Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Kranj / Transtation Squat / Slovenia
Concert date: 25.02.2015
Attendance: 60
Ticket price: €10.00
Sister, those hot Swedish troublemakers, deftly pick the best from the leftovers of New York Dolls and Guns N’ Roses, while the formula for smearing white and black paint across their faces was handed down by the most illustrious King Diamond. They’re considered some of the most dedicated flag-bearers of the “new Scandinavian wave of sleaze rock,” or sleaze metal for that matter. Sister, a sharp-dressed quartet with plenty of tightly strapped-in punk elements you can’t miss, are black as the blackest doomsday! Let’s say Sister walk the path blazed by the slightly older Murderdolls and Wednesday 13, but the black sleaze they’ve outfitted their musical vocabulary with gives them a recognizable spot among the pile of bands that (broadly speaking) stand for the aforementioned movement (Crazzy Lixx, Hardocre Superstar, Chrashidet,…). Whatever you do, don’t mix up the name with the legendary Los Angeles outfit of Blackie Lawless and Nikki Sixx that went by the same name and briefly popped up on the horizon in the second half of the seventies, before both musicians went their separate ways toward fame.
The evening was opened by local heroes Ransom Call. The quintet, which calls its musical doctrine an offshoot of hard rock and punk, partly infused with inspiration from the new wave of Scandi sleaze rock, were a fitting choice to kick off the storm with Sister. The band played material from both of their demos, »Creatures on the Loose« and »Lobotomized«. Wrapped in black, with a dash of glitz and kitsch that goes nicely with it (though the guys don’t overdo it), a solid, tight and well-rehearsed performance with confident stage presence, and a distinctive croaking, gloomy vocal approach that might take you a little while to get used to, mark them out as a Slovenian specialty, since acts like this are more of a rarity than the rule around here. Well-used set time and convincing execution. The crowd had the band’s back too, with friends and familiar faces cheering the guys on. This is a band with just the right dose of venom, and let’s hope they keep upgrading, nurturing and fleshing out their spiked sleaze pose in the future.
Sister poured across the stage like a raging swarm of red ants. They conquered the stage without any restraint and instantly subdued the crowd. Their musical approach, unlike the kitsch that’s a mandatory part of the band’s stage pose, works in exactly the opposite way. It sounds totally stripped down, naked, yet sharp and greasy through an extremely spiked sound. Black tongues of fire engulfed the venue in an instant! The small crowd, a modest fifty, maybe sixty heads, was eating out of the band’s hands. This is a band that every punker and metalhead (from all the subgenre spheres) should see, to realize what sweet, authentic filth from the blackest corner of the musical underground really is. Vocalist Jamie, with his extremely, let me just say brutally screechy vocals, which often bordered on growl or actually slid into rasping, is the first magnet that hooks you instantly. A rowdy, unbridled singer with a proper hooligan pose and untamed “cocky” teasing, he pulled off straight-up acrobatics on stage, engaged with nearly every single person in the small crowd and tried to squeeze every last atom of energy back out of each of them. The other two troublemakers, bassist Rikki Riot and guitarist Tim Tweak, didn’t lag behind him on stage, constantly swapping positions at the mics. The chemistry between the crowd’s reactions and the cocky quartet was outstanding, and it’s a real shame there wasn’t at least twice as many people in the room. The band presented the new album »Disguised Vultures« (2014), and of course filled the set list with tracks from the debut » Hated« (2011), and they didn’t skip the EP »Deadboys Making Noise« (2009) either. and toward the end. So from the new album, among others, we got My Enemy, Sick, Disguised Vultures, Arise and, in the very finale, Please Kill Me stretched out by two rounds, while the set list also included Motherfuckers (Like You), Hated, Would You Love A Creature, Spit On Me, To Bad For You, Werewolves On Blackstreet and toward the end Crash Bum Bang
Shrapnel to the forehead! Fantastic execution, energy, authenticity! Right down to the core of the musical point that Sister stand for so wholeheartedly and passionately. Let’s hope this wasn’t their first and last visit and that they’ll come back to our parts.
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