Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Ljubljana / Orto bar / Slovenia
Concert date: December 13, 2012
Attendance: 90
Ticket price: €16.00 (presale) / €20.00 (at the door)
The year (and the world) is almost over, and this year has served up an incredible number of great gigs. Thursday’s show at Orto bar will without a doubt go down as one of the best, with four bands gathered on a tour called »And now for something completely different 2012.« The four couldn’t have picked a better name, because four extreme, avant-garde metal bands came together in one place, all but one of them from Norway. Every act that followed felt like a soundtrack to an ever more unhinged Monty Python sketch.
The first band on stage was still the most down-to-earth and conventional, since the Dutch Monvolland swim in more or less well-charted waters of folk/black metal. Luckily, though, it isn’t propped up with idiotic humppa and polka moments that fifteen-year-old Austrians in fur pelts and Korpiklaani shirts would happily dance to. No, with Mondvolland the folk is only a seasoning, and even that just in the form of choruses sung with clean vocals and lyrics about local legends and history. Otherwise the band is firmly anchored in classic black metal, and it was executed superbly, especially considering this was the very first opener, which in most cases is the musical equivalent of a diploma from our know-it-alls over on Šubičeva. Until this August, the band’s drummer was Ask from the genre-related Norwegian giants Kampfar, who recently played Channel Zero, and he also recorded the current EP Pestvogel with them. From it, Mondvolland blasted out the title track and Onzalige Bossen, leaving a good impression on a crowd of only about twenty heads, and thanks to the Dutch lyrics it was also an interesting, rarely heard surprise. And how else but with dynamic, varied black metal (which at moments recalled Windir, and that can only be a good thing), a thundering rhythm section (with a nicely audible, roaring bass!), epic riffs hard as a hammer and Mickeal’s varied vocals, which range from black metal screaming to clean, epic vocals in the choruses.
With the next act, the Norwegian band Krakow from Bergen, the cradle of black metal, we were already sailing much more concretely toward the tour’s title. In front of an already much bigger crowd, Troy Sanders (Mastodon), Paul Masvidal (Cynic) and Artur Felicijan (Dekadent) marched onto the stage… Just kidding, but it’s true that the bassist and both guitarists looked like very good doppelgangers of the aforementioned, and, surprisingly, Krakow’s musical brew mixes elements you can find in all three of those bands. Krakow used this tour to present their current album diin, released in September, and covered Ljubljana with a blanket of fat stoner rhythms, more brutal black metal excursions and hypnotic mantras. Good sound worked in every band’s favor this time (the sound engineer actually walked down in front of the stage several times), so Krakow had no trouble shaking us up either. The guitarists fired off sawing, repetitive riffs and spacey guitar lines propped up with plenty of effects, while the energetic, smiling Frode Kilvik provided excellent support with rattling bass. He represented the band’s more brutal side with raw, robust vocals, while guitarist Rene, with hypnotic, robotic vocals, recalled the ethereal quality of Cynic. Even though Krakow were probably the biggest genre leap from the other three, their set managed to warm Orto bar up to working temperature too.
After two fairly moderate bands, it was finally time for something completely different. After ten months (since the concert celebrating Dirty Skunks’ tenth anniversary), the Norwegian avant-garde black metallers Vulture Industries were back in Ljubljana. We knew full well that something special was in store for us again. One of the most innovative metal bands right now delivered an hour of bizarre, razor-sharp and spectacular show, walking us from their debut The Dystopia Journals to its follow-up The Malefactor’s Bloody Register, and in between they even brought back a piece of the 25-minute suite Eliogabalus by the cult Slovenian-Italian progressive band Devil Doll. I could easily put the unhinged frontman Mr. Vulture’s look down to him being a big fan of the work and character of Mr. Doctor, since the band brings a strongly theatrical approach to its music, full of horror and diabolical programmed keyboards that sound like they were lifted straight from some old-school horror flick starring Vincent Price. This time the band impressed even more than at Kino Šiška this February! What helped them most was the excellent sound and an unmistakable, unique approach we’re not used to in orthodox black metal: the cliché corpse-paint was nowhere to be seen, and instead Vulture Industries take off their shoes and put on white shirts with black suspenders over them. Under the psychotic leadership of the crazy Bjornar Nilsen, Vulture Industries wowed us with brutal black metal parts and fantastic epic passages with multi-part vocal lines. Nilsen spiced up the show with a whole palette of manic grimaces and also took care of the props we’ve come to expect from Vulture Industries. This time the light sadly gave out, but the chair was there, and so was Nilsen down in front of the stage, pushing three quarters of the hall closer to it. The band recently signed with Season of Mist – we’re waiting for the new record with open arms and a noose in hand!
To close things out, another bunch of Norwegians, the avant-gardists Virus, delivered the total musical mind-blow. Of all four acts, they’re the ones you can most easily tag with the Monty Pythonesque »And now for something completely different,« and they’ve just released a new EP, Oblivion Clock, which they premiered in Ljubljana. Virus are made up of members who aren’t exactly strangers to our stages, since band leader Czral played Metal Mania this summer as Aggressor with the Norwegian black/thrash band Aura Noir. With Virus, Carl-Michael Eide explores a completely different sphere of his mind, the parts he most likely keeps stocked with Thompson’s arsenal from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas while writing music for Virus. For a solid hour Virus walked us across psychedelic plains of stoned, grooving bass lines and hypnotic, repetitive guitar riffs, all of it seasoned with Czral’s uniquely confessional vocals, which, like the music, occasionally recall the experimental nature of Canada’s Voivod. At first glance one-dimensional and simple, Virus’s sound hides a ton of unexpected twists that give the band a strong whiff of jazzy »free« forms, and the unusual experimenting is exactly what you’d expect from a band whose first record Carheart was written about dogs and cars. It’s a bit like a giant cartoon foot from Monty Python’s Flying Circus is about to stomp on you any second, while the musical backing comes from fanfares blown by the arses from The Holy Grail.
Setlists
VULTURE INDUSTRIES:
1. Crooks & Sinners (intro)/Race for the Gallows
2. The Bolted Door
3. This Cursed Flesh
4. The Benevolent Pawn
5. Blood Dont’ Flow Streamlined/Eliogabolus
6. A Path of Infamy
VIRUS:
1. The Black Flux
2. Be Elevator
3. Oblivion Clock
4. As Virulent As You
5. Red Desert Sand
6. Road
7. Carheart
8. Chromium Sun
9. Stalkers of the Drift
10. Queen of the Hi-Ace
11. Strange Calm
Photo Gallery
