Benediction (support acts: Razvalina & Hobos)
Friday, 18 April 2025, 20:30–23:40
Solkan (Nova Gorica) / Mostovna / Slovenia
Benediction are death metal legends. They’re no strangers to Slovenia, yet given their more-than-enviable run as a band, they haven’t played here all that often. But hold on! Their first visit was back in 1991, when they played Maribor. Then in 1999 they stopped by Ljubljana for the first time! Three years ago they headlined the Metaljot Raspaljot festival in Laško. In between they also played here in 2013 at Metaldays (that time with Anaal Nathrakh vocalist Dave Hunt — RockLine concert review) and in October 2008 at Metelkova!
Safe to say Benediction picked a great day to visit Slovenia. Since early April the band had been doing the hard touring miles alongside Jungle Rot and Master, and once those dates wrapped they tacked two club shows onto the tail end of the run! The first right here at Mostovna in Slovenia, the next in Parma, Italy. No Master, no Jungle Rot. For fans of extreme metal’s harder edges — especially the old-school kind — having a band that literally carries ‘blessing’ in its name roll into Solkan was, well, a genuine blessing! A salvation, even! On Good Friday — the day Jesus breathed his last on the cross! Benediction know nothing of breathing their last. They’re legends. You can’t do anything but respect a name like that in the death metal pioneer hall of fame.
That same April they also dropped their tenth studio album “Ravage of Empires” (Nuclear Blast Records), so catching their show in Solkan felt not just like a duty for our team, but a genuine honour! We were late again, naturally. I hadn’t been to Mostovna in so long that the road layout had changed in the meantime — the classic route, where you turn onto Kolodvorska just before the border crossing, no longer works. Fine! So we came through Italy, via Stara Gorica. No problem, but precious minutes kept slipping away. We made it though. We walked in right on the last song of Ljubljana death metal revival flag-bearers Razvalina. They’re led by Gašper Flere. Gapa is, by any measure, a true survivor on the Slovenian scene. Anyone who remembers thrash metallers Panikk — especially the year they burst onto the scene and the whole Slovenian metal explosion of that era — knows exactly why. All those Slovenian bands that drew inspiration from the old thrash and death metal days have split up and sunk, or are sinking, into obscurity. With the exception of Eruption and perhaps a few others. But not Gapa. After Panikk, he founded Razvalina and has stuck with it ever since. A trio that kills in the spirit of old-school metal worship, and a trio that stomped through a solid half-hour set. When you pushed up to the front row, you noticed that familiar, thankless-yet-polite thing the crowd does — keeping a solid two-metre gap from the edge of the stage — while politely soaking in the brutality unleashed during the presentation of the band’s second EP, “Zatirani” (2024). That old-school death metal revivalism delivered exactly what you’d expect. Gapa is an excellent frontman — charisma to spare, heart even more so. The trio did the job with distinction, showing a great level of tightness and getting the crowd properly fired up right from the jump.
Next up: Italy’s Hobos. The band from Belluno in the Veneto region has been active since 2012 but can’t exactly boast a prolific discography — their second studio album “Nell’era dell’apparenza” came out six years ago. That’s a long stretch. Anyway. The front rows reshuffled completely, taken over by waves of Italian fans who’d come to cheer for their band. Where the earlier vibe had been ‘polite’, Hobos were met with outright fanaticism from individuals up front who were literally losing their minds. The key isn’t just the mix of hardcore with heavy metal elements that flirts with death metal — it’s the Italian-language lyrics. The band’s songs have genuinely become anthems for their Italian following, and the energy throughout the set, temperature included, hit near-boiling point more than once. No holding back, cool and assured. Five hobos reached their destination! The band impressed with focus and convincing execution, satisfying every single one of their fans. This is a band that doesn’t mess around and hits like a freight train when it needs to!
But of course, we were all there for Benediction! Mostovna is perfectly positioned at the crossroads of the Slovenian and Italian worlds, which is why events like this have always felt fraternal — two neighbouring countries sharing something. Borders disappear. And that’s somehow fascinating, especially when you’re arriving from somewhere in the Slovenian interior where you never get to experience that. The odd Croatian visitor here and there, but otherwise roughly fifty-fifty: Slovenians and Italians. The venue was packed — sold out, we can safely say.
While Razvalina were still warming up the crowd, Benediction’s two guitar bosses, Darren Brookes and Peter Rewinsky, were personally selling official merch in the venue foyer. That the tour was winding down was clear from the merch stand — only men’s T-shirts in S and M were left. Just right for, how to put this, more compact gentlemen — let’s say of ‘Italian’ stature. Darren and Peter were completely cleaned out before long. Every last Benediction shirt sold. Every single one!
And Benediction? 10:30 PM! The quintet delivered exactly what the ‘old school’ mantra demands — the mantra legendary vocalist Dave Ingram repeated countless times throughout the night. A string of lethal riffs backed by hellish drumming, a rhythm section that doesn’t let you breathe for a second. Ingram, even on the second-to-last night of the tour, was vocally sovereign, piercing, and devastating. His growl whipped without mercy as he tore through the band’s classic catalogue and the freshest material from the just-released tenth album “Ravage of Empires”!
The sound was decent and satisfying throughout, except perhaps in passages where the guitar work in the already-sparse solos got slightly swallowed in the overall mix. But there was no shortage of ominous carnage blazing through the venue like wildfire. The band opened with newer material from the current album and its predecessor “Scriptures” (2020), then quickly cut through the atmosphere and dragged us into the guts of older classics — like the title track from their debut “Subsconscious Terror” (1990), followed by Vision In The Shround (“The Grand Leveller”, 1991) and Violation Remain from “Transcend The Rubicon” (1993). You simply can’t get more raw, more to-the-bone, more primal than what we witnessed — that’s an axiom of extreme metal. No ornamentation, no prosthetics, no filler. Just a frontal assault and? Total devastation. An hour and ten minutes including the encore! The minutes flew by way too fast!
And then came that moment nobody wants — the one that makes it clear the end is near. Encore time. The band didn’t even leave the stage; Ingram deadpanned: “Now we’re going to pretend to leave the stage and then come back on. You get it, right? We’ll play three more songs for you!” Up first were Progenitors Of New Paradigm from predecessor “Scriptures” and the new Engines Of War, both confirming once again that the band’s creative form is very much alive even in their mature era, while the closer — the title track of the 1995 classic “The Dreams You Dread” — put the cherry on top of an exceptional evening and slotted in the one missing piece of the puzzle. The band set Mostovna on fire. As expected! Legends stay legends! Great sound, devastating performance, brilliant tightness, Ingram authoritative and crushing with his growl! Add in the quintet’s assured, well-oiled stage presence and complete command of the space — the whole package. A band you’d shout about from the rooftops! An unforgettable detonation from the bowels of death metal’s pioneering past — and we’re already counting the days until it happens again in Slovenia.
Authors: Edita Klemen & Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
