Location: Gala hala (Metelkova) / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 22.11.2010
Attendance: 150
Ticket price: €20 (presale) / €24 (day of show)
What’s more depressing than a gloomy, rainy Monday? A bunch of black metal devotees who showed up at Metelkova with one single purpose: to see their dark heroes Gorgoroth.
Thanks to some unfortunate complications, we missed out on Spain’s Noctem. All we got was the epic intro drifting out through the front doors.
With the next band, things were sorted, and so were we. We stepped into the temple of evil and got a band to match. They go by Cavus and they came to us from the land of a thousand lakes, Finland. Since the vocalist kept wandering through the crowd, hardly anyone recognized him on stage. He was painted, you see, and so were his bandmates. Spiked wristbands were out in force too. Sure, black metal has largely become a synonym for clichés these days and supposedly has nothing groundbreaking left to offer, but Cavus beg to differ. There was a real feel for combining melody and rhythm in their playing. Despite all that boldly crafted atmosphere, the crowd watched the set pretty statically. Out of the many-headed mass, only three black metal diehards felt the atmosphere enough to start moving, giving the action below the stage a tiny jolt of life. So the Finns played their set, which lasted a good 30 minutes. And believe me, this is a band worth catching live every single time.
After a break, a black wave rolled in, with greased-up hair streaming into the hall, because soon they’d be lashed by the devils of the evening – Gorgoroth. But however hard they try to be evil under that name, they only partly pull it off, since the name itself is lifted from Tolkien’s book The Lord of the Rings. It’s the plateau that separates the Black Gate from Mount Doom. In short…not all that frightening. But since the media describe them as living, modern evil, we had to see for ourselves whether that’s actually true. The sound was badly mixed. The guitars roared and you really couldn’t make out a single melody the whole show. The whole show. So these were supposedly the terrifying Gorgoroth, and yet they didn’t manage to stir up any fear. When the vocalist grabbed the mic, you could feel that there was no real stage chemistry coming from the stage or the vocal delivery, nothing that would pull the audience into the whirlpool of everything you’d expect from the embodiment of a band of Gorgoroth’s caliber. Not a word, not even a “thank you” to the fans for coming. I can also mention that photography and recording weren’t allowed, as the sign on the door in front of the hall already warned us. That’s why the photos here are official ones, from the band’s own archive. So…annoying vocals and monotonous music, thanks to a lopsided sound picture, didn’t exactly make for a great embodiment of the evil of our age this time. If evil is this boring, then let’s hope the apocalypse never happens, because it would be worth nothing more than a thunderous laugh. Every die-hard fan of this overrated band said they were really good and that they were glad to have seen them, especially guitarist Infernus, the founder of Gorgoroth. The more interesting moment of the set came when the vocalist started singing in a Norwegian folk style. The cherry on top of totally trashing their name and honor in front of the crowd was the band’s absurd ending: after the last song, they coolly put down their instruments and walked backstage, and the roadies came out and started packing up the stage gear. Mouths hanging open, we poured out of the hall, still marveling that we’d managed to keep clear heads and cool blood in the face of such blatant rudeness from the band. And let me hint at one more thing. As the main act of the night, Gorgoroth treated the crowd to a mere half hour of their music. Is there a more bitter word out there than “rudeness”? Headliners usually prepare at least an hour of material for their show. That Gorgoroth played barely half an hour is a real disgrace for the band, and it doesn’t exactly stir up fond associations when you think about the rest of today’s black metal world either.
For the grand finale, the rain that poured down after the show gave us a proper washing outside. Let’s just hope this seed of an evil curse doesn’t grow into some plant of boundless size. Next time, if there is one, we’re hoping for a better musical performance. Until then, the guys need to pull themselves together. From what we saw, they’d be better off calling it quits on live shows altogether. With performances like this and an attitude like this toward their audience, they’re digging their own grave in advance. It’s like cutting their own umbilical cord. The crowd is the only one they can thank for their long-running existence.
photos: Gorgoroth (the band’s official photo archive)
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