost certainly Slovenia’s biggest Defformeros fan by at least a light-year over whoever’s in second place — had equipped a dozen attendees, let’s call them comrades from his inner circle of Slovenian Pero Defformero devotees, with neck chains made from strings of can pull-tabs (beer can pull-tabs, just to be clear), all handcrafted by Izzy himself. He may well have just given the band an idea for how to beef up their merch table.
After Ferrari the band stayed with their first record, carrying on with Ostavljen sam ja and Silvana. They also ran through: Bez tebe, Gotičarka, Metal sviraću, Extra, Trebalo bi, Oka tvoga plam, Žalim draga ispalo je sranje, Jaroslava, Volim te, Na dan kad si pošla za tog čoveka, Sedmica na lotu, Ćerka đavola, Ludo zaljubljen, Fejsbuk stana, Gastarbajter, and in the obligatory encore, Kauboj and Došli smo do kraja puta (special thanks to Izzy for passing along the setlist).
At a party like this, though, your sense of time — and of space — vanishes in an instant. Biške never runs out of material, constantly needling and teasing the crowd with impish glee — and pushing it far enough that Saša starts hollering at the sound engineer to pull the singer out of the monitor right now. Rehearsed tricks, maybe, but they fire without limit — and they’re here to entertain. And Pero Defformero aren’t just great performers — they’re incredible entertainers. Nobody comes close. Their return to the Slovenian capital confirmed it once again. They remain a league of their own.
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Sebastijan Videc
