Author: Rok Klemše
Artist: Black Diamond
Label: On Parole Productions
Released: 2013
Runtime: 63:55
Rating: 5/5
Summer 2005. The up-and-coming duo of Igor Manasijevič and Nejc Vidmar start writing original material, and they give the newborn band a name too. Black Diamond. Extreme trouble finding and landing extra members doesn’t faze the guitar pair, and Igor and Nejc keep writing undisturbed, finally introducing their material to the public via MySpace sometime around 2008. Even the first demo recordings showed that this Novo Mesto gem had the potential to be a top-class heavy metal outfit. Because the search for the members they needed went nowhere at the time, Black Diamond turned to »session« musicians, with Žanil Tataj Žak (Turbo, Mary Rose), who recorded vocals for a few songs, and drummer Robert Kovačič (Scaffold) making a huge contribution to the band. They successfully got people’s attention, while Igor and Nejc kept patiently polishing and cutting their music like a diamond until it gleamed perfectly. In all its brilliant blackness, that gleam has finally shone through on the debut Last Man Standing!
Last Man Standing is an incredibly rich record: it runs over an hour, and the songs mostly don’t wrap up until the six- or seven-minute mark. But any fear that Black Diamond put quantity before quality is completely unfounded, and it gets stamped out in the very first moments of the opening anti-war epic Opus 91-96, which is about the Balkan nightmare. Right from the start you can easily hear that the songs on the album matured, developed and came to life under the watchful eye and careful hand of their creators. Every single one of them is steeped in a mighty atmosphere that seeps out of every vocal line and every guitar line. Despite the songs’ hefty length, they don’t suffer from bloat or boredom in the slightest. Quite the opposite, the generous runtimes give the tracks room to go on a proper little evolutionary journey. Black Diamond prove they’re masterful songwriters and arrangers, and their heavy metal often reaches beyond the borders of the genre and edges toward progressive metal, at times recalling the American masters Fates Warning. In one of the longest tracks on the record, the ten-minute symphony Dreams of Tomorrow, Black Diamond fit in, for example, not one but two different goosebump-inducing choruses, a whole host of tempo and rhythm changes, a dazzling interplay of guitar passages and layers of fantastically performed vocals.
Vocally, thanks to the incredible Žak, the album easily reaches the very peaks of heavy metal. With the power and conviction of big names like Bruce Dickinson and Jorn Lande, Žak breathes life into the songs and adds warmth, bite and kicking power. I can’t remember metal with balls this big around here! Žak lifts Black Diamond’s music into the sky, whether it’s on pompous, epic choruses that send your pulse racing or on gentler, balladic moments like the shattering, sensual love ballad Hold Me Tonight. But Žak isn’t the only carrier of the album’s vocal brilliance, because others deliver moments of vocal ecstasy too. One of the record’s best moments is without a doubt its exceptional midpoint, Black Diamond, where Žak turns in a furious performance as the narrator of a story about a small, exploited man ground down day after day by the dictatorship of capitalism (which, in fact, sums up the cover art as well). The band then brilliantly recreate a dialogue between father and son, with the son voiced by innocently sung lines and the father giving his boy advice in a deep, experienced voice. There are so many moments like this on the album that listening is quite a mouthful, yet the offering is so rich and varied that not a single second is wasted. In The Thing That Couldn’t Die, Black Diamond get almost metaphysically intoxicated in lyrics about following your dreams and hope. Even though Last Man Standing is enriched above all by a somewhat dark atmosphere, heavy because of its real-world themes, Black Diamond use their fantastic instrumental and vocal performances to make sure a ray of hope still glimmers in the darkness.
It’s precisely the thoughtful lyrics about topics we (sadly) run into every day that bring Black Diamond even closer to the listener and make them come across as far more sincere and credible than ninety percent of similar bands that still dream about dwarves and dragons. The only song on the album in Slovenian deals with hypocrisy among »friends«, and once again Žak’s flawless delivery, the rich backing vocals, the outstanding riffs and the wonderful placement of acoustic guitars prove that you can pull off a killer song in Slovenian too! I hope the guys add a song or two more in Slovenian in the future. Like everything else on Last Man Standing, it sounds excellent thanks to Simon Jovanovič’s great production (Studio Evolucija). The production spreads the instruments out superbly across the soundstage, the two guitars complement each other nicely, the vocals are just loud enough to support the instruments without drowning them out, and the drumming is remarkably varied. It’s even nicer to hear that, despite his technical chops, Kovačič stayed true to a heavy metal foundation. The baroque-rich sound was perfectly capped off by the mastering of Mika Jussila from Helsinki’s Finnvox studios, who has mastered bands like Deep Purple, Nightwish, Sentenced, Stratovarius, HIM and Gamma Ray, and is reportedly even the record holder for the number of masterings done. Definitely a reference that suits the excellence of a product like Last Man Standing.
A product that wraps up in grand style with the mighty ballad Tears In Eyes, soaked in a heavy, depressive atmosphere and a chilling vocal duet between Samo Urbančič and Sandra Tomovič (ex-Moveknowledgement). The song’s melancholy grayness is painted above all by its sad subject matter, prostitution and child abuse, and with mournful guitar lines, weeping solos and shattering vocals, Black Diamond leave a lump in your throat. Despite the emotional exhaustion at the end, this hour-long journey leaves you full and richer for a one-of-a-kind musical experience.
Black Diamond are proof that perseverance pays off. Despite their unlucky search for members, Igor and Nejc didn’t give up. They diligently and tirelessly wrote their own original songs and even released and presented them as they went. That’s definitely a trait few fresh-out-of-the-oven bands have, as most of them fall back on covers and, at best, average-sounding demo recordings. Black Diamond, on the other hand, are complete perfectionists in this regard, so it’s no wonder Last Man Standing is one of the most complete releases in Slovenian metal. A rich sound, world-class vocal and instrumental performances, fantastic arrangements and thoughtful lyrics make this an album where even after repeated listens you keep finding new nuances and secrets of the kind of heavy metal that makes your heart sing!
Lineup
Igor Manasijevič – guitar, bass (1,2,3,5,6,9)
Nejc Vidmar – guitar, bass (3,9,10)
Žanil Tataj Žak – vocals (1-8)
Simon Jovanovič – vocals (9)
Samo Urbančič – vocals (10)
Sandra Tomovič – vocals (10)
Mirko Jokič – bass (5,7)
Robert Kovačič – drums
Šajla Usenik – violin (2)
Vavta vas girls’ choir – vocals (4)
Production
Simon Jovanovič
Tracklist
1. Opus 91 – 96
2. Edge of Sanity
3. Power of Mind
4. Dreams of Tomorrow
5. Hold Me Tonight
6. Black Diamond
7. The Thing That Couldn’t Die
8. Lažne zvezde
9. Mastermind
10. Tears In Eyes
