Death Metal Justice with Baest

Rok Last updated 29 April 2022

After last year’s string of cancelled shows, the scene has finally come fully back to life and is picking up some international flavor again. This past Sunday, organized by Earsplitter/Dirty Skunks, Danish death metallers Baest paid a visit to Orto bar, with local acts Smrt and Sovrag handling support duties.

First up were Ljubljana’s death/thrash metallers Sovrag, who share three-fifths of their lineup with the already-familiar Kočevje outfit Septic Order. With three members in common you’d be forgiven for expecting the two bands to sound pretty similar genre-wise — but (thankfully) that’s not the case. Where Septic Order and their groove/thrash metal aren’t far from Pantera or Machine Head, Sovrag sounds considerably more old-school. The five-piece plays a fairly classic brand of death/thrash metal, spiced up in places with black metal touches and some seriously meaty melodic sections that shine brightest in the varied, dynamic, and carefully crafted solos coming from the guitar duo of Krulič/Ivančič. The neck-wrecking was also handled by a tight rhythm section, led by Dobreta’s drumwork — packed with varied transitions, speedy bass drum runs, and the occasional blast beat. Luka Orel put in a solid vocal performance too, though the clean-sung sections in Tribute to Death didn’t quite land as convincingly live as they do on the EP. In a good half hour, Sovrag ran through their short-form debut Tribute to Death, released about a year ago, and threw in a healthy dose of new, unreleased material that shows real promise.

Next up were Smrt from Prekmurje, and the upper hall of Orto filled up nicely for them, getting a solid dose of progressive death metal — or ‘spiritual death metal,’ as the band themselves call it. The tag fits well enough, since Smrt weave in plenty of quieter, atmospheric, and melancholic passages that feel more at home in other genres than in death metal. In vocalist Lan Pahor’s own words, what they play is essentially a collection of laments — fair enough — though I’ve never wrecked my neck this badly at a wake before. At their core, Smrt still play death metal and they know exactly how to serve it up. At Orto they dished out a solid handful of considered riffs and earth-shaking drums, topped with brutal vocals that lean more black metal than death metal. Smrt are a productive bunch in the studio — they’ve already put out two EPs and their full-length debut Oppression From All Suffering, which made up the bulk of the set, while a follow-up is already in the works and got a few songs aired here too. The guys won the crowd over with great energy and a tight performance, sealed the deal with what’s probably their biggest hit Sweet Nostalgia (which always sets off an involuntary Dekadent comparison), signed off with a track from their debut EP The Will to Power, and set us up for the headline act — which, honestly, none of us probably needed much warming up for. Can’t wait for the new album!

Let me kick things off by shamelessly stealing the words of our own Primož: ‘what Warbringer were to the thrash revival, Baest are to classic, modern death metal¹.’ The Danish five-piece proved just how right that is within the first seconds of their storming, just-over-an-hour set — one that’ll go down as one of the best death metal shows Orto has ever seen, and honestly one of the best around full stop. But let’s take it step by step. First: Baest have played here before — September 2018 at Kino Šiška with Abbath, as vocalist Simon Olsen pointed out — but back then they unfairly slipped under the radar. Second: hand on heart, Baest aren’t bringing anything you haven’t heard before — but they do it with such conviction, energy, heart, and personality that they win you over in an instant. Third: if names like Bloodbath, Carcass, Bolt Thrower, Entombed, and Dismember mean anything to you, Baest will make your black, rotting heart skip a beat. Baest kicked things off in Ljubljana — fittingly enough — with Genesis, taking us on an hour-long death metal genesis that opened with the perfectly escalating riff work of the Lasse Revsbech/Svend Karlsson duo, torn wide open by Simon’s ultra-long scream, and from there the high-octane death metal storm didn’t let up until the very end. Baest won Orto over not just with their infectious energy and top-tier performance, but also with Simon’s crowd addresses in smooth, fluent Slovenian and his description of Ljubljana as the ‘city of dragons.’ The daughters and sons of the city of dragons more than returned the favor, and Orto bar hasn’t seen that many mosh pits and walls of death in a long time — not even in the pre-COVID days. The band were visibly, genuinely having as much of a blast as the crowd, delivering a top-quality performance of riffs that reveal themselves slowly, a crushing rhythm section, brutal yet intelligible vocals, and that all-round death metal vibe that’s getting harder and harder to catch live these days. This time around Baest leaned heavily on last year’s Necro Sapiens, pulling just Crosswhore from their debut Danse Macabre and only Gula (Lat. Gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins) from its follow-up Venenum. They did preview two absolute destroyers from the EP Justitia (Lat. Justice), out in just a month’s time — Ecclesia and Gargoyles (the latter featuring guest vocals from Trevor Strnad of The Black Dahlia Murder). Baest ground through it all with an (unexpectedly) outstanding performance — rolling over everything like Bolt Thrower tank treads, blowing heads back with classic Carcass-style melodic twin-guitar assaults backed by blast beats, greasing the HM-2 Entombed/Dismember chainsaw to perfection, and finally ripping heads clean off with the crushing title track of their latest album, Necro Sapiens. Sunday, then, was for dancing — not just in the streets, but in the upper floor of Orto. ‘Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.’

¹I’d add at least Lik and Carnation to that list

Baest setlist: