Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / Dvorni bar / Slovenia
Concert date: 03.10.2013
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: €0.00 (free entry)
The day has finally come. The day the studio debut of the first and most notorious all-female heavy metal or heavy rock (call it what you like) band in Slovenia hit the shelves. No need for guessing games. Hellcats and the album »Divja pot«. We waited a long time for it, and we’d almost given up, but in the final polishing of the product the girls went about it with real sensitivity and finesse. They wanted to squeeze the absolute most out of themselves, and of everyone who stood by them while the album came together. And they can be proud of what they’ve achieved. Great production, songs with hooks that grab you the first time you hear them, and simple, tight, chunky metal riffs that make no secret of a big soft spot for the legendary Judas Priest of the time they made their cult album »British Steel« (1980). »Divja pot« is an album with character, an album with a clear musical vision, and an album whose telling title reveals that on the way to its release the girls rode a real adrenaline roller coaster of wild events that criss-crossed their rock path.
Dvorni bar, a handy spot. You’d expect to see some singer-songwriter presenting their record here, but it works perfectly nicely for a music package with a higher dose of decibels like Hellcats, too. First, the caring Vlado welcomes you with a glass of white wine, a familiar happy face of the even more familiar Srečna Mladina, and then you quickly fall into conversation with a bunch of interesting faces who are in one way or another part of the Slovenian rock ‘n’ roll scene. Media people, labels, agencies, or even better, creators – musicians. The age and gender makeup of the crowd was interesting. 90% mature men (with the eternally childish character that rock ‘n’ roll demands, of course), with the EMŠO (personal ID number) wedged deep into the »core« of their forties, and up. And if one of the eminences of the evening is Igor Vidmar, you know it’s no joke.
Since the whole thing got going more than half an hour late, the girls only blasted through a set of four songs. So Viking, Heavy Metal and Čas je da greš got dropped. Instead, Dvorski bar was served Hellcats, Vladar noči, Sanjam demone and Divja pot at living-room volume! As expected. Short but sweet. The band really deserves praise for its rock-solid focus, which the foursome maintains with plenty of camaraderie. That can be an example to other Slovenian heavy metal and hard rock bands. The band radiates it, both on stage and in casual chats. With a polished stage look and a presence that irreversibly wins over male eyes, yet backed by plenty of tightness and hard-earned, confident stagecraft built on experience, Hellcats prove today that this is a band to be taken strictly seriously. And that eternally frustrated claim, especially from Slovenia’s male rock bands, that it’s easy for them to get anywhere because they know how to tease with tight skirts and high heels, is simply not true. The girls actually play. They play! When you hear Katja’s solos, with the effective way she squeezes the most out of the position and placement of the notes, her stage pose and so on, you don’t need Einstein to figure out that Katja, as a guitarist, could teach the basics to a good number of the »uptight« members of other bands, who often look »hick« on stage. I’d rather say clumsy and humorless. The girl knows exactly what she’s doing! And then there are the other three, each adding her own »piece« of artistry to the name and work of Hellcats. And given that Katja is the main figure in holding up the sonic backdrop for the vocals, we can say that on this point Hellcats have matured and grown so strong that, with the debut launched, they can calmly think about a proper tour of Slovenia with, say, 7-8 gigs from Murska Sobota to Koper, while the album »Divja pot« itself works as a kind of »wild card« that opens the door to competing abroad as well. Let me also mention that the girls shaped the Slovenian verses with great skill and fit them into the lines of the lead melodies so that all the characteristics of those very melodies, which they want to highlight in their music, are preserved.
What I can’t tell you, though, is how many loaded canapés anyone ate. The author of this piece remains, first and foremost, incorrigibly childish when it comes to his musical obsession. So his focus on the other »extra-musical« goings-on around the laden table that evening was more an experience of boredom than of wild adventurism. Having established that the revelry, fueled by the undeniably contagious effect of alcohol derivatives, went on in Dvorni bar late into the night, he can wrap up his piece with the following. A big day for the band, then! And a big day for Slovenian heavy metal and hard rock! Ladies! Good luck on your wild road!
Setlist
1. Hellcats
2. Vladar noči
3. Sanjam demone
4. Divja pot
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