Bombs Away at Orto Bar! (2008)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Location: Orto Bar / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Concert date: 04/28/2008
Attendance: 70
Ticket price: €7.00

Adam Bomb is without a doubt the real incarnation of rock n’ roll. The thrilling career of this 44-year-old rock desperado is the stuff of envy. Back in 1979 he started his first cover band with future Queensryche singer Geoff Tate, and soon after, a meeting with Eddie Van Halen changed his life for good. The man, who dresses for his shows in colorful quilted, skin-tight clothes, with curly hair and a smear of black mascara around his eyes, comes across as Captain America meets Marc Bolan, a new era but the same old habits. An event that’s gripping all by itself, since Adam Bomb is a guarantee of the most authentic rock shows you can imagine.

CYCLONE:

Let’s take it from the top. At nine in the evening, Ljubljana’s Cyclone were already happily raging on stage. The quintet served up a mix of covers and their own original material. Cyclone recently refreshed their lineup, so this was (almost) the christening gig of a reborn and promising hard rock band (with a touch of sleaze/hair metal). Promising for sure. Opening with a cover of Hardline’s Hot Cherie confirmed that promise in an instant, while Talk Dirty To Me (Poison) then got a good number of the people who’d come to cheer the band on into a cheeky gallop. Thanks to the crowd’s seriously committed cheering, the guys and keyboardist Anja rode the repertoire home safe and sound, and quite satisfactorily. You could feel a few slip-ups, especially that the singer doesn’t quite find his feet on stage yet, even though during (ohoho!) Livin’ On A Prayer (Bon Jovi) he tried to squeeze every last atom of feedback energy out of the crowd. You could sense some tension and stiffness, a few “off notes” in the vocal lines. The reason is probably the loud stage sound, since the guy couldn’t hear his own vocals at all during the gig. But that’s how it goes. Every beginning is like that. Even in driving school and on your first math test ever. The band also strung together three of their own songs, and then closed with a burning Kiss classic, Crazy Nights.

A nicely used opportunity, and on 05/24/2008, in the company of Hellcats, Cyclone’s performance will undoubtedly get another upgrade. The main thing is that people had a good time, and the crowd’s wild, relaxed mood, by pumping up their confidence, helped the band step onto the first rungs of their rebirth.

Cyclone setlist:

1. Hot Cherie

2. Talk Dirty To Me

3. Follow You

4. Livin’ On A Prayer

5. Desire

6. Magic Ride

7. Crazy Nights

BROKEN ARROW:

Broken Arrow, from Brežice, are guys with a bit more stage seasoning than Cyclone. You could tell right away. In the tightness of the sound, the excellent chemistry between the instruments, the riffing, the fluid bass lines and the compact slapping of the drums that the band locked in instantly with the opener Polet v nebo. The band also does a good job looking after its “image,” which comes with the genre of music these guys play. Mostly thanks to the natural sheep’s fleece that mother nature blessed singer Matjaž with and that his head proudly wears. Add a pair of classic Ray Ban-style shades and at first glance the guy looked like a lost Ian Hunter (Mott the Hopple). The guys play hair metal with a strong Bon Jovi backbone, and everyone who remembers the likes of XYZ, Silent Rage, Poison, Giant and similar hair “chicks” from the golden eighties, welcome home. Broken Arrow didn’t forget to return the favor to Cyclone with the Bon Jovi song You Give Love A Bad Name. Their own material mixed with covers, Zdaj ko si sama, Hit the Streets, We Ride, Big City, Glam, Fight Fire, Big City Nights (Scorpions), Le sedemnajst (Šank Rock), warmed the crowd up nicely. Of course you can tell that Matjaž in particular still has to work quite a bit on his vocals, since the quality wavered a lot, even though his slightly raspy voice suits Broken Arrow’s music perfectly. The question is how it was up on stage, whether he could hear his monitors well enough, because several times he went noticeably out of tune with the backing of his four companions.

Broken Arrow come across as confident, Matjaž has charisma, the guys are a very well-oiled machine, and they’re convincing in their stage play. Looks-wise, I’d recommend even more naughtiness. That girls love bad boys who tell them sweet lies was of course confirmed by the ratio of the sexes in the crowd, which was fairly even this time, with the female half working out especially eagerly in front of the stage. A very hot little gig. But you’ve still got some polishing to do, guys.

ADAM BOMB:

And now for the hot and eagerly awaited trio! Adam Bomb swung his guitar and yelled into the mic, and all he needed besides was a rhythm section. The guys step on stage, fire up the engines and the madness begins. What was funny and, for a moment, sad was that the photographers had it easier getting up front this time to take a few shots, because the crowd obviously didn’t know Adam Bomb all that well and had scattered away from the stage. But not for long. The energy, the trio’s incredible stage kinetics, a rock n’ roll rush nicely greased with a dirty punk accent, which is mostly down to Adam’s singing, quickly brought the crowd back to the stage, and some 70 crazies, us included, went wild the whole way through. Adam didn’t talk to the people much, and there was no need. Simple, direct, but brazenly erogenous songs charged with rock voltage, short, punchy and effective, completely subdued you and sent you into a free gallop until you melted into the energy of rock. Seriously. Adam Bomb is the real incarnation of a rock figure. Besides his original material, the man also put some hugely witty covers in the set to fire up his show. Primarily these were The Song Remains The Same (Led Zeppelin), New York New York (Frank Sinatra), Day Tripper (The Beatles), I Want You To Want Me (Cheap Trick), and Adam stayed on stage completely alone to perform the Van Halen piece called Eruption.

Adam Bomb knows how to keep a crowd on its feet. That’s why he doesn’t need to wag his tongue, he wags something else. He calmly pulls two girls, a blonde and a brunette, out of the crowd and onto the stage, and they generously agree to dance a wild can-can for him while he growls into the mic. There’s no end to the stage curiosities when Adam Bomb pulls off a trick with a glass and confetti, which he showers over the crowd with abandon, and he tops it all off at the end of his energetic set by setting fire to a flambéed “poisonous pink” Gibson Les Paul guitar, accompanying the whole rock ‘n’ roll primitiveness of the song Rock Like Fuck from his latest self-titled studio effort from 2005.

The guys come back for an encore and dish out Won’t Get Fooled Again (The Who). In it, Adam Bomb once again confirms his excellent command of his Flyin’ V Gibson guitar. The opening intro, which is led by keyboards in the original, he smoothly turned into guitar lines, and the song is basically set up in a way that suits a punk flavor perfectly anyway.

Adam Bomb, together with the two support bands, delivered a red-hot rock evening that by no means left people indifferent at Orto Bar and that stirred up that spontaneous flow of energy that you often miss at concerts, or maybe I’m just unlucky and don’t go to real concerts anymore. In short, a bomb that charges your batteries and gives you back your zest! What’s encouraging is that young people in Slovenia are rediscovering hair/sleaze/glam metal and rock.

text: Aleš Podbrežnik

photos: Aleš Podbrežnik