Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Ljubljana / Orto bar / Slovenia
Concert date: 24.01.2013
Attendance: 90
Ticket price: €4.00
The big days come when Slovenian metal gets a new album. A top-notch album! A »killa«! An album we talked about a lot, an album we pinned big hopes on. Fingers crossed, but wisely keeping quiet, waiting and… did it come? It did. It’s here! The second studio album from Eruption, called Tenses Collide – RockLine review HERE. The second album from a band that emerged in the phalanx of the thrash metal revival in Slovenia in 2005-2006 – it followed hot on the heels of the successful ice-breaking with Negligence two years earlier.
Eruption are a band that has popped up on stages sporadically all along. So the band didn’t slip into hibernation after releasing »Lifeless Paradise«! Quite the opposite. In what’s a relatively short gap by Slovenian standards, three years, Eruption put together a studio successor.
RockLine and Eruption go way back. Even by birth year (2006). A kind of »Bonded by Blood« bond between the zine and the band is proven by no fewer than eleven RockLine live reports from various Eruption shows on stages across Slovenia between 2006 and 2013. Usually we watched Eruption as a band somewhere in the middle of a typical festival line-up, or in the role of a support act. But this night at Orto bar was special. This time Eruption had the reins absolutely in their own hands, as the headliners of the night!
Lintver were an excellent choice for the warm-up support slot, storming this edition of the »Kadilnica of death« at a quarter to ten in the evening. The place was pulsing with the kind of true metal spirit you can only wish for at events like this. An event that, thanks to the loyal, solid and roaring support of unrotted metal hearts and souls, won’t fade from memory for a long time. Lintver are ready to release their studio debut, though they’ve been fiddling with it for way too long. But they’ve got a ton of stage mileage behind them, and that was confirmed at Orto bar too, as the quartet, with extremely confident and self-assured playing, thoroughly fired up a bunch of metal souls to work their necks and limbs. Dune, Cop Killer? Heh… heads have got to fly! Thrash metal with a reflection of Slayer’s primitive originality, and at times even Sepultura’s tribalism. Doomed in three quarters of an hour! No indulgences! A band that simply has its own well-crafted »Evil Plan« and charisma. The sound was very good in the room during the set, too.
Eruption are visibly improving! From gig to gig. The peak of this cumulus was defined by the show at Orto bar. The crew has grown into a rock-solid entity and I can say without mincing words that right now they’re one of the strongest Slovenian metal formations when it comes to stage delivery of their material. And that wouldn’t exist without »Tenses Collide«, because its polish is a manifesto of extraordinary defiance from a band carrying an untamed desire to unleash bestial primordial fury in the most authentic light that the thrash metal of Eruption’s musical vision can conjure!
Bay Area mixed with the speed metal element of early Helstar? There’s surely something to that. When the middle instrumental section of a song like Selfcaged cuts in, it’s immediately clear how far the band has driven its musical vision. Even in its intro, that song is pure intravenous riff venom, which just poured oil on the fire of an already automatically erupting series of mosh pits in front of the stage. Throughout the show, a few thoroughly alcohol-armed metal Conans – acrobats – were slamming around in the crowd, »hard-headed« style. The energy was incredible. The audience reaction was incredible! The climax of the drama? Definitely the last third of the song Empty Shells. Masterful! A no-compromise march that takes no prisoners and knows no mercy. Confidence and focus working in sync, a full-blooded execution firing on all cylinders.
And for everything that radiates from the stage today, the quintet had to sweat blood! A radical restructuring of the lineup led to final success and the realization of a goal packed with tangible musical substance. It started with the integration of Andrej Škof on bass guitar, and a lightning leap to a new quality level came with the arrival of seasoned drumming master Ivan Cepanec (Dickless Tracy) and another excellent guitar virtuoso, Andrej Čuk. Add to that Buco’s constant maturing into a vocal machine that takes the best moments of Russ Anderson (Forbidden), James Rivera (Helstar) and young Warrel Dane from the Sanctuary era! No wonder a »Halford-esque« scream slips out from time to time. The duo of Andrej Čuk and Tim Tajič comes within an inch of the elegance of the guitar duels on Negligence by the good old duo DYZ / Švigelj, and the stage chemistry between the two guys and the way they read each other is exceptional. There’s a whole bunch of partial solo passages that the guitarists share in well-crafted middle instrumental sections, intricately cut too. And that demands a hefty dose of full presence of mind and eye contact between the members. Buco proved to be a true stage beast this evening. A great vocal performance, convincingly hammering away in the highest vocal registers. The band conjured up exceptional organic solidity, chemical connection, and extraordinary coherence of a single mega-avalanche with the grenade detonation of a first-rate old-school lesson in thrash metal revival, the kind of better manifesto you’ll hardly find these days.
It wasn’t my first time seeing Eruption live. And it won’t be the last. But the show at Orto bar hypnotically stunned and captivated me by far the most of all their concerts I’ve experienced up to this day. With the strengths of their new album »Tenses Collide« and the kind of stage form Eruption are in today, the guys are ready to storm foreign stages and let thrash metal fans around the world get to know them! Alongside Negligence, Eruption with »Tenses Collide« proudly stand at the top among Slovenian bands, and let’s hope another one follows soon in the »immodest« selection found in the field of Slovenian thrash metal. Judging by the momentum they’ve shown, it’s clear that Eruption keep developing musically and growing. Let’s just hope they don’t run out of steam, don’t rest on the laurels of the praise, and keep gnawing away relentlessly. We can be proud of the immodest probabilistic thesis that the best works of the »thrash metal revival« are currently being made in Slovenia. In global terms.
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