Location: Postojna / Car park behind the Municipal Building / Slovenia
Date: Friday, 2 September 2022
In early September this year, right alongside the grand finale of Postojna’s annual festival Zmaj ‘ma mlade, Croatian parodic sonic terrorists and ‘uncatchable’ rock’n’roll troublemakers Brkovi made their appearance in town. The author of this piece caught wind of that precious nugget entirely out of the blue, on the actual day of the show — just a few hours before it. So there was nothing for it but to floor it straight to the venue.
The main stage of the Zmaj ‘ma mlade festival used to stand on the square in front of the Hotel Kras. These days it has been relocated to the car park behind the municipal building. The venue was already buzzing from half past eight in the evening, but a conscious decision was made to skip the support acts entirely — local metal veterans CarlxJohnson and Ljubljana’s alternative rockers Čao Portorož. While both bands were dutifully putting in their stage shift, a round of craft beers at the Music Caffe bar felt like a far better use of time, with the occasional eye on the basketball, where Serbia — one hand tied behind its back — was grinding the Netherlands into dust.
Ten o’clock at night. The venue is packed. Brkovi take the stage. A band that pulls in fans of ferocious punk rock energy and metal heads alike — the latter increasingly drawn to their shows lately, thanks to the virtuosic antics of brilliant guitar ace Igor Paspalj, an internationally established guitar virtuoso who joined the band not long ago. The party went from zero to full blaze in seconds. Brkovi were dialled in to a tee sonically — from the first drumbeat to the very end of the set. Cranked up to exactly the right volume for an open-air stage, with a beautifully built sound. Riding those sonic qualities, Brkovi dragged the crowd headlong into the delirium of their endlessly caustic, piss-taking world — a world largely shaped by life on the Balkans, from the war of the sexes to slogans of defiance against the system, all of it wrapped in bizarrely incisive black humour that doesn’t skimp on the most colourful Balkan profanities. You couldn’t ask for more magnetic appeal. With a bold and lavish flood of parody — Balkan folk melodies rubbing elbows with polka and ska rhythms, held together by the strummed steel backbone of relentlessly ferocious, ever-escalating guitar riffs shot through with brilliant and occasionally breathtaking solos — Brkovi have over the years built up real battalions of fans in Slovenia. Deservedly so. This is top-shelf rock’n’roll taking the piss, Balkan-style, carrying the legacy of the Yugoslav rock tradition into new times in a genuinely unique way. Even if they borrow tricks from folk singers and turbo-folk, it’s all brilliantly plugged into the hellish alpha-and-omega alphabet of technically flawless execution, with the indestructible stage commander — the ‘resident motormouth’, vocalist Shamso 69 — at the very centre of it all.
When it comes to doing their job, Brkovi are not only hard to stop and hard to catch — they’re utterly, unshakeably convincing. The front rows proved as much, eating out of the band’s hand. Boiling heads in those first rows had pushed the poor barrier almost all the way up to the stage within minutes of the show starting.
Brkovi’s code of conduct is clear. Glam beyond the limits of good taste! Bizarreness. Deliberate excess with the aim of shocking the audience. But that’s exactly what the band’s musical logic demands. Shamso 69, Šarac, Tomac, Vlajko, and one-of-a-kind guitarist Igor Paspalj — who goes by the nickname Pas — were simply unstoppable that evening. Across two hours they covered material from all seven studio albums, and their ultra-popular anthems were all present: Bolje da sam s frendovima pio rujno vino, Opasno se drogiram, Mala, Kurvo prokleta, Balkan Star, Pizda materina, Hoću da mi dijete sluša narodnjake, Hormon sreće, Samo pijan mogu, Srećo laku noć. And also: Švaler, Tolerancija, Ornela, A ja ču da pijem, Slušaj sada dobro, Nevjernice, and more. High-octane combustion from the first second to the last, with fanatical crowd participation. The combustion — and the evaporation of alcoholic beverages — was so intense that the venue ran completely out of beer mid-concert. Halfway through the set. Every last drop.
The band isn’t standing still creatively, either. The current shows, part of a tour called »Novo nenormalno«, brought fresh original material to the stage, with Brkovi announcing a new studio album before the end of this year or in early next year. They opened with the new track Više ni pankeri ne slušaju pank, and later let two more new songs loose — Sex i droga and Skupe bombonjere.
The wild, red-hot frenzy of the completely deranged front rows — most of whom knew every lyric by heart — was observed by remarkably calm and friendly security staff, who didn’t lose any sleep over the endless theatre of killer stage-diving right up against the front of the stage, and didn’t bat an eye even when, after the band had taken their bow and headed backstage, one of the pumped-up guys in the crowd theatrically climbed over the barrier, launched himself off its edge onto the stage, sprinted across it to the table where a bottle of whisky — three-quarters full — sat all by itself, grabbed it swiftly, pocketed it, took a running start, and flew back over the barrier to his mates, with whom he shared the precious spoils. Before that, Shamso 69, in the manner of a head waiter, had at the end of the set handed out every last beer can and water bottle from that same table to the crowd. Apparently that still wasn’t enough. At that point nobody gave a second thought to the fact that they were standing at the entrance to the SPAR Hypermarket (on Titova cesta heading out of Postojna) — that’s just the script of nightlife in A.D. 2022, with a fearless police patrol (read: pulling over battered Renault Clios while the latest Audis weave left and right in more than obvious fashion and cruise blithely past them) that once again that evening was ‘entertaining’ itself with ample interactions with the innocent local population.
The Brkovi crew are defined by excellent chemistry, incredible confidence, and the effortless authority that comes from an enormous number of kilometres logged. Perfect stage form, forged by a relentless run of shows. A quintet that will surprise you on every front — whether you’re a fan of heavy sonic distortion, the jaggedly punk-edged destructive force of occasionally almost vampirically metalised guitar phrases, and the flawless guitar spells of the impeccable Igor Paspalj — or even if you’re not, because Brkovi will keep you occupied and entertained with the sheer sweep of their parody and the extreme buffoonery of razor-sharp lyrics soaked in cutting self-irony. The bizarre lexicon of juicy, crude toilet-humour profanities — delivered meaningfully within messages of hard-won insight about the bitter sting of ‘the gloriously derailed new world’ — has in its mocking guise set the crowd completely alight. And the crowd was looking for exactly that. A Friday-night unplug. A total catapult beyond reality. For that, you’d be hard pressed to find a better remedy than a Brkovi show!
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Edita Klemen
