Location: Belgrade / Ušće / Serbia
Date: Thursday, June 28, 2012
Slovenia has Metalcamp, Metal Mania, Rock Otočec and plenty of other festivals. Croatia has InMusic and the freshly born Metal Fest Croatia (which will run under the name Burning Sea next year). Only Serbia has been limping along on the festival front (with the exception of the gargantuan Exit, of course). That’s changed now too, because at the end of June this year the first-ever Belgrade Calling festival went down at Ušće in Belgrade. Over three days it hosted some of the hottest bands of this summer, and above all it served up a colorful and (even a little too) varied lineup. On the first (musically uninteresting) day, Ušće was taken over by electronic beats and the dumb pop of Britain’s Đesi Đej, while the second day was the real kickoff, with an actual concert lineup.
The festival took place at Ušće, in New Belgrade, right at the confluence of the Sava and the Danube. From some spots you get a gorgeous view of the Kalemegdan fortress and the tallest skyscraper in the Balkans, Ušće Tower, the former Central Committee building. The park right below the skyscraper has been the site of mass political rallies and even more massive concerts for decades, and its enormous expanse can of course only be filled by names like Ceca and Zdravko Čolić, who played to well over a hundred thousand people. In past years Ušće has also hosted world-class acts like The Rolling Stones (2007), The Police (2008) and Metallica (this past May), and this time it was the home of the first Belgrade Calling, which opened its gates on Thursday a good hour late. The clumsy organization and some pretty big birth pangs were also to blame for Satyricon taking the stage as the first act while most people were still jostling at the entrance.
Still, the black metal veterans Satyricon, led by the legendary duo of Satyr and Frost, brought a bit of Norwegian winter to sweltering Belgrade. The two men who were there at the birth of the beast known as Norwegian black metal are these days the target of fairly frequent criticism that Satyricon are heading in the wrong direction and forgetting their roots. But whether Satyricon are black, post-black metal or whatever other genre junk you want to call it, in the worst of the summer heat they managed to present their vision of black metal in the best possible light, and that despite the fact that black metal generally only works live in the dark. The sun was to blame only for the dance of death with Satyricon not coming off as transcendental and ritualistic as usual, but Satyr still knows how to hold a crowd in his fist while keeping up the posture of a black metal frontman without falling into the trap of any Spinal Tap moments. This time the Norwegians focused only on the last three records, Now, Diabolical, The Age of Nero and Vulcano, and so, with the exception of the classic Mother North, they presented the second phase of the band, which, whatever the elitist fans think, is no worse than the first. The excellent sound only gained in power and massiveness when Satyr picked up a guitar as a third guitarist, creating a perfect impression of a monumental band, which Frost’s destructive drumming (he now sports an ultra-krieg mustache) only lifted higher. With Satyricon, Belgrade Calling got off to a very promising start.
And it carried on that way with the set from the fathers of doom and gothic metal, Paradise Lost! The Brits used their Belgrade show to promote their brand-new record Tragic Idol. They played only two songs from that album, while going back to their past with one track each from earlier records, and even pulled off a few very pleasant surprises. The first was that they marched onto the stage to the sounds of Desolate, the “outro” of the cult album Gothic, which blended perfectly into the new Honesty in Death. That one, together with the title track of the new record, was living proof that Paradise Lost age like fine wine, that with their last three releases they’re hitting their creative peak again, and that with Tragic Idol they’re just under it. On top of that (in my estimation mostly thanks to the phenomenal Mackintosh, who is probably also fueled by his new band Vallenfyre and is the main driving force behind the much more guitar-driven and aggressive new material), Paradise Lost hadn’t sounded this good and this old-school in a long time. Nick Holmes had a pretty rough time vocally over the first three songs, but his form kept visibly improving from song to song, and he pleasantly surprised again with a somewhat juicier delivery of Tragic Idol. He also dished out a few charming bits of banter, which he backed up, entirely in his own style, with gentlemanly British humor. Through Forever Failure, with the controversial Charles Manson speech once again present, and the mighty The Enemy, Paradise Lost wrapped up their set far too soon (probably mostly because of the festival day’s hour-long delayed start) with the ultra-hit Say Just Words.
With the next act, the festival atmosphere could really be felt in the air for the first time, even though the crowd was nowhere near as big as I’d expected. Former Ozzy Osbourne sidekick Zakk Wylde took the stage, and an hour of guitar wankery began. In his home band, Wylde combines elements of heavy metal, which he’s painted heavily in the black of stoner, and then drowned in liters of Jack Daniel’s-soaked, American South-inspired rock. Since there was no whiskey at the festival, Black Label Society just had to be washed down with Jelen beer, which was served from smoothly running bars, with the cold beer arriving from the hands of typically friendly Serbian waiters dressed in T-shirts made especially for the festival, with a picture of Bambi and the slogan »Kad porastem biću jelen« (“When I grow up I’ll be a deer”). Meanwhile, Wylde led his dirty crew through the band’s rich discography in a good hour. He bored a bit with monotonous, nasal singing that even recalled the vocals of his former boss (while at moments sounding melancholic and spleeny like Layne Staley, and at others pure Southern like Phil Anselmo). The endless solo spot was harder to stomach: in that time you could order a beer and a Banja Luka-style pleskavica, drink the beer, eat the pleskavica and still digest it all in peace. The recurring guitar tricks were just as hard to take (there’s no end in sight to Zakk’s self-pleasuring with constant pinch harmonics), all courtesy of a Wylde adorned with an Indian feather headdress. Despite the overly poseur-ish guitar showboating, Wylde’s almost total lack of communication with the crowd and the somewhat muddy, murky sound, Black Label Society went down easily enough, and instead of a grilled pleskavica, all that was missing was some ribs with Zakk’s “Berserker” hot sauce.
Before the set from rock giants and British icons The Cult, the “fan pit” in front of the stage finally filled up properly for the first time, and the evening dusk that fell over Ušće was tailor-made for a show by big rock stars. Serbs obviously love guitar rock (which is a pretty interesting fact if you just glance at the music programming on Serbian TV, but that’s a topic ripe for a serious sociological study, hehe), as they already proved at the Judas Priest and Whitesnake concert at the Belgrade Arena, where the latter got much better and louder support. Led by the star frontman Ian Astbury (naturally hiding behind black sunglasses, wearing white cowboy boots and, despite the evening mugginess, a jacket with some sort of furry thing around the neck), The Cult strutted into Belgrade like little devils, with Lil’ Devil from the cult album Electric. The very first song showed that The Cult were in excellent form (which, according to the accounts of bigger connoisseurs of the band, was more the exception than the rule just a few years ago), and they probably played the best show of the night, quality-wise and overall. Astbury was in a good mood that evening, talked to the crowd several times, and the dance moves so typical of him were there too, the kind he laid out in the cult video for She Sell Sanctuary. Even better was hearing the truly phenomenal guitar sound of Billy Duffy. It was just loud enough to pleasantly shred your eardrums, and totally distinct and crystal clear. Thrash metal fans’ hearts beat fastest for the legendary drummer John Tempesta, who as a member of Exodus and Testament wrote himself into the annals of thrash forever, and since 2006 has been earning his bread with The Cult (probably much more profitably than in thrash, hehe). In top-notch, polished style, as befits a band of their caliber, they carried their brilliant set to the end with the loud support of a satisfied crowd, finishing with the mega rock hits She Sells Sanctuary and Love Removal Machine.
The peak of the second festival day was without a doubt the set by the mad freight train that is Ozzy Osbourne and Friends. Ozzy came up with this Band-Aid for the burning wound once it turned out that the long, long awaited reunion of the classic Black Sabbath lineup wasn’t going to happen. The father of the metal riff, Tony Iommi, unfortunately came down with leukemia (from which, luckily, he’s reportedly recovering well), and after a dispute with Bill Ward the band split into two camps. The lucky ones caught Black Sabbath (minus Ward, who was replaced behind the kit by Tommy Clufetos, otherwise the drummer in Ozzy’s solo band) at two exclusive shows in Birmingham and at Donington, while the rest of us just had to wipe our noses. But if you managed to forget all the fuss and the dirty backstory around Black Sabbath, Ozzy and Friends was pure heavy metal enjoyment from the moment the Prince of Darkness personally shuffled onto the stage and screamed “Let the Madness Begin!” Ozzy kicked off the craziness with a medley of his biggest solo hits, and so the current lineup of his solo band fired off one ultimate hit after another for the first half hour: Bark at the Moon, Mr. Crowley, Suicide Solution, I Don’t Know and the nice surprise Shot in the Dark. It was played superbly, of course, even though Clufetos is at best an average drummer and Gus G is still a guitarist who in my opinion simply doesn’t fit with Ozzy. The bigger question was Ozzy’s form, which over the first five songs really did get steadily worse vocally and gave the legend a pretty rough time a few times, but you have to remember that Ozzy is 64 and in the eighties and nineties he ate, drank, snorted and did whatever else could be done, and with everything he consumed he could probably have circled the Earth a few times. Still, nothing is nicer than seeing a spry Ozzy who on stage still acts like a kid, a kid with a bit of Damien hiding inside him, who with particular glee and a childlike smile and wickedly mischievous glittering eyes drenches the crowd in liters of white foam. After the five-hit run, Ozzy got a generous break, as it was time for the first Black Sabbath classic, the instrumental Rat Salad, which Gus G and Clufetos stretched out with not-too-convincing solo excursions. The best part of the show was the trio of Black Sabbath anthems, the eternal steel classics of heavy metal Iron Man, War Pigs and N.I.B., and even nicer was seeing the lively, playful legend Geezer Butler on stage, who at sixty-plus still plays bass lines like a twenty-year-old brat and headbangs like crazy while he’s at it. Iommi’s immortal riffs were handled this time by Ozzy’s star guest, none other than Slash, who somewhat surprisingly played all the guitar parts with great respect and very close to master Iommi’s original sound, without overdoing the improvising. For Fairies Wear Boots, Slash was replaced by Ozzy’s former employee Zakk Wylde, and Ozzy’s constant cries of “Louder!” were heeded best by the somewhat lukewarm crowd at the peak of the show with the hit Crazy Train and the closing mega-anthem Paranoid, during which all of Ozzy’s guests, Ozzy’s band and the godfather of heavy metal himself took the stage. We kind of missed I Don’t Want to Change the World and Mama I’m Coming Home, which Ozzy played everywhere on this tour, and I honestly don’t know why they got skipped. So the show flew by a bit too fast, but it was great to see the legend live before he rides off into a well-earned retirement. “Ozzy Osbourne is Our God!”
In the Thursday small hours, Macedonian thrashers Sanatorium saw off the sparse crowd, but one in the morning was the right time for a stroll through Belgrade by night and for gathering strength for the next day.
author: Rok Klemše
photos: Nina Grad
SATYRICON:
1. Now, Diabolical
2. Black Crow On a Tombstone
3. Possessed
4. The Wolfpack
5. That Darkness Shall Be Eternal
6. Commando
7. Mother North
8. K.I.N.G.
9. Fuel For Hatred
PARADISE LOST:
1. Desolate/Widow
2. Honesty in Death
3. Erased
4. As I Die
5. Tragic Idol
6. Forever Failure
7. The Enemy
8. Say Just Words
THE CULT:
1. Lil’ Devil
2. Honey From a Knife
3. Rain
4. Lucifer
5. Phoenix
6. Fire Woman
7. The Wolf
8. Wild Flower
9. Rise
10. For the Animals
11. She Sells Sanctuary
12. Love Removal Machine
OZZY OSBOURNE & FRIENDS
1. Bark At the Moon
2. Mr. Crowley
3. Suicide Solution
4. I Don’t Know
5. Shot in the Dark
6. Rat Salad
7. Iron Man
8. War Pigs
9. N.I.B.
10. Fairies Wear Boots
11. Crazy Train
12. Paranoid
