Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Rock Club / Ronchi dei Legionari / Italy
Concert date: 09.12.2007
Attendance: 150
Ticket price: €15.00
While “all” of Slovenia was zeroed in on the Swedish metal bombast merchants Therion in Ljubljana, the Norwegian prog metal crew Circus Maximus dropped in on our neighbors just across the border, with a whole lot less fuss and fanfare. These youngsters, who have barely traded their adolescent peach fuzz for the first stubble of manhood, have two excellent albums behind them, “The First Chapter” and the brand-new “Isolate” from this year, which was the star of the show in Ronchi, a little town near Gorizia best known for its international airport. This time, too, we didn’t get there without plenty of detours, driving on gut feeling, sniffing out the right direction by intuition, and pestering the locals about where we were and how to get where we wanted to go. Well, pal. You’re in Italy, so make peace with the fact that roads off the motorway aren’t signposted. The Rock Club in Ronchi is so badly marked that we arrived right at the destination without knowing we’d arrived. The second time went easier, after one more lap around Ronchi’s industrial zone, because by then the keen fans had started to gather, finally bringing the industrial zone to life as they showed up to cheer on their heroes at Rock Club.
As he already proved last year by putting on Tramp’s White Lion in Trieste, the real music enthusiast Massimo has once again pulled off a visit from a top-quality band close to Slovenia. It’s unbelievable how the guy manages to organize a completely non-profit show. Nothing but sheer faith and love of music can be driving him. A warm welcome, a few encouraging words of support and thanks traded back and forth, and we’re already sitting at the bar armed with the standard watered-down Italian beer. Shame we’d already had a taste of our Laško beforehand, because the difference in quality broke and ground up our hearts on the spot.
ANARCHY-X:
The wait dragged on for quite a while. At 20:40 things finally started rumbling in this cute little club that holds 200 people, dressed in warm wood and decorated with proper rock posters and murals. A pleasant place to visit! Up on stage stood the Italian Queensryche, known around here as Anarchy-X. Very brave to wade into “a tribute to” waters, and when the band in question is Queensryche to boot, there are only two options. Either you’ve lost your marbles, or you’re so damn good that nobody believes you, so surreally good! Either way, you’re taunting the devil with Queensryche! Anarchy-X showed that they dare, but they’re nowhere near good enough to swim around relaxed in the demanding repertoire they chose to cover. First of all, the sound was way too loud when it came to the drums. Already in the opening Anarchy-X the singer was struggling in the highest registers, there was some half-tone botching, but okay, I told myself: “Let’s wait a bit longer. The guy has to warm up his voice!” Waiting didn’t help. That said, the dude handled songs like Damaged and Empire fairly skillfully, and the guys together delivered a thoroughly decent I Don’t Believe In Love too. The men repeatedly tripped over each other in sloppy playing and missed badly, especially in the gems of the evening, Walk In The Shadows, where the chorus literally broke the singer, then Eyes Of The Strangers, and above all the disastrous finish with Queen Of The Reich. The guitars were the closest to the originals of the lot, the singer has to work pretty hard, the vocal tone is right, but in the high registers it gets frighteningly thin and weak, and the rhythm section was stuck on a pitiful frequency too. The fact that the guys strayed far from the originals several times is down to the drummer, who badly botched or came late on quite a few transitions. 50 minutes of “Queensryche”. A decent running time for the first of the two support acts. But the guys have potential, they just need to put in some very thorough hard work. Five beers deep, I was having a total blast belting out at the top of my lungs the verses of classics by this once great and unforgettable band.
1. Anarchy-X
2. Revolution Calling
3. Operation: Mindcrime
4. Damaged
5. Empire
6. The Mission
7. I Don’t Believe In Love
8. Walk In The Shadows
9. Eyes Of A Stranger
10. Queen Of The Reich
STEEL CROWN:
Steel Crown kicked off their set as the second support act shortly before ten. For Italy, this was a special occasion as far as their show was concerned. It was the first gig of the reunited Steel Crown, who split up long, long ago, somewhere deep in the eighties. Back then heavy metal was played in its bare form. Riff, clean vocals, solos and pedal to the metal. No overcomplicating things. And Steel Crown too belong to some version of the new wave of Italian heavy metal. Very obscure grumps, no question. No charisma, no charm. Both in performance and in the music. Although the crowd was visibly melting with delight before our eyes, probably thanks above all to the nostalgic flutter of hearts over the resurrection of this band, legendary for Italy. You could really feel that the guys have been off the stage for ages, that they’d somewhat forgotten the basic mathematical axioms. Above all that you simply have to spit fire when you’re rattling in front of a crowd with the unique steel forged by the power of a metal riff. So the dot on the “i” was missing, the thing called energy flow. Since that wasn’t there, all we witnessed was an outbreak of sterility from guys who did make a nice effort to swing their sabers one more time in honor of the good old days. But I can simply conclude: maybe it just isn’t meant for them. Still, this reunion is a very welcome and nice thing for the Italian scene, even though in their years of abstinence Steel Crown were overtaken by plenty of young hopefuls who mean much, much more on the scene, if we look just across the border, no need to go further than Trieste, home to Rhapsody Of Fire, for example. This reunion in Italy is reminiscent of the recent nationwide Slovenian ruckus over Interceptor. During their absence, the new Slovenian metal bands literally stuffed them in their little underpants pocket. But they carry the status of kind of legends, which keeps them alive. And let it be so with Steel Crown too. Good luck, old-timers, but please don’t turn into Snoopys!
2. Stay Poor
3. No Man Land For A Gypsy
4. Bad Flowers
5. Sunset Warriors
–encore—
6. Prisoners In The Box
CIRCUS MAXIMUS:
Circus Maximus took the stage around 23:00! What to expect from these promising young pups who were still growing up on cereal with milk and watching cartoons on TV yesterday? Scandinavians. And wherever that word shows up, the adjectives “perfect” and “perfectionist” always tag along. Given the far more favorable conditions of playing a bigger hall the day before in Brescia, with a bigger crowd and above all a bigger stage, you couldn’t expect such an intense performance this time. The boys charged straight into the new record “Isolate” (2007), giving it the first three songs of the opening part of their set. They coaxed a decent racket out of the small crowd, and the guys were rewarded above all by the fact that the fans had the verses of some of the band’s favorite songs down cold.
Circus Maximus had their plans crossed above all by the sound, which is odd for Scandinavian perfectionism. Once again the drums were somewhat too loud, but in the first half of the set the guys fixed the situation, and 15 m from the stage the sound picture finally came together into something at least close to balanced, even though we never got the final optimization. The boys are in excellent form when it comes to drilled precision and tightness. The vocals are explosive, authoritative, highly melodic, strong in every register. In the biggest melodies of their songs, Circus Maximus crowned this big advantage of their polished vocals with an added layer of atmosphere, followed of course by the progressive moments of countless transitions and rhythmic turns. Too bad the keyboards were practically run over in the mix, so the atmosphere took a bit of a hit at that point. The fact that the guys are still very young showed above all in the team’s huge stage stasis. A practically motionless guitarist, a keyboardist almost hidden backstage, a bassist with one foot on the monitor the whole time, which was honestly starting to get on my nerves. The only man putting a bit more energy into his own stage kinetics was the singer, but even he, by turning toward the drummer too much and thus showing his back to the crowd, kept breaking the flow of energy between audience – band, even though that flow did work during the show. Thanks to a few seriously fired-up individuals in the front rows who breathed with the band onstage the whole time. If only there’d been just a handful more fans like that at Rock Club this night!
The guys fought their way through their repertoire. They played the best stuff from their two studio albums in an hour and a half! For the encore they invited the two support acts, Anarchy-X and Steel Crown, up on stage. Together they all launched into the Queensryche evergreen Take Hold Of The Flame, which, unlike the previous day in Brescia, was this time mostly sung by the Anarchy-X frontman. Even though the Circus Maximus vocalist joined in for just a few modest verses, they confirmed the unfathomable difference in quality between the two singers! That was the high point of the night’s fun, which gave wings to everyone in the room, and above all it was a show of respect for the energy organizer Massimo put in to bring Circus Maximus to Italy and let the guys bring their music live to this part of Europe too.
The night was still long and, as always with this kind of rock n’ roll adventure, unforgettable. Next came an interview with Circus Maximus for the sake of our “rock line”, a drive through snowy roads over Col to Ljubljana, and before that, of course, getting lost once more on the roads of Gorizia. “Rožna Dolina border crossing! Do you copy?!?!”
1. A Darkened Mind
2. Abyss
3. Wither
4. Prophecy
5. Arrival Of Love
6. Sane No More
7. Silence From Angels Above
8. Mouth Of Madness
9. SIN
10. Glory Of The Empire
11. Alive
12. Ultimate Sacrifice
13. Imperial Destruction
—encore—
14. Take Hold Of The Flame (together: Circus Maximus, Steel Crown, Anarchy-X)
text: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
ANARCHY-X:
1. Anarchy-X
2. Revolution Calling
3. Operation: Mindcrime
4. Damaged
5. Empire
6. The Mission
7. I Don’t Believe In Love
8. Walk In The Shadows
9. Eyes Of A Stranger
10. Queen Of The Reich
STEEL CROWN:
1. I Can Dream
2. Stay Poor
3. No Man Land For A Gypsy
4. Bad Flowers
5. Sunset Warriors
–encore—
6. Prisoners In The Box
CIRCUS MAXIMUS:
1. A Darkened Mind
2. Abyss
3. Wither
4. Prophecy
5. Arrival Of Love
6. Sane No More
7. Silence From Angels Above
8. Mouth Of Madness
9. SIN
10. Glory Of The Empire
11. Alive
12. Ultimate Sacrifice
13. Imperial Destruction
—encore—
14. Take Hold Of The Flame (together: Circus Maximus, Steel Crown, Anarchy-X)
Photo Gallery
