Inmate Deliver Their Firstborn Without a C-Section, Charting a New Path of Evolution (2012)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Location: Velenje / eMCe Plac / Slovenia
Concert date: 30.03.2012
Attendance: 200
Ticket price: 4 € with reservation (6 € on the day of the show)

Slovenia – a land of just two million souls and a whole regiment of quality, talented, though not always inspired musicians, is a true melting pot of good ideas, but among the names up on the pedestal of creation there are precious few that survive the test of time. Our metal scene is no exception: we’ve got plenty of sturdy, hard-hitting young guys and gals devoted to heavier rhythms, but most of them treat it like a Sunday orchid-growing hobby or a teenage napkin-collecting phase. In adolescence they build a shrine on which they’d sacrifice everything – their time, soul and body – and in adulthood they latch onto something more lucrative, sensible and above all more “environmentally friendly and age-appropriate”. Thank the gods of Olympus for the bright exceptions! When I write about the Styrian, Šalek Valley union of metal rhapsodes and melody nomads, the band Inmate, I can’t get around the fact that they stand for everything that used to be closer to my musical heart than it is today, and yet, despite it all, they fill my heart and mind with the happy realization that every so often there really are bright exceptions, ready to work hard and devotedly for success, to chisel a rough idea and mould it into something promising and lasting, all while defying the millstones of time, narrow-minded surroundings and the expectations of a world that’s partial to “constructiveness”. The new, fresh, punchy, aesthetic and above all long-awaited record from the Styrian five-piece, the album Free At Last, is finally here, and after four years of impatience we could easily rechristen it “here at last”, if we can allow ourselves a bit of wordplay.

It was precisely the news of the christening bash in Velenje – once my home turf, a center of real-socialist thinking, the proletariat and big ideas that are fading and dying out so stubbornly these days – that gave me one more reason to occupy the Velenje youth culture center, which has been successfully parasitizing – or better, living in symbiosis with – sport for several years now, right in the instant hub of Velenje’s goings-on: the Rdeča dvorana. Instant access to culture, aesthetics, art, music and alcohol, and just a stone’s throw from the fire station in case you need to put out passions and overblown expectations? More than a good send-off for a trip to the Styrian epicenter of creative offerings on the last day of March in the apocalyptic year of 2012!

The program itself rose above the dry Slovenian average of mediocrity and the unremarkable, and above all the unconfident, since this time already in the very overture of the launch night there was considerably more than just an ordinary concert – alongside an exhibition of photos by the talented photographer Tilyen Mucik, who has been collaborating fruitfully with the guys from Inmate for over two years and who occupied the “sacristy” of the sound desk with a body of portraits of the band members, visitors could take in a wonderful mosaic of professional play of light and shadow, while a small bite to eat just lifted the mood. Before the guests of honor, the stage was to be taken by a five-piece from Celje – to be more precise: from the Savinja region – and the Šalek Valley, devoted to metalcore melodies, Last Day Here; after that we’d watch a short documentary and then get a rich helping of Inmate’s debut. All of this without excess fat, waffling or needless cosmetics set the bar high for a truly exceptional night. High standards are always good, and a crowd of some two hundred or so people was easily drawn to this one, packing in front of the entrance of the small but well-equipped eMCe – good sound, good lighting, and a strategically placed, always well-stocked bar.

The overture’s already too long, so I’d rather give myself over to the music of the night. Minutes flew by and time became completely irrelevant when Last Day Here, already pretty well established, took the stage on home turf. It’s almost unbelievable, but long years have passed since the debut From Pieces Created – five, to be precise – and the guys have aged a bit and matured. Personally I’m not a fan of naive melodics and weltschmerz standards that may well sate and feed the ears and souls of uncritical teenage girls who go to gigs just to feast their eyes on handsome lads with not much to say, and yet: Last Day Here are masters at manipulating and communicating with the crowd. The balanced action – fat bass tamed nicely by Tomi Senventer, solid rhythm from the on-the-beat, music-appropriate drummer Saša Corse, and above all the unobtrusive, easy dialogue of guitars in the hands of Uroš Boršič and Jure Gorjanc – works solid and confident live, even if the debut sounded to me more like a boring mosaic of standards heard a thousand times and chewed over. What glues this brittle and elusive whole into a syrupy but compact projectile of emotion and stage magnetism is Šoštanj’s soft-voiced “god of erotica” (I overheard that from the mouth of some teenage girl who had evidently come to the gig during ovulation …) Marko Duplišak. If the Goo Goo Dolls set the standard for pretty clean vocals, add a little Incubus on a metalcore trip, and during a pleasant ride in third gear with a hand on the handbrake, the main body of the debut shows up – the dark track Hide, This Time and the closing Saved From Falling – while the filler in between this dynamic start is new! Sounds like Avanged Sevenfold, and yet – this summer the long-awaited sequel to the aforementioned first act of the musical epic of this up-and-coming quintet from our sunny side of the Alps is out, and judging by the crowd’s reaction, we can expect liveliness and above all a roaring reception. A solid, dynamic and above all slightly too easygoing performance left at least my ears rather unwarmed, so the climax of the night came only with the clever little documentary, which lets the audience peek behind the scenes of studio life and feed the voyeuristic beast that would otherwise feed its curiosity on the yellow press and unverified rumors.

Inmate had prepared a good quarter-hour (or a bit more) of film that presents the soul of the crew, their desires, their fears, the skeleton of what Inmate stand for; on a good foundation the muscles can grow that propel the beast higher and farther than the competition, and also make room for the juicy beats of a heart that feels pain, passion and desire and fills the lungs with air capable of screaming out all the static energy of accumulated images with confidence, loudly and uncompromisingly. Precisely this last part is delivered by the harder-sounding landing of Swedish-style melodics, seasoned just right with metalcore and brutality, which makes the heart chakra spin faster than during the lukewarm overture. The lights glow red, as if the place had been drenched in the bloody sweat of four years of musical pregnancy. The silhouettes of the guitar duo Aleš Kroflič and Andrej Bezjak, after the whistles of the mystical introductory breath of the Nordic gods and the Inmate intro, get ready for the thundering rest of the night. Bassist Sašo Bandalo doesn’t lag behind either, and together with drummer Jure Grudn he takes the initiative on Without Warning. It’s like In Flames poetry creeping into your ears, but without the needless vocal pathos! That’s taken care of by the band’s dynamic frontman – the indestructible Mike Miklavžina! “Now I stand here like a man / Thid truth is your confession / I wanna start all over again / To find compassion” is a verse that creeps into the ears like sweet manna and represents the center of gravity, the axis and the line of force around which the whole night will revolve. The solid sound of tight guitars outplays the opening stage fright in the manner of a top-tier act. The next burst of whirling sound calls Arch Enemy to mind, but instead of Angela, what’s happening on stage is a masculine tornado of emotion, burning desire and dedication to the real thing! After the promising Written In Blood, which leaves nothing to sheer chance – besides the solid, impenetrable guitar sound of distorted juiciness, granite bass inserts and the firm rhythm of double bass drums, vocal harmonies are woven into the sonic whole, contributed by the aforementioned lead throat of opening act Last Day Here – the continuation is like a fiery catharsis. Overcome is one of the best and most recognizable moments of the night. The electronic intro sounds like an echo of the big bang in space, and then Inmate start demolishing everything in front of them. Feet on the monitors, hands in the air, and the smell of sweat floods the airless vacuum of the Velenje universe. The banners with the band’s name at the sides are like a tool of further indoctrination that no one will wriggle out of! The pit opens up, and from the throats of the crowd the confident battle cry of the chorus soon thunders, easily, maybe even at the nearby protests: “This is not the end!/ You have to fight! / You have to scream! / You have to resist! / You have to overcome!”. The melodically saturated Healing offers nothing less good, satisfying all technical standards and expectations, but I personally hit standing ecstasy during a truly solid and devastating wave of explosive pleasure (I hope Orbit won’t sue me …) with the song Fire, Walk With Me! Inmate have matured and blossomed over the last few years into the most beautiful flower of our scene. They’ve become one of the most valuable black orchids in the incubator of the most genuine ideas around here; instead of honey and pollen, which can make many people sick or which they gorge on sooner than needed, highly reactive kerosene and napalm flows down the toughened worldly petals. With the military rhythm of Angels we reach the full halfway point of a rich night, and a bit more sweetness is rubbed into the open wounds on the front lines by the hellish Promises, and believe me – when Inmate promised to give it their all, they damn well keep their word! There’s no time for sweet-talk, and apart from friendly, encouraging greetings to the crowd, what stuck in my memory is that Mike doesn’t get tangled up in pussyfooting chatter; Inmate come across as a whole most like a wrecking crew on a combat mission, five noise warriors dressed in black under the baton of an energetic general, right in the vortex of it all, with Mike adorned with red bands on his sleeves, pressing on at full throttle and without mercy. The guitar interplay of both guitars becomes, in its organic juiciness, a downright necessity for preserving basic life functions. Inexorable Path overflows its banks with the truly exceptional rhythm of the song Lost In Words, and beneath the layers of racket there’s always enough soft lines and beauty. Inmate are masters at toying with standards, and the final garb is tailored perfectly to their truly recognizable melodic contour. Out Of Darkness is the most sensual part of a truly outstanding set; amid the beating of the heart, hands shoot into the air and the crowd breathes, pulses and surges with the rhythm of the more-than-enjoyable home stretch of an exceptional night. The edge doesn’t dull, the force of the blows doesn’t lessen or weaken. Marko joins them on stage and sings his melodious lines into the mic, and Inmate in their own way amplify the effect of the outstanding Germans Raunchy and Caliban, engraving the big letters of their name into your small brain and consciousness. After the closing fade of the statics of nature and organicness, all that’s left is time for farewells, big applause and standing ovations, and adding anything would, hand on heart, be superfluous. The big finale brings the surprise of the night. The band Kaoz was for a long time the hardest cornerstone of the Velenje metal scene and, after a decade of active and loud creating, enthroned the name Kaoz as a synonym for thrash quality and metal sincerity. The song Try Me Punk brought the big finale of the night as a tribute to the giants of Velenje. Joining the young hopefuls on stage is a veteran of Slovenian metal, Dejan Đorđević – Đoko. “Try me punk, get ready for chaos / Try me punk Let madness run through your veins / I am not insane / You are not insane / We are not insane /madness runs through all our veins” thunders under the vaults of the MC and the hundred-headed crowd backs up the sound from the speakers with their throats. Metal in true form and with balls becomes a memory of the past. The present and the future, hand in hand with the past, carve a path even deeper into the hearts of today’s youth, while the old-timers of the past wipe away perhaps a tear and, aware that things were once different and maybe even better, close out the Friday night with a taste of sentimentality, but by no means regret. Free At Last is launched, and setting out with it onto the oceans of global consciousness, alongside the five-man crew of the battleship Inmate, is a throng of newly won believers.

The melodics didn’t budge an inch at the expense of heaviness and backbone. The aftertaste of the thrashy ease of, say, Lazarus A.D. is completely natural, since the evolution of Inmate as stage artists reached for numerous high-quality and by no means soft paths, my dears! The chemistry of the five-piece is exceptional, and despite the occasionally muffled sound, smothered by the jam-packed hall of the overfull Velenje MC, what we heard satisfied every expectation; curiosity gave way to faith in miracles. The firstborn Free At Last is sent off with salvos of praise, aesthetics and the promise that the sequels will only get prettier and better. After you’ve experienced Inmate, you’ll be able to confirm that after a ride at full revs it’s hard to lift your foot off the gas, and you couldn’t expect anything less from these guys. Inmate are the fulfillment of all hitherto unspoken desires and a concrete threat to all the half-measure types and limp-dick posers – and it’s right that they should fear them! After what we’ve heard, the time has come for radical selection and for cleansing those spheres of music that can no longer afford crap and a lack of ideas! Thanks to the gods of Olympus! Amen!

Setlist

LAST DAY HERE:
1. ’till It Ends
2. Second Time Waiting
3. Hide
4. Believe
5. Made Mistakes
6. Against the Wall
7. This Time
8. How I Wanted
9. hope
10. Someone Else
11. This Life Of Yours
12. Saved From Falling

INMATE:

Outmate (documentary about the making of Free at last)

1. Inmate

2. Without Warning

3. Written In Blood

4. Overcome

5. Healing

6. Fire, Walk With Me

7. Angels

8. Promises

9. Victorious

10. Inexorable Path