Author: Urban Bolta
Venue: Lukna's Halle / Šešče pri Žalcu / Slovenia
Concert date: October 26, 2013
Attendance: 300
Ticket price: €6.66 (presale) / €9.99 (day of show)
On the last Saturday of October, Šešče pri Žalcu wrapped itself in black. The reason wasn’t the approaching All Souls’ Day, but a metal show that drew several hundred heavy-music-starved fans into a tiny village in the Styrian countryside. We’re talking, of course, about the legendary Fuck Off Commercial festival, which put Styria on the Slovenian metal map with its first edition in the late eighties and has kept backing the local (and wider) metal scene with occasional editions ever since. The last Fuck Off Commerical went down in 2008, so after five years the festival rose from the dead, and the main thread of this year’s edition was celebrating the 25th anniversary of the very first one.
Let’s be honest: these days the Slovenian metal scene is carried by the greater Ljubljana area and Gorenjska, while east of Trojane and west of the Mura the scene is clinically dead, with a few bright exceptions. That made my grin all the wider when I rolled up in front of Lukna in Šešče, where a nice crowd of black-clad folks from Celje, Velenje and other corners of the region had already gathered in the minutes before the shows kicked off.
As a proper festival should, it started with an aggressive terrorizing of everyone’s eardrums by the hometown boys INMATE. Well, almost hometown. Inmate come from Velenje, and as has long been known, live shows are one of their strongest weapons. Their stage presence is every bit as toxic as that of the most execution-honed foreign bands, and the professionalism didn’t slip even in the opening minutes of the set, when the crowd below the stage was only starting to fill in. Although Inmate stylistically swear by the newer school of metal, their demolishing performance filled the little hall with ease, so their aggressive metalcore eroticism with melodic In Flames flashes came roaring to life in a proper blaze! The guitar wailing from the fingers of Aleš Kroflič and Andrej Bezjak bent to precise rhythmic twists and hit its peaks in genre-typical breakdowns, which effortlessly forced the first few rows into some dizzying hair-whirling.
Second up, making their Slovenian debut, were RAPIDFORCE, elder statesmen of the Serbian thrash metal scene, who, thanks to the brutal conditions back home in the nineties, never managed to climb any higher career steps. Despite a rejuvenated lineup, Rapidforce stay true to their original idea of uncompromising aggression in the style of the Slayer school (by the way, in June they played Belgrade as support for those Californian giants), which they evoked in places mainly through guitar phrases and rhythmic twists. Double bass pedals and a growling vocal pull the Serbs away from the definition of classic thrash metal tradition, much to the delight of all the fans of bands like Pantera or Sepultura in attendance. Even when jamming instrumentally, Rapidforce know no watered-down fourth-gear moments; instead, they carefully nurture their groovy sound through whole songs full of rage and hatred for everything that moves and is warm! The Serbs can be happy with their debut on the sunny side of the Alps, and given the positive response, there’s no reason to worry they won’t come back one day.
Next came a blast by the name of ANESTHESIA. The oldest fans of the metal craft in Slovenia probably remember that these Croatian veterans already played Fuck Off Commercial back in 1991, when the stage was also taken by the legendary German band Holy Moses. Although of all the acts at this year’s gathering Anesthesia put on the most modest stage show, they (for me, at least) reaped the most sympathy. This is a quartet of four longtime friends, the very same four who jammed together twenty years ago, in the band’s early days! The central figure is frontman Tomislav Vučetić. A charismatic guy in every way, his voice recalls James Hetfield (Metallica), and stylistically too, apart from simpler songs and a faster tempo, Anesthesia can be compared to those famous metal brothers from San Francisco. The Croats served up a mix of older and newer (still unreleased) material in Šešče, with the single Soulsucker, strong in its message, standing out as the farewell track. So much so that even one of the punks in the crowd threw his hands high in the air!
The festival’s headliner was a well-known heavyweight of the domestic metal scene, NOCTIFERIA. The band has lately been showing up more regularly on Slovenian club stages, where live blows bridge the studio gap between their last record »Deatb Culture« and the upcoming one they’re currently working on. These in-between gigs thus serve Noctiferia as a way to burn off excess energy, even though this is an extremely experienced band that knows how to give the crowd exactly as much as it needs. Any barely noticeable hint of routine was most firmly defied in Šešče by frontman Gianni, now short-haired for a while, with his morbid vocal assault on the ears. The guys are excellent musicians who, besides being tight with each other, carry themselves professionally in every respect, so comparing Noctiferia to the standards of the big Western European bands is more than justified! The band strolled through mostly newer material from Slovenska morbida onward, and the polished show and refined sonic details that have made them one of a kind in our corner of the world over the years kept the club in a chokehold for a full hour-long set.
With heads already a bit boozy and eyes no longer as crystal-clear as a few hours earlier, the evening’s closing act took the stage: more Velenje locals, CORDURA. It’s an expanded project of guitar virtuoso Tim Draksler (ex-Eliminator, ex-Interceptor), who gathered like-minded guys around him and finally brought his long-in-the-making, progressive-rooted original songs to the live stage. After a short soundcheck, it was on! Brutal songs, spiced up with mostly extreme vocals from new singer Nejc (I Scream), dictated a merciless tempo; to be honest, I’d expected a somewhat gentler assault on my ears from this project, but I got a kick straight to the forehead instead, and a daft one at that! The main trump card of their sound is, of course, the technically polished wandering up and down the guitar necks by the duo of Tim Draksler / Gogi Planko, who bring a bombastic dynamic to the shared harmony. Considering that the project has barely come to life in its stage form and still hides plenty of room to grow, it’s definitely a welcome shot in the arm for our little corner of the metal universe! For the festival farewell, Cordura invited up none other than the festival’s main organizer, the legendary first metal throat of Žalec, Gregor Čulk, who, backed by the Velenje boys, recalled the legacy of the late Interceptor with Zadnja žrtev and Homo Stupidos and delivered one of the highlights of the concert marathon.
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