Author: Urban Bolta
Location: MC Jedro / Medvode / Slovenia
Concert date: 01.11.2013
Attendance: 120
Ticket price: 3€
This year, the two public holidays at the turn of October and November melted into the weekend, and four days off in a row were a blessing above all for concert promoters, who threw a thousand and one gigs all across Slovenia. Among them was Medvode’s youth center Jedro, which invited rockers in on the first of November with a promise of sets from three young Slovenian hard rock and heavy metal bands.
The glowing reviews of MIST‘s debut gig a good month ago at Ljubljana’s Orto bar (Rockline report here) only boosted the buzz around this new all-female metal band, which has been around since last summer but has only just started showing itself live. The girls spent the past year busily writing original songs, and now they’ve started climbing onto club stages, eager to once again confirm the long-debunked notion that music is an exclusively male domain. Here was fresh proof! The cramped feel of the four walls of the first floor was only amplified by the traditionally built doom metal riffs, which caught the genre’s doomed atmosphere completely convincingly. Rhythmic twists born of a dynamic tempo and several ideas merged into single songs point to a creatively inspired band, one that was forced by circumstances to show off its improvisational flair too, after drummer Mihaela’s kit literally fell apart on the right-hand side at the end of one of the originals. The girls swear by the genre’s old-school legacy, as their choice of covers already attests – Relentless (Pentagram) and Bewitched (Candlemass). If the compositions sound mighty promising and the razor-heavy riffs rattle your bones like it’s nothing, the band’s weak spot is on the other side of the ledger: a lack of live mileage. Mist did manage to rein in their static stage presence by the end of the set, once the crowd’s good response had boosted their confidence, so there’s no need to worry: with live experience piling up steadily, there’s only one way for this new female doom outfit to go: up!
Second on the bill at Jedro were MOTORFIRE, young lads from the Karst region who, despite being wet behind the ears (on their faces and in their careers alike), already have some notable gigs under their belts, like the Metaldays warm-up weekend and September’s Paranoid Mania. Motorfire are first and foremost a party band, which they signaled right off the bat with a bouncy Twisted Sister tribute. Inexperienced or not, the guys looked very self-assured onstage! They managed to turn the energy of the classic heavy metal school into actual stage kinetics too, with energetic frontman Anej standing out – one moment back behind the drum kit, the next second on the front line at the very edge of the stage! The Karst crew thus shone with a bombastic stage attitude, while they still have a long way to go before crystallizing a sound of their own. The occasional rhythmic misfire can be forgiven thanks to the ruffled-up rock’n’roll style, but what stung the ears more was the jumping between styles, one of the typical traits of most young bands that are still searching for themselves. Judging by the reaction, the original songs with melodic guitar harmonies in the classic Iron Maiden vein were a bullseye, but it’s an open question how modeling themselves so directly on those heavy metal elders will play out on the upcoming debut »Rising Fire«, which the guys promise soon. Motorfire have plenty of time left to fix all the shortcomings, and if they build on the healthy foundations they’ve laid, we’ll surely be hearing more of them.
As the evening’s headliners, TOP STRIPPER returned to the Medvode crowd, having already played this very club earlier in the year at the Lipstick N’ Leathür festival. The guys have made some notable career steps this year, so (at least in central Slovenia) they can already afford a headline slot. Unlike the first two bands, Top Stripper did what they do best and slowed things down, and with a pinch of blues they got a satisfactorily packed club swaying to rhythms of sex appeal, the trademark of their sound. The quintet gigs regularly, so from show to show they display an ever sturdier stage form, visible above all in a relaxed spirit that slowly but steadily pushes out the tense, unnatural posture. Because of Miha’s technical problems with the drum sound, Top Stripper kicked off the show twice, but that of course didn’t rattle the guys while presenting their debut »High Heels Avenue« (Rockline review here)! It was great to see the ballad Daisy Darlin’ back in the live repertoire, this time with its acoustic fabric swapped at the end of the song for a heavier electric sound, which certainly went down well with all the regulars at their gigs. Top Stripper served up a bouquet of punchy hard rock tunes like L.A. City, all the way to more elaborately composed “Cinderella-bluesy” numbers like Gone With The Train and Cryin’ Over Love, where Jaša’s charismatic vocals really came into their own. In the middle of the show they stepped up their sex-soaked musical message with a dirty cover of Love in an Elevator (Aerosmith), and the finale, as is their habit, went to the anthemic Paradice City (Guns N’ Roses). And what message did Top Stripper manage to get across to the crowd with their set? If you’re gonna party, party like it’s paradise!
Setlist
MOTORFIRE:
1. We’re Not Gonna Take It
2. Ghostrider
3. The Pride
4. Heading Out to the Highway
5. Night Verison
6. Burn Out
7. Claws ‘N’ Fangs
8. Conquistadores
9. Miss You
10. Victim of Fate
11. Metropolis of Dreams
12. Aces High
13. Demoni
14. Angel Witch
15. Motorfire
16. Fear of the Dark
Photo gallery
