Photos: Sebastijan Videc
Venue: Channel Zero, Metelkova
Concert date: 10/30/2013
Ticket price: €16 with reservation, €20 without
On the eve of Halloween, Chanel Zero hosted a black metal night with three bands on the bill: local act ATER ERA, France’s NOCTURNAL DEPRESSION, and Denmark’s MAKE A CHANGE… KILL YOURSELF. As usual, I got to the venue a little early. It’s something that stuck with me from past gigs, because the body needs to be “warmed up” a bit before a show with assorted substances. This time I skipped them, though, and just watched Slovenia’s young black metal crowd “warm up” before the show.
As with most gigs, this one started a bit late, and shortly before nine we heard the first intro. Up on stage came ATER ERA from the Primorska region, whose music strays a little from genre-pure black metal, since it’s got plenty of melody and plenty of “clean” parts, which they served up for us. Their sound was really crisp, so the heavily distorted fast guitar lines came through great, and the clarity on the acoustic clean sections was phenomenal. Their set ran smoothly, helped along by a good choice of setlist (sadly unknown to me). The parts of the songs were well composed, so everything made sense and held together! Since they were the first band, the crowd was only just warming up for headbanging, with heads barely bobbing and the hair only flying during the “encore”! I thought their set was excellent, and ATER ERA are definitely a band with promise who deserve some attention.
Then came a break, time for a beer and a changeover, and then NOCTURNAL DEPRESSION took the stage. Out of the quiet (apart from the music playing in the background) they fired off a quick “soundcheck,” and I knew right away what was coming. Around ten o’clock the second intro rang out, and the French trio hit us with a proper black metal opening to the song! A guitar sound full of high tones, the bassist’s distorted tone merging with it into a wall of noise, a drummer at 200 bpm, and high screamed vocals let us know it wasn’t time for sleeping yet. The hall was “buzzing and rattling,” in short, a real black metal atmosphere, and you could see it in the crowd too, which was fully warmed up and kept the band cooled with all that hair-whipping. The songs shot out one after another, and NOCTURNAL DEPRESSION were going at it flat out. Their guitarist was phenomenal, moving up and down the neck fast and precisely despite a deformed left hand that looked like some kind of “Satan’s hoof.” Totally insane, and hats off for the riffs he was grinding out! Besides the guitarist with his Satan’s hoof, the bassist provided some unusual performance with his grimaces and stares into the spotlights (maybe he was counting them, or maybe he was checking the lighting). Taken as a whole, though, NOCTURNAL DEPRESSION’s set was average, since the structure and execution of the songs were pretty monotonous, which is an excellent “formula” for black metal, mind you.
During the last break, one more beer, and with the hall already well warmed up, the last band arrived, this time without a “soundcheck.” Behind the drummer, instead of a faded “banner,” I spotted a video projection reading MAKE A CHANGE… KILL YOURSELF, announcing the final act. I honestly had no idea what to expect, and when I saw on stage that the drummer and the vocalist (who also plays guitar) had swapped with the previous lineup, I more or less guessed what the mood would be. This time the guitarist and bassist put on masks, the Satan’s hoof was sawing away at full tilt again, and the bassist carried on in his own style with the aforementioned antics, only now adding a throat-slitting gesture, horns up, and a misanthropic middle finger! The vocalist seemed very reserved to me, not really frontman material, quietly announcing songs and standing coolly on stage. The crowd was nuts anyway (all the substances had kicked in), and MAKE A CHANGE…KILL YOURSELF were going full “noise,” but unlike their predecessors they sank into deeper decadence. Slower, three-chord riffs and one-note rasping vocals made the band more boring and monotonous from song to song, in short well below my expectations of a “headliner” and a long way from the previous bands in terms of energy! The only thing that impressed me was the video projection, which matched the music thematically and played behind the band for their whole set.
After a few hours of high guitar tones and screaming vocals, my already pretty battered eardrums told me “go home or… kill yourself,” and that’s how I wrapped up my pre-Halloween black metal night!
Photo Gallery
