Location: Ljubljana / Gala Hala (Metelkova) / Slovenia
Concert date: 15.03.2012
Attendance: 150
Ticket price: €20.00
According to some opinion polls, the Swedes of Deathstars are the best-looking men in the world. Thursday’s gig with two bands from that Scandinavian country didn’t just confirm that, it also showed that they clearly have massive personal reserves of testosterone, which they use to their advantage and pass a little of on to the crowd. Toward the end of the show, pretty much every guy in the room was probably walking with a slightly wider stride and feeling a bit more manly for a moment. Why does that happen? No idea, but that’s just how it is.
Before the evening’s headliners Deathstars, we got Marionette, also from Sweden. After a quick dig around the internet I found out they’re not such a young band at all, since they put out their first demo back in 2005. They’ve got three studio albums under their belt, the latest, “Nerve”, from 2011. The halo effect with this band was probably the same for most of the crowd, at least for those of us who didn’t know them: “What are those little poseurs doing up there?!” But much to everyone’s disappointment, I have to say the guys actually delivered. They definitely didn’t reinvent the wheel, no. Encyclopaedia Metallum, which I like to check for a hint or two, says they play melodic death metal. That’s totally true, but they’re clearly not boxed in by genre. I’d file at least two tracks under melodic doom, somewhere in the neighborhood of Finland’s Rapture or Swallow the Sun. They did have some trouble with the sound. At the start it sounded like they were playing inside a pot with the lid off, but by the second or third song it all got sorted out. The kick drum became more distinct, and you could hear both the rhythm and the lead guitar. Special praise goes to the bassist, who took the whole thing sort of left-handed. With his little beanie and his lanky frame he stood in the background looking bored, plucking the bass here and there and striking the odd pose. After a measly hour the Marionettes decided to leave the stage. When we called for “more”, they just shook their heads, well, their manes really. A solid opening act and a solid start to the night.
After about half an hour of instrument calibration and bored “One, One, Tuuuuo, One”, Deathstars appeared on stage to the screaming of the girls in the front rows. You can tell the band has played a serious number of shows. Last to stroll onto the stage was Andreas “Whiplasher Bernadotte” Bergh, the band’s vocalist, with his trademark makeup and officer’s cap. And the show could begin. After the first track, which served more as a warm-up, they lined up all their hits one after another, with loud support from the crowd. And as we were saying before the gig, it’s sometimes good for a band to have a small discography, because then they can’t escape being forced to play all their hits. I wouldn’t call myself a huge Deathstars fan, but the show was pure pleasure. An “Über” charismatic singer, quality sound, and a proper rock attitude, where the performers used every cliché in the rock star book. My favorite album is “Termination Bliss”, so I was happy they played quite a few tracks from it, including the single Cyanide. In true rock star fashion, they let us beg a little, but not too much, to come back, and once they returned to the stage they gave us four more songs. The final act was a single from their new album, Deah Dies Hard. That was a bullseye, because you could tell from the crowd’s reaction that most people had been waiting for exactly that song. And so Deathstars bowed out like Janica Kostelić at the very peak of her career, in our case, from the concert.
Considering I went to the gig with a heavy heart, I got a quality evening out of it. My doubts were mostly about the whole Deathstars image thing, and the fact that after seeing them twice at festivals I was never exactly thrilled. This time they won me over mainly with their approach. The music is what it is. We can’t really talk about some tectonic shift in music here, just very fun, carefree music “for the party”.
One last thought to finish. The most terrifying word of the Second World War, which ended 67 years ago, was Blitzkrieg, and at Thursday’s gig the song with that title was one of the biggest hits. Evolution or amnesia? You be the judge.
“Blitzkrieg BOOM!”
Setlist
1. Mark of the Gun
2. Motherzone
3. Semi-Automatic
4. Night Electric Night
5. Tongues
6. New Dead Nation
7. The Fuel Ignites
8. Chertograd
9. Blitzkrieg
10. Blood Stains Blondes
11. Metal
12. Cyanide
—encore—
13. The Revolution Exodus
14. Trinity Fields
15. Death Dies Hard
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