Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Orto bar, Ljubljana
Concert date: 26.09.2013
Ticket price: 5 €
With autumn, plenty of venues around the country are throwing their doors open again, and that obviously includes Ljubljana’s cult Orto bar, which for the past year has been welcoming the metal crowd back after a long hiatus under the Kadilnica of Death banner. Kadilnica of Death won’t properly kick off its second season until this Thursday, with a show by Mephistophelian, Nephrolith and Teleport, but last Thursday Grablovičeva shook under the mighty riffs of Ljubljana’s freshly minted doom ladies Mist and fellow Ljubljana heavy metal beasts Dr. Evil.
To be completely honest, I marched into Orto’s upper floor at nine o’clock pretty skeptical, and not at all because women supposedly can’t match their male metal counterparts musically. Bands like Castle, Jex Thoth and Blood Ceremony prove that doom with a female face can sound even more deadly, more sinister and, above all, sexier. What worried me was that Mist might be heading down the same road as another local all-female band that spent years and years searching for a listenable musical identity. But Ljubljana’s Mist, made up of Nina Spruk (vocals), Ema Babošek (guitar), Nina Grizonič (guitar), Neža Pečan (bass) and Mihaela Žitko (drums), made it clear fast that they’re not messing around, and after an epically sinister intro they launched straight into Bewitched from the cult Candlemass classic Nightfall. Any fear that the girls would serve us some quasi-symphonic, gothic-sounding crap was gone in no time: Mist play proper doom in the vein of Candlemass, Pentagram, Black Sabbath and Cathedral, and on top of that they sounded convincing, tight and mighty. You could barely tell this was their debut gig, since there were no major screw-ups to be heard, it was played superbly and sung ‘with balls’, hehe. The original material sounds really promising, with no shortage of good riffs or well-thought-out solos (courtesy of Nina Grizonič, who, after thrash with Root A’ Ballut and heavy metal with Hellcats, is already proving herself in a third genre) and some excellently played drum parts, and it’s great to hear that not every girl on the stage chirps like Tarja. Nina, with her somewhat deeper voice, sailed nicely through everything from Bewitched to the closing Pentagram classic Relentless. If the girls keep heading in the direction they’ve set, the Slovenian metal scene has just gained one of its more promising bands and, after Cold Dew, finally some real homegrown doom metal again!
After a well-deserved, thunderous round of applause for Mist, another set of »youngsters« quickly took the stage: Dr. Evil, who, despite their bandleader, the elder statesman Milan Krušič, are also newcomers to the local metal scene. If I’m not mistaken, this was only the second gig for the group, which also includes guitarists Jan Prosen (Dawn Patrol) and Jure Anžiček, bassist Miha Oblišar (God Scard, ex-Sweet Sorrow) and drummer Luka Čadež. Still, the band’s tightness is breathtaking, and the youth of the instrumental foursome shows too, as they flooded the stage with unbridled energy and gave the music an extra charge. Riffs flew back and forth between Jan and Jure like shrapnel, and Prosen is truly phenomenal, excellent as both a rhythm and a lead guitarist, while the thunder and rocket fire were handled by Obleey (who also pitched in generously with convincing backing vocals, so powerful they almost turned into »gang« vocals) and the rampaging Čadež, who later in the show also chopped out a torpedoing drum solo. Krušič steered the young crew convincingly, and thankfully he’s dropped many of the costumes from the Leni kosti days, so the band now comes across as far more serious. The original songs (five of them, if I’m not mistaken) were convincing too, continuing in the direction Penetrator set out, only much rawer and more brutal. Judging by what I heard, I’d love to see the originals fully replace the Leni kosti material in the future, and they could easily have skipped repeating songs at the end, as well as the by now slightly overworn Diamonds And Rust, even if it was performed great as always. With twenty songs played, the band showed they’re in outstanding form, and to close, let me just repeat the immortal words of the late Chuck Schuldiner, which apply to everyone: »Listen to music, not rumors!«
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