Author: Rok Klemše
Venue: KMŠ / Celje / Slovenia
Concert date: 13.12.2007
Attendance: 50
Ticket price: 5,00€ / 7,00€
Friday, December 14, brought the first snow to the lowlands, and that evening the snowy Styrian motorway carried us to Celje, where KMŠ was hosting a show with local heroes LastDayHere and Dweal from Maribor. Walking into the club, it was obvious that KMŠ is an exceptionally well-kept hangout for young people. We Ljubljana folks would gladly take something like that too. Kriza, the show’s organizer, showed a huge amount of drive and professionalism despite the small scale of the event, and plenty of promoters of bigger shows in this country could learn a thing or two from them.
By around half past eight the small hall was nicely packed, and the local heroes LastDayHere were the first up on the “stage” (which didn’t actually exist), since the Maribor openers Dweal were running late. The vocal-instrumental outfit LastDayHere have just released an excellent debut album, From Pieces Created, which is deservedly picking up positive reviews in more and more media, both online and in print. So the gig doubled as a launch for this brand-new record, which smells of the American school of alternative metal but effortlessly leaves plenty of similar foreign bands in the dust. To my surprise, the sound was excellent for such a small hall from the very first song, Take Away. Both guitars and the rhythm section came through totally clear and distinct, along with the superb vocals of Marko Duplišek. What’s more, he sang as well as on the album, and on top of that smooth, powerful melodic voice he added even more screams live, and with some brutal growls he even brought back his days in the legendary Slovenian death metallers Supremacy. It’s hard to believe that a former growler has such a good clean voice. Marko also proved to be an excellent frontman, confident and damn energetic, and the girls in the front rows were devouring him with their eyes anyway, even though the underwear he got as a reward wasn’t quite the kind he’d have wished for. The guitar duo of Uroš Boršič and Jure Gorjanc fire off simple riffs on seven-string “down-tuned” guitars, yet they’re so effective that you don’t even notice when you start headbanging, and to top it all off, they know how to spice everything up with melodic solos. The rhythm section deserves praise too: Mohor pounds the skins like his life depends on it, while Tomi handles the bass like it’s nothing and even hints at some slapping. Live, the whole band works as one, and the energy you can feel between them is truly enviable. In just under an hour the guys played the whole album and added two promising new songs, which, together with the rest, show that LastDayHere are a band with a long career ahead of them, and I hope it’s as successful as it can possibly be. Judging by what they showed in Celje, I have no doubt these guys could handle bigger stages with ease, too.
LAST DAY HERE setlist:
1.Intro
2. Take Away
3. Burned Inside
4. Never Coming Around
5. Deep Down Surrounded
6. Fate Somewhere
7. Hide
8. Coming Alive
9. Memories Undone
10. This Time
11. Saved From Falling
12. Standing In Dark
The night was wrapped up in a hurry by latecomers Dweal, who didn’t win me over with their post-grunge nu-metal, and neither did they win over the crowd, most of which had drifted back to the bar. They only mildly surprised with a decently played cover of Killswitch Engage’s The End of Heartache, and otherwise their half hour quickly sank into oblivion. The performance is confident, but they’d need to put in quite a bit more effort to develop more distinctive and original music.
DWEAL setlist:
1. Intro
2. Burden
3. Encircled by Thorns
4. Beg Me
5. Šlager
6. Inhume
7. Leaving
8. The End of Heartache
9. You
10. Kombajn
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Text: Rok Klemše
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