Location: Podljubelj (Tržič) / Slovenia
Concert date: August 28, 2008
Attendance: 120
Ticket price: 0,00€
The dull August gig season is slowly winding down. Honestly, I can’t remember a duller August than this one, festivals aside of course. A trip to an Alpine idyll in the little valley of the Tržiška Bistrica, where the village of Podljubelj near Tržič sits with a campsite squeezed up against the Bistrica, brought me to a one-day festival featuring up-and-coming bands from Tržič. The party at the venue had been going since 6 p.m., but I caught my connection a little before ten in the evening, just as the generic, faceless pop rockers Bonus were wrapping up their set. Let’s skip them, because the sound was awful: bass guitar inaudible, guitar too quiet, keyboards and vocals cranked up everywhere. That this band has plenty of nerve is proven by the fact that they cover Bon Jovi and Van Halen classics (Livin On A Prayer, Jump). So, a repertoire that’s not for everyone. And yet. We’ve seen them in better form (Cyclone, Forgotten Eden), and even then their covers of both bands had big holes in them. The band also doesn’t come across as serious enough to have a clear vision and the drive to build a serious body of original work.
ATRUM INFERUM:
Forget Bonus. The next band was more interesting, even though their racket drove a good chunk of the crowd away from the front of the stage. Atrum Inferum, black/death metallers from Tržič, delivered more life on stage in 50 minutes than their predecessors did. They’ve just grown from a four-piece into a five-piece and now have two guitars. The lads, who are probably barely 20 on average, showed that technique is no real problem for them, even though there’s still plenty of room to grow in terms of know-how. The drummer in particular made a huge impression and proved he has quickly outgrown the basic drum kit. His contribution is really what kept me at the front the whole time, since I never lost interest in what Atrum Inferum had to offer. Their sound is still very generic, drawing on the legacy of the likes of At The Gates, Dark Tranquillity or In Flames: massive, slowed-down pounding with fancy double-bass work and colorful drumming, steered by some melodic third harmonies that spilled over a few times into extremely fast tremolo picking that called for black metal comparisons. Of course the kids are still very green, but not without talent and potential. That greenness hides in the generic sound. It’s also in the way the band looks, dressed as nothing more than five fans of some other band. The biggest upgrade is needed in the vocals, which for now don’t deliver enough darkness and doom, as the extreme genres demand. The growls are very weak, and if they were just a touch prettier, you’d almost get Witchery vocals out of them, even Grave Digger. That’s also why the band didn’t manage to create the proper atmosphere that the extreme branches of metal call for. So a bit more grub on the plate in the future will only help. These guys are just starting out. The question is where they want to develop and soar, but standards are very high these days, so they’ll have to spit in their hands and get to work: polishing the structure of the songs, making the riffs more refined, maybe adding some guitar solos. And above all, practice, practice and more practice. But let’s not forget. These guys have potential. Let them make it real!
ATRUM INFERUM set list:
1. Rotting In Shell
2. Where Dead Angels Life
3. Be Or Not To Be Yourself
4. Treacherous Gods
5. Blinded By Faith
6. A True Friend
7. Vikingški pršut
8. Equal Status
LADY’S FIRST:
Compared to the other bands on the bill, Lady’s First were pure balm for the ears. You knew that with Lady’s First, at least, quality was guaranteed. This time the band faced a nasty task: they had only 50 minutes. Before the show they locked themselves in their famous yellow all-purpose van for a war council and put together a set list to the taste of singer Guzi (Domen Guzelj), who even before the huddle came out first with the idea of a 6:3 split (read: covers versus originals) in favor of covers. Before the lads even got started, they tuned up by playing the whole of Prazna cesta. And how they pulled that off, while guitarist Tomaž Frelih Yowda once again had to fiddle with the knobs on the mixing desk at the same time. Nice. Urko (Uroš) jumped in and scrubbed out the riffs in place of Yowda’s sound rig. So the excellent ballad Prazna cesta just kind of “went by.”
There’s currently no better opener among Lady’s First originals than High Machine. Rock solid. Guzi was having his day and served up truly powerful, expressive singing throughout the show. The sound was finally set the way it should be once the audiophile guru Yowda arrived with his crew. The bass line was at last the big “leg” that the whole Lady’s First construction stood on. By the time the guys got to The Trooper, the crowd, which by that late hour had thinned out quite a bit in front of the stage and was visibly worn down by alcoholic derivatives, finally let loose properly. With Creeping Death the mood kept building, and it peaked with the by-now-folk-song Fear Of The Dark.
The folks at the front know Lady’s First very well, since this time they were playing on home turf. They were completely relaxed, and Guzi, with a few juicy jokes at his own expense and at the expense of his bandmates, put the dot on the “i” of the performance. Especially during the band introductions and the announcement of Aaron’s birthday.
The guys showed a great deal of routine, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t motivated and warmed up to just the right temperature during the show. At the close they drove the crowd crazy once more with Motori (Divlje jagode), and then they were obliged to wrap up. You could feel they were fired up just right for another 50 minutes of blazing.
Not a single slip, tight and confident. The chemistry in the band works, and Lady’s First, beefed up with Aaron, have no reason to ease off. They come across as united, which is very important, since the recording of a new album is approaching. And the quality of the product depends heavily on how friendly the band is with each other. Right now, Lady’s First undoubtedly have no shortage of that. The partying wasn’t over after the show, either. The Laško was drunk, but the Union was still around. In the excellent company of the Lady’s First crew, the clock hand suddenly struck well past four in the morning. I’d also like to thank Nejc, one of the festival organizers, not just in general for a pleasant evening of music, but also for the excellent catering. The pasulj was unforgettable!
LADY’S FIRST set list:
1. High Machine
2. Criminal
3. The Trooper
4. Creeping Dead
5. The Game
6. Killing In The Name Of
7. Fear Of The Dark
8. Happy Birthday to Aaron (plus band’s introduction)
9. Motori
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