Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Orto bar, Ljubljana
Concert date: 02.11.2017
According to Christian doctrine, God is made up of three persons – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity naturally has its opposite number too, embodied by Satan, the Antichrist and the False Prophet as the personification of deceit, hatred and evil. An unholy trinity of that kind, operating under the wing of the German label Van Records, paid us a visit last Thursday, and even though the three bands that played Orto bar differ quite a bit from one another genre-wise, they’re bound together by a shared set of themes – darkness, death and Luciferianism. With All Saints’ Day just around the corner, the trio’s visit was even more fitting.
The gates to Dante’s underworld were opened first by the Italian mystical stoner/doom outfit Caronte, who released their third studio album YONI just over a month ago. The band was founded in 2011 by vocalist Dorian Bones (Whiskey Ritual), and they took their name from the ferryman Charon, who ferries the souls of the dead across the river Acheron in Greek mythology. Fittingly, the band’s retro-sounding stoner/doom came tinted with a distinctly ethereal and mystical hue, first and foremost thanks to Dorian’s gentle, enigmatic vocals, which personally weren’t entirely my cup of tea but played their part more than convincingly. The heavy riffing and groovy bass were topped off in all the right places by Led Zeppelin-esque solos, and Dorian put the cherry on the occult atmosphere with the lyrics of tracks like Shamanic Meditation of the Bright Star and The Moonchild, which draw on the rich legacy of writings by the one and only Aleister Crowley. Caronte are clear proof that hidden gems can easily be found even in the proverbially poor Italian metal scene. The already densely packed crowd confirmed as much, rewarding Caronte with well-deserved applause.
Closer and closer to the core of the nine concentric circles of Dante’s Hell, Orto was then driven by the German atmospheric black/doom metallers The Ruins of Beverast, really the solo project of Alexander von Meilenwald, who creates the albums in the studio entirely on his own but surrounds himself with excellent musicians for live shows, such as Job Bos (Dark Fortress) and Michael Zech (Secrets of the Moon, and live with Negura Bunget and Dordeduh). Beverast is Meilenwald’s take on the Norse Bifröst, the mystical bridge that links the worlds of Midgard and Asgard in Norse mythology (and so symbolically links humanity and the gods), and the band reduced that bridge to dust with the very first terrifying notes of the fifteen-minute title EP of the current album Exuvia. Zech led us into it with clean but ominous guitar strokes, while Meilenwald wiped out any hope of escaping Hell with truly crushing, soul-tearing guitars and raw vocals. Still, The Ruins of Beverast are a long way from a typical black metal band, since practically every moment of the music is suffused with a rich but dark and menacing atmosphere, which Meilenwald builds with slow doom passages, clean vocals and, in the case of Exuvia, ambient inspired by the myths and musical influences of Native Americans. The Ruins of Beverast is a band that’s really no easy experience live, but it leaves a lasting impression.
And all the way to the Lightbringer himself, the almost completely full upper hall of Orto bar was taken by Thomas Jefferson »TJ« Cowgill (also a member of the American blackened death metal band Book of Black Earth) with his band, better known as King Dude & His Demon Brothers. King Dude released the first album, Tonight’s Special Death, in 2010 and the latest, Sex, last year, and with it firmly planted himself on the throne as the king of dark neofolk. The foursome greeted Orto with the faster, invigorating Holy Christos from the current record, but the King himself made it clear right away that they were up on stage to push us into ever deeper depression with every following track. Even though TJ was in good spirits between songs and tossed the crowd some black humor and well-received jokes about masturbation, it was the music that really sucked us in like a black hole, full of occult, terrifying and Luciferian themes, deviant human relationships and behavior, sexuality and human depravity, deftly caught in a musical blend of darkfolk, Americana, a touch of country, keyboards that sound like church organs and a pinch of dark Mississippi Delta blues. In his exploration of the dark sides of the human soul, King Dude can be gloomier than Johnny Cash and bleaker than Nick Cave put together. With the grim and doomed I Wanna Die At 69, Death Won’t Take Me and Deal With the Devil he hit straight to the heart, and he delighted us with older numbers like Fear Is All You Know and Jesus in the Courtyard. A primal, masterful lesson in horror and despair.
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