Live Reports

Location: Ljubljana / RTV Slovenija (Studio 14) / SloveniaDate: Saturday, 13.10.2012 If anyone stands out from the general Slovenian apathy in this gloomy autumn October of 2012, it's without a doubt the sharp-witted Slovenian…

Twenty years after their first show in Slovenia, Paradise Lost presented their thirteenth studio album Tragic Idol at Kino Šiška last Sunday.

Another unforgettable evening in an intimate setting, where this outstanding Slovenian singer-songwriter once again cut his curves and laid down his bends with masterful flair, backed by a seasoned, tightly locked-in band.

Location: Ljubljana / Channel Zero / SloveniaDate: 06.10.2012 So what is "24 Hour Party People"? 24 hours of non-stop gigging by 24 bands? 24 hours of uninterrupted musical trance? A 24-hour cross-section of the Slovenian…

Ljubljana's K4 is finally opening its doors to other forms of live music too. This time the space was taken over by two local acts (Ontervjabbit, Your Gay Thoughts) and one foreign one (Oneohtrix Point Never), all representing the…

After a good year away, American death metal champions Dying Fetus have made a triumphant return to Slovenian stages, presenting one of the best death metal releases of 2012 - Reing Supreme!

Who is Jarboe? An ex-Swans musician? A respected singer with a career of her own? Or just an underground marketing trend that found a commercial niche in the alternative?

Whose steel cuts sharpest? Who deserves the conqueror's crown? Plenty of those who occupied the belly of Ljubljana's fortress Gala Hala had no doubts – that honor belongs to the bearers of bitter steel from Ensiferum!

The event was at least a partial proof of what the Slovenian alternative scene can do: it has more than enough quality to deserve wider support. We've got the potential and the quality for our own »Factory Records« bands too, and it's about…

Two years on, Lene kosti are back at Orto Bar, revamped, refreshed and younger.

»Let someone say it's a dream, let someone say I'm still asleep…« A snippet of lyrics that Avtomobili sing in the song Palme gorijo from their latest studio album Pozna pomlad, and one that probably echoes like a mantra in the heads of the…

Nashville Pussy served up a high-octane show, and after their last conquest of Orto it was hard to expect miracles or upgrades, but an adrenaline shock is still possible ...

The name Steamroller probably doesn't mean much to music fans who are a bit less rock-savvy. But add that behind it stand Doug Aldrich, Michael Devin and Brian Tichy – the guitarist, bassist and drummer of the latest Whitesnake lineup, who…

Three years after Artillery played Channel Zero, we got hit by another thermonuclear thrash metal attack at that club!

Saturday night drew a pretty decent crowd to Križanke, the vast majority of them nostalgics who grew up in the age of Beatlemania and grabbed the chance to relive a slice of the lovely sixties at least for a moment, one more time.

Nasum played one of their last shows before the final goodbye at Ljubljana's Gala hala, and at the high-energy grind wake, the American crusty crew Black Breath and local death'n'rollers Hellcrawler raised their own banners too.

After years away, metal nights are back at Orto bar with the Thursday Kadilnica of Death sessions!

"Open up your skullI'll be there" (Climbing Up the Walls) Imperfection will always be more attractive than perfection. Radiohead, one of the biggest bands that doesn't want to be one, with an antisocial, idolized frontman who doesn't want…

Location: Ljubljana / Križanke / SloveniaDate: 20.09.2012 Even a year ago, anyone who has to travel abroad to catch their favorite bands would have shot a sarcastic smirk at whoever dared predict that a concert by two legendary…

What new could I possibly write about Parni Valjak's "unplugged" show at Križanke? After all these years, from playing dives to a top-notch gig at the Arena?

ŠUNDR fest 2012, or "Šundr u Grac" as the locals in Polhov Gradec call it, is a traditional rock event that first saw the light of day back in 2003, thanks to the Polhov Gradec Tourist Association and the effort of a handful of selfless,…

Duo Silence came, played, and wowed. All in a ''Less is more'' package. When heart and intellect meet in music, you get duo Silence. An evening for music connoisseurs.

Even a year ago, plenty of people who have to travel abroad to catch their favorite acts would have shrugged off with a sarcastic smirk anyone who dared predict that a concert by two legendary British rock bands, Nazareth and Wishbone Ash,…

The low start of the grueling marathon is underway, and nearly all the marathoners have run the first lap, but with no new national record and no standout moments.

Over the decades The Dubliners have recorded more than thirty albums, inspired later bands like The Pogues, Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly, and written themselves into Irish history as a national pride of Ireland (right alongside beer…

Rock Fest Vodice number "2", featuring Adam, Brezno, Ne Še, Manana and L.S.D., was a full-on success. Let's hope it sticks around on the scene, keeps developing, growing and cementing its place.. See you in Vodice again next year!

Location: Faak Am See (Faaker See) / Harley Davidson Biker's Week / AustriaDate: Friday, 08.09.2012 And it has rolled into our neck of the woods for the fifteenth year running! The new European Bike Week, with the Harley Davidson…

The show could've ended after Immolation, because with all due respect, Marduk just can't match the Americans' perfection. Marduk's set showed them sinking deeper and deeper into tried-and-true clichés, even with a handful of classics…

At the closing concert night of this year's 15th "European Bike Week", it wasn't hard to see that the legendary British art rockers 10CC stole the show from the superstar lineup Snakecharmer with effortless ease!

Reintegrating into the real world is hard. At Trg Leona Štuklja, Sigur Rós created an alternative, better world than the one we know. A world that hardly anyone but Sigur Rós can recreate.

This summer, Ljubljana's Kino Šiška is going through a proper green revival. It even looks like it's turning into a Mecca for hot-blooded musicians of Irish descent who, on top of juggling a whole range of instruments, always manage to…

What dragged us to Nova Gorica was, once again, an unshakable urge to chase sonic perfection in the homegrown craft of Avtomobili's one-of-a-kind artistry. These great masters, who really do have plenty to be proud of in their own body of…

Location: Zagreb / Hipodrom / CroatiaDate: Wednesday, 08/29/2012 Good things come to those who wait! After more than six months of warming up for one of the biggest rock spectacles by one of the biggest bands of our time landing on…

Funk, rock, and pure musical libido launched the hearts of the Zagreb crowd into the stratosphere, and R.H.C.P. got to hang the scalps of more than 40,000 new, fervent believers on their belts.

"The Vienna show was one of the last on this year's European tour, and you could feel it: more energy, more ease, and a band playing even tighter than usual."

Once you've truly grasped the greatness and sheer musical brilliance of Toto, especially a stage execution that's pretty much all superlatives, only a handful of concerts by other acts can top that experience. Simply put, you realize you…

"…and so the last Metal Camp festival is done. From now on we get MetalDays. Same scale, meaning one big-name headliner in the lineup and a festival of the same length. Let's hope the location stays at the confluence of the Tolminka and…

Location: Tolmin (the confluence of the Tolminka and Soča) / SloveniaDate: August 6, 2012 We moan every year, and we moan all year long. We (rightfully) complain about a lineup that looks like the roster of Nuclear Blast and/or the…

Another great Requiem show, another great experience of shared interplay between band and crowd, which was mostly made up of young people from the surrounding villages, and a super Friday opener to the peak of the biker weekend in Velike…

Location: Tolmin (confluence of the Tolminka and Soča) / Slovenia Date: August 9, 2012 Day four of this year's Metal Camp 2012 has arrived, a festival we'll never cover under the "Metal Camp" banner again! Day four was actually the…

"Davis worked absolute wonders with his vocals, and across the sheer range the KoЯn repertoire demands, he didn't slip for a single second. A bomb of a performance that, as expected, swept the competition away! The third day of the festival…

The Doge's palace shook to the sounds of alternative beauty while the crowd slid into mass trance. Foo Fighters know their business, and instead of resting on old laurels, they're decked out in fresh new blooms ...

Another night with Benč, another great experience! This time it was the gorgeous summer-evening ambience at Mali grad in Kamnik that did the trick, and together with Benč's musical language it squeezed everything it could out of a Sunday…

With At the Gates, the flames of the end swallowed us whole on the festival's final day.

And so the last-ever Metal Camp festival has come to a close. From now on, we get MetalDays.

The festival's second day was all about the triumphant return of German death metallers Morgoth and this year's biggest headliners, American giants Machine Head.

Sweden's Amon Amarth confidently ruled the giant stage as the musical headliner of Metal Camp's fourth day, though it was hard to shake the feeling during the show that Hatebreed had completely stolen the cherry off the top of the evening's…

Sludge/stoner metal and industrial took the medals on the first day of this year's Brutal Assault.

Day three of Metal Camp served up easily the most genre-diverse, multicolored lineup of the festival. With the arrival of this year's biggest headliner, the Americans KoЯn, it even went head-first into alternative metal territory!

Central Dalmatia came alive in early August with a music festival called Terraneo. Even though it's only had its second run, it runs flawlessly and feels mature. Quality music, a lovable festival setting and the sea are Terraneo's aces, and…

Day two of this year's Metal Camp kicked off a run of folk metal acts, which are clearly the darlings of the metal crowd these days, but in the end it all ran under the banner of death metal. Thanks to the excellent Kataklysm and the…

The first day of this year's Metalcamp was all about the California double assault of Testament and Machine Head!

Photo report from the third day of Shengenfest 2012.

Location: Seebronn / Baden-Württemberg / Germany Date: 28.07.2012 Europe, Bob Geldof, Fish and the rest of the lineup gave us a cozy welcome on opening day of Germany's Rock of Ages festival and helped us get used to the climate of…

The opening day of the fifth Schengenfest in Bela Krajina saw Leningrad Cowboys, Riblja Čorba, Viza, Siddharta and more taking the stage.

Photo report from the second day of the 2012 Shengenfest festival.

"Outstanding technical chops, pure joy in performing and a laid-back vibe once again added up to an unforgettable night of live music with Toto. These guys were simply born for the stage, born to perform!"

"Though each of the night's headliners came from a completely different school of rock, every one of them managed to carry the crowd off into a trance that only regular gig-goers know and that's impossible to put into plain words. So by the…

Staggering technical chops, pure joy in performing and a relaxed vibe once again added up to an unforgettable night of live music with the American perfectionists Toto.

Destruction, technicality and a sea of brutal kids, a beach mirage with a dash of generic and a massive sound are a guarantee of a successful party without any huge peaks, while Slovenian melodeath turns out to be a pretty fine side dish to…

Location: Grado / Diga Nazaro Saurio / ItalyDate: July 28, 2012 Simple Minds are one of those sonic heavyweights who carried their musical craft over from the "golden eighties", the decade that crowned them with huge commercial…

After another visit from the Russian heavyweights of pagan music, there's no doubt left: language barriers can't ruin raw, primal fun, and Russian women have more balls than some Slovenian heavyweights.

Another nostalgic moment of the unforgettable magic of the great art pop rock culture of the golden eighties, shaped by the new wave bearers of the era's sound and rooted in the raw elements of punk rock: an unforgettable concert adventure…

With yet another fantastic show, Alice Cooper lived up to his billing as headliner of the likeable German Rock of Ages festival, putting the cherry on top of a full day of varied action on the main stage.

Catching Ken Hensley live is a real rarity, and in that sense an evening with the 'wizard', whose vocals have sadly not been spared by the years, was a genuinely lovely gig experience with an unavoidable aura of nostalgia.

End of July rolled around, and with it came a new edition of the Rock of Ages festival, which has been bringing together fans of classic-flavored rock under one roof since 2006. Day one was headlined by Swedish hard rockers Europe, Irish…

The Three Friends concert was a first-rate demonstration of pure musical brilliance and total stage spontaneity, delivered by top-class talents who are always up for a good joke. They gave us an unforgettable night and took us back to the…

"And so the music side of the five-day Otočec came to an end. The festival kept mostly undemanding visitors happy with its music and its side entertainment, but the worrying part is that their numbers stagnate from year to year."

Author: Rok KlemšePhotos: Aleš Podbrežnik Location: Komen na Krasu / SloveniaConcert date: July 21, 2012Attendance: 600Ticket price: €30.00 / €55.00 After a wild Friday night (wilder for some, tamer for others, as you could tell from the…

Metal Mania is back, the most homegrown metal festival in the world, and with its venue, the little Karst village of Komen, it has long been something like a metal Mecca for the local scene.

"The night seemed pretty much perfect for a dose of eighties nostalgia, since besides showcasing hits from their current studio album "All You Need Is Now" (2011), Duran Duran, as they have done in recent years, had a collection of their…

Despite not-so-promising expectations, the new romantic legends' show at Križanke delivered in every way and surprised even the biggest skeptics, who may have wrongly assumed that the legendary band wouldn't give it their all for the…

An outstanding concert by the cult British icon, who won us over with his sincerity and a powerful, melodic band.

A month has gone by since the Trieste show, and Springsteen and his E-Street Band are still roaming the stages of Europe. So we checked in on the form of one of the world's greatest singer-songwriters right in the middle of the Austrian…

On Sunday, July 8th, a meteor slammed into Gala Hala as the herald of the inevitable end: the tour The End of Humanity 2012, with technical death metal lunatics Origin and death metal giants Suffocation.

Location: Belgrade / Ušće / SerbiaDate: Friday, 06/29/2012 Friday morning greeted us with a slightly spinning head, but mostly with impatient anticipation of the evening ahead. The afternoon was reserved for sightseeing and sampling…

This report might come across as a takedown of Crystal Castles and New Order. Trust me, it isn't. This report is a love letter to The Cure. It's a love letter to the incredible Robert Smith, whose almost four-hour set wiped out every wound…

Klumpanje 2012, day two of the festival, Saturday, 07.07.2012!

So Shutdown are the heavy rock revivalists who caught this wave right as it hit European soil. Their studio debut is basically paving the "track" for a Slovenian answer to the phenomenon. Heartfelt congrats to the band for all their guts,…

At this year's annual “hippie gathering” in the Austrian state of Burgenland, we soaked up the vibes of Ray Manzarek & Robbie Krieger, Lou Reed, Gov't Mule and a whole bunch of others.

For the thirteenth year in a row, Klub mladih Planina invited a crowd to its corner of the world in early July for a two-day festival. In an idyllic spot between Šenjur and Sevnica, on a grassy plain, mostly young people hungry for fun and…

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…

The Cult proved at Kino Šiška that they're still true stage preachers, rock sorcerers to whom every mystery is plain and revealed. Year after year, their defiance and their mastery of the rock occult only deepen, and its magic touch spreads…

The British indie rockers proved they're way more than just a summer-hit band.

The short promo gig did its job and made it clear that Bajaga and his Inštruktorji are still with us. Not only that, based on what we saw, we can already look forward to the fall, when Bajaga is supposed to play one of Ljubljana's bigger…

At the end of June, Zagreb moved to the beat of two legendary acts: New Order and Franz Ferdinand. Those two were the big treats, but INmusic Festival had plenty more to offer. Beyond the music itself, the gorgeous surroundings and a…

Ravi Shreshta and Miha Petric. Two exceptionally special musical figures, two special artists. Each with a recognizable, one-of-a-kind artistic vocabulary distilled from pure musical talent. A blend of homegrown therapy and total musical…

Friday at Belgrade Calling was all about six letters - UKJ and FNM!

Belgrade called and we answered. At the very first Belgrade Calling Festival, the first (or rather, second) day brought thunder from Satyricon, Paradise Lost, Black Label Society, The Cult and Ozzy Osbourne's crazy runaway train of friends!

Author: Rok KlemšePhotos: Nina Grad Venue: Orto BarConcert date: 25.06.2012Attendance: 100 Summer is supposed to be the season of easygoing music, heavy metal and open-air festivals. But it can also be the time for brutal death metal…

On day two, Limp Bizkit and Twisted Sister headlined Belgium's Graspop Metal Meeting, while fans of the thrash metal school got their fix throughout the day too.

After four years away, I'm back at Belgium's Graspop Metal Meeting, and day one is spent partying with Ozzy and Friends, Slayer, Slash and a bunch of other hard rock heavyweights!

Rock Otočec kept mostly undemanding visitors happy with its music and side entertainment program, but the worrying part is that attendance has been stagnating year after year.

"The first Rock Music Festival served up a wildly mixed, many-colored lineup. The idea was to tap into the generational shift in musical taste, and especially to go after the younger, let's say (still) MTV generation, the one gripped by a…

Slovenia's capital has finally landed an event that actually wears the "festival" badge. Rock Music festival. And with a wildly mixed genre palette of performers, too. From legendary cult rockers Warrior Soul, to Finnish MTV darlings…

On Thursday, June 14th, I had a weird dream. I dreamed I went to a La Dispute* show wearing some strange yellow clothes, totally unlike me. But when I got to the venue itself, it felt like a high school prom for one of Ljubljana's…

It all went the right way in the end. A full renovation! A raised ceiling, an opened-up interior that now holds almost 2,000. The new Cvetličarna is born, and it even comes with an upgrade to the hall's acoustics. In short: let the new…

This time the old-school Bay Area tornado stuck its aching middle finger high in the air smack in the middle of the Slovenian Littoral, as Exodus and Heathen, backed by Greece's Suicidal Angels, conjured up a true wet dream for every thrash…

After years of waiting, Slovenia finally has a modern (alternative) festival where established, quality international acts share the bill with new, interesting and quality Slovenian names, giving them a shot at a wider audience. The…

The legend of the New Jersey artist who conquered the world with a guitar is even more real after the show in Trieste!