Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Video: Primož Novak
Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Concert date: March 10, 2015
Attendance: 700
Ticket price: €34.00
The American festival format – a kind of all-day indoor concert – isn’t exactly common here, but that might even change down the road. If it does, then Tuesday’s Day of Metal was a harbinger of such festival days, where 5+ bands play one stage in a single day and the whole thing stretches across an honest working day. The experiment worked this time, even though the hall only started filling up properly around the halfway mark, but a festival demands its side action too: hanging out with buddies and quenching your thirst. There was no shortage of that on a lovely Tuesday afternoon, and as the day tipped into evening, a varied lineup of bands delivered a musically excellent warm-up for Metaldays, which we’re slowly counting down the days to.
Right around lunchtime, Swiss thrash outfit Suborned took the stage first, and proved from the very first notes that good Swiss metal bands can be counted on the fingers of one sloppy butcher’s hand. The four-piece, led by the rather burly Lucie, dumped a mountain of thrash clichés, generic riffs and even more unremarkable solos from last year’s debut From Space on us in just under half an hour. You could’ve even listened to them, if Lucie’s truly bad vocals hadn’t ruined everything, sounding like a poor imitation of Nolan’s head-cold Batman. Not that the brave Swiss, who ruled the stage with plenty of confidence, don’t deserve some attention, but when a bone gets stuck in your throat, it’s stuck, and you’re better off washing it down with something fast.
If there were as many people in the hall during Suborned as there’s room between the holes in Swiss cheese, then during Methedras the crowd grew to about as much as the cheese on a slightly better Italian pizza. The Milan thrashers, with a career spanning almost a decade, are real veterans compared to Suborned, and it shows on stage. And even though Italian bands are also far from any gourmet delicacy (they’re more on the level of the dinner Bear Grylls shoves down his gullet), Methedras went down easy enough. Sure, the band and its thrash, which is close to the likes of Dew-Scented, is in no way striking oil, but it does serve up a riff or two that gets the blood going, plus aggression, speed and the solid (if somewhat monotone) screaming of new singer Tito Listorti. Solid, but quickly forgotten.
Which is definitely not true of French death/thrash veterans Loudblast, the first band to draw enough people to the front of the stage that there wasn’t even room left for a tumbleweed. Loudblast, pioneers of French death and thrash metal, got going way back in 1985, recorded their second album Disincarnate at the legendary Morrisound, split up in 1999 and reunited in 2000 for one special occasion, a concert in support of the by-then seriously ill Chuck Schuldiner. The French elders were thus more than a fitting support act, and they won us over with their vision of hard-hitting death/thrash full of quick turns, aggressive riffs and, above all, the excellent drumming of Herve Coquerel, who thrashed the skins like an octopus on speed. With great sound, Loudblast was the first band to give the until-then sleepy Tuesday the real meaning of Day of Metal.
The next band only confirmed it. With American Abysmal Dawn, the pure-blooded death metal fans finally got their money’s worth. True, the Californians play death metal in a modern way, with a pronounced technical element, but they also look back at the genre’s veterans with respect. There’s no dick-measuring with overdone solos and technicalities; the heart of Abysmal Dawn is the song, which they know how to pack with good, varied riffs, extremely dynamic drums and just-complex-enough solos. Abysmal Dawn spent most of their good half-hour set presenting their current album Obsolescence (you can read the review TUKAJ) and confirmed that, despite the brutality, they can slot melodies, harmonies and groove parts into a song that blend perfectly with their otherwise breakneck speed.
Abysmal Dawn opened the door to a total American takeover of the Kino Šiška stage, which continued with the return of legendary Seattle heavy/power metal outfit Sanctuary to our stages. The band, who in the early nineties told their label, which kept nudging them that it might not be a bad idea to start sounding like Nirvana, to fuck off and called it quits (Warrel Dane, Jim Sheppard and Jeff Loomis continued the story in Nevermore), came back from the dead just under five years ago after the main creative forces, Dane and guitarist Lenny Rutledge, patched things up, and announced a new studio album. Even before that, they made their debut on our soil in 2012 at Metalcampa, and last fall they finally released the long-awaited studio comeback, The Year the Sun Died (you can read the review TUKAJ). It was clear the emphasis this time would be on the new record, but Sanctuary also threw in a few classic bonbons that, brilliantly performed, put necks and vocal cords through the wringer. New guitarist Nick Cordle (ex-Arsis, ex-Arch Enemy) proved himself a fast and precise shredder, while most of the attention was once again on the charismatic Dane, whose vocal performances can be questionable. This time he showed he deftly blends the vocal approach of both Sanctuary and Nevermore in modern-day Sanctuary, winning us over with deeper, apocalyptic tones and proving that in spots he can still pull off inhumanly high screams (though it’s clear he can’t do the helium shrieking anymore, as he admits himself). The finally somewhat more packed crowd made sure that classics like Die For My Sins, The Mirror Black, Future Tense and the killer surprise Seasons of Destruction didn’t ring out into the void; the hit White Rabbit went down well too, and the new songs are slowly catching on with the crowd. Judging by what we heard and saw, we can hope Sanctuary have more in them this time than just a couple of albums, and for now they’re nicely carrying on the legacy of the cult Refuge Denied and Into the Mirror Black, as well as filling the void left behind when Nevermore split.
Death To All, the project celebrating the life and immortal legacy of the great Chuck Schuldiner, first played here last June. Back then it won people over with sincerity, a little less so with the performance, mostly thanks to the sloppy, superficial playing of the duo who recorded the legendary Human with Chuck, Sean Reinert and Paul Masvidal. This time the outlook was already a bit better, since DTA returned for the 20th anniversary of perhaps even the most perfect metal album of all time – Symbolic. And with them, behind the drum kit, one of the biggest names in extreme drumming, the great Gene Hoglan. On Symbolic, Schuldiner pulled off what few manage – recording a progressive metal album with an above-average set of songs that are outstanding from A to Z, capturing the essence of death metal to perfection yet lifting it to the next level with a technical and progressive approach, and topping off the already superb whole with brilliant, daring and thought-provoking lyrics. On Tuesday we got probably the closest approximation of that perfection, with half of the album’s lineup to boot. Joining Hoglan on guitar was Bobby Koelble, who practically vanished from the metal map after Symbolic came out, having thrown himself into jazz waters. But Koelble played his part so precisely that the whole thing sounded like Symbolic was being played from a recording. Not to mention Hoglan, the human atomic clock – metronomically precise drumming with brilliant cymbal work, his trademark sprint across the double bass drums and pounding the snares like a pneumatic hammer took our breath away the whole time. Animal! DiGiorgio probably woke up thanks to Hoglan’s performance and beat his strings more precisely than last time, and Max Phelps handled the most thankless role confidently and respectfully. They killed it most with the outstanding renditions of the Symbolic crushers (Without Judgement, 1,000 Eyes), and Steffen Kummerer (Obscura) joined them again and flubbed Symbolic at the very same spot as eight months ago, heh. It was maybe less moving than the first time, but performance-wise it was on an incomparably higher level. »I close my eyes/And sink within myself/Relive the gift of precious memories/In need of a fix called innocence.«
The fatigue was already showing after six bands, but during the set by New York thrash giants Overkill, the crowd squeezed out the last atoms of its strength. The elder statesmen of East Coast thrash didn’t stay in debt either, delivering a real shot of old-school thrash with punk energy, no stopping and no mercy. Overkill demolished the place from song to song, with youthful energy radiating off the stage and excellent sound roaring out. The band’s iconic figure, the charismatic frontman Bobby Blitz, screamed his head off like his life depended on it until the last second, and seeing him on stage after beating cancer and surviving a stroke is truly astonishing. This thrash granddad on stage just doesn’t know how to stop, even though he turns 56 in May! Overkill offered a proper cross-section of thirty-five years of making noise and, after eight hours of Day of Metal, wrapped things up with a classic cover and a fitting send-off for a good night, Fuck You!
Setlist
SANCTUARY:
1. Arise and Purify
2. Let the Serpent Follow Me
3. Seasons of Destruction
4. Die for My Sins
5. White Rabbit
6. The Mirror Black
7. Frozen
8. Question Existence Fading
9. The Yeart the Sun Died
10. Future Tense
11. Taste Revenge
DEATH DTA:
1. The Philosopher
2. Suicide Machine
3. Overactive Imagination
4. Trapped In a Corner
5. 1000 Eyes
6. Without Judgement
7. Flattening of Emotions
8. Symbolic
9. Bite the Pain
—encore—
10. Crystal Mountain
11. Pull the Plug
OVERKILL:
1. XDM (intro)
2. Armorist
3. Hammerhead
4. Electric Rattlesnake
5. Powersurge
6. In Union We Stand
7. Rotten to the Core
8. Bring Me the Night
9. End of the Line
10. Necroshine (Intro)
11. Necroshine
12. Horrorscope
13. Hello From the Gutter
14. Overkill
15. Ironbound
—encore—
16. Bitter Pill
17. Elimination
18. Fuck You
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