Lene kosti Are Back in Action! (2008)

Interview date: 09.11.2008

Lene kosti. Does that name mean anything to you? They were there when heavy metal was young. Bands once fled from their high-octane shows, because Lene kosti would “skin every one of them down to the bone” and sweep them off the stage whenever they shared a bill on the same night. Russian Girl is a proper slab of potent boogie rock crossed with fifth-gear, old-school heavy metal arrogance, powered by the solid riffing of the Kavaš brothers and embodied above all by the hugely charismatic presence of singer Milan Krušič.

Singer Milan Krušič and I had a few words about the rediscovered passion for playing and writing music, and about all the unsung joys that Lene kosti still owe us big time after all these years of silence…

RockLine: How did Lene kosti come back to life?
Milan: During the gig in Nove Jarše. The guys were on stage playing songs by Status Quo, ZZ Top and Rolling Stones, and I was down in the crowd. Totally out of the blue, there was an invitation from the stage to join the guys and sing the Lene kosti song Russian Girl. The crowd went wild when they saw me.

RockLine: Had you talked beforehand, did you know about each other? I mean, the way it happened – you below the stage, them on it, and then… It sounds like a perfect “boom” scenario for this kind of comeback.
Milan: Of course we’d seen each other before. But I went to that gig just to watch it, nothing more. There was no plan for me to sing or for them to call me up on stage. Then came the invitation to join the band for the first bigger show, which was supposed to happen a few months later. The guys needed a singer. So I joined the band at rehearsals a month before that gig. Everything happened very spontaneously and all of a sudden I was back with Lene kosti. That’s how we ended up playing Rulstock in Stična near Ivančna Gorica, where the crowd was visibly thrilled.

RockLine: That was right around when The Drinkers were throwing their big 15th birthday bash, sometime in October? Milan: Yes. Actually The Drinkers weren’t there, so we ended up playing the headliner role. We played 8 songs, and besides our own material, a cover of Judas Priest’s Diamonds & Rust, in an acoustic version.

RockLine: And what’s next, any gigs locked in?
Milan: On December 20th we’re playing Gromka club at Metelkova in Ljubljana, on a bill with two other bands. That’s basically our warm-up for opening the Grave Digger show in Ljubljana at the start of February next year.

RockLine: Ohoho, opening for Grave Digger, congrats! How did you pull that off?
Milan: There’s a special story connecting us with Grave Digger. Their guitarist Manni Schmidt and I are great friends, and when he found out I used to be in a band, he wanted to hear the Lene kosti songs. He loved them, and so he invited us to open the Grave Digger show in Ljubljana.

RockLine: Sorry to interrupt, Milan, but this seems really important to me. Since you mentioned Grave Digger, it’s interesting. They’re your generation, and it’s funny that Slovenia doesn’t have any heavy metal bands from your generation anymore. They’ve died out. Pomaranča are six feet under, Turbo too… And finally you got Lene kosti back together. I think it’s very important that you’re back, because you’ve brought continuity back to rock and metal in Slovenia. Metal is strong here, but it’s mostly made up of bands whose members are, on average, between 20 and 25. With Lene kosti back, the scene is more mature and experienced again, you could even say legends…
Milan: Well, I wouldn’t exactly call Lene kosti legends. We simply felt that after such a long absence we still have plenty to offer people. At the peak of our popularity, recording material wasn’t as easy as it is today. Today’s technology makes that part simpler, so we’re counting on releasing a record next spring. 7 of the songs are older, and they’ll be replayed and re-recorded. So far Lene kosti have only released the cassette “Park Bar”, and that was still with singer Bobi. We’ve been thinking about adding those demo recordings to the release as a bonus CD.

RockLine: So a mix of old and new, right?
Milan: We’re planning to add 5 completely new songs to this release as well. Let me also add that Manni Schmidt from Grave Digger said he’d be glad to contribute a few solos to our material. The original drummer Igor Kremenšek is back in the lineup too, the guy who joined the band back in 1978, since the drummer “Animal” moved to Australia.

RockLine: You need as many gigs as possible.
Milan: Naturally. For now we don’t have a lot of material, so we play on bills with several bands at once, which means we can’t do headline shows of our own yet, but that will change next spring. We’ve already received individual offers from Croatia, for example Zagreb and Osijek. Then there are biker festivals both in Slovenia and in Croatia, like Umag and Vrsar, and offers for gigs in Serbia have come in as well. Those would be club gigs, four of them. And I can already announce that next year we’re invited to Stuttgart, to play at the anniversary show of another legendary metal band, which, for now, will stay a secret.

RockLine: Have you found a new bass player yet?
Milan: For now Davor Kastelec is helping us out, but we’re looking for someone to join the band permanently. We parted ways with Janez Dagarin on friendly terms, and we wish him all the best. He’s a great musician, so I don’t doubt for a second that he’ll find a suitable, really good band in the future. We invited Davor to the band and he gladly accepted. Davor will play with us until we find a permanent bass player, and he’ll very likely help us in the studio too. He might even have to play all the bass for the new material, if we don’t find a permanent bassist before then.

RockLine: How does your return to the scene feel compared to Lene kosti’s past experiences at the turn of the eighties into the nineties?
Milan: It’s a huge difference. Back then there were three or four bands. It wasn’t really rivalry. It was more like everyone negating each other. Now there’s a whole little sea of bands on the scene. Each of them has its own connections, acquaintances, contacts. There are more clubs, and it’s much easier to land gigs. Another difference is that the “internet” age lets you open a “MySpace” page and people get to know you. You don’t have to hunt for some spot in a newspaper where they’d give you a couple of lines. And since I’m mentioning “MySpace”, I have to say we’re currently getting extremely positive vibes from the area of the former Yugoslavia, especially from Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia. Especially from Croatia, and I think there won’t be any problem with Lene kosti playing there. So people haven’t forgotten Lene kosti.

RockLine: The musical niche Lene kosti occupy doesn’t really exist otherwise, so you’ve got a nice advantage on the scene in that respect too.
Milan: Some music critic said years ago that we’re the only band in the world that managed to mix the raw form of boogie rock with heavy metal, and that we’re unique in that. I completely agree. We’re neither classic heavy metal nor boogie rock n’ roll, but somewhere in between. You can tell that both our guitarists are huge fans of ZZ Top, Status Quo and AC/DC, while I lean more “heavy”. On MySpace we’re labeled as n.w.o.b.h.m., because we stick to that classic iconography. We won’t be inventing 20-minute songs. Our songs will be made to hit straight away, built on the riff, firing up from the first note. Even Lemmy from Motorhead keeps insisting that Motorhead aren’t metal but rock n’ roll, and we’re boogie heavy metal rock n’ roll.

RockLine: How does a Lene kosti song come together?
Milan: The Kavaš brothers write the music, and I bring the lyrics. I also put together the staging of Lene kosti’s live shows, and I’m responsible to some extent for the stage design. I also handle the more organizational stuff, while the Kavaš brothers focus exclusively on composing. And now, in the internet age, everything is easier again. It’s easier to sort out organizational matters, and we can quickly swap music samples of our new ideas in mp3 format.

RockLine: So with you and Lene kosti back, you can feel a new work drive, a new elan in the air?
Milan: Definitely. Even though we’re looking for a new bass player, new material is being written…

RockLine: I assume the first release will soon be followed by a new, completely fresh studio album, with no retrospective angle, if I may hint?
Milan: Yes, and like I said. First an album will come out with a few new songs and older material. If all goes well, financially too, the band will release an album of exclusively new material as early as next autumn. So that second release should be the record that truly reflects what the reunited Lene kosti are right now, and the musical style we feel at this moment. The real deal.

RockLine: Anything to add in closing?
Milan: Not really. Just that people shouldn’t miss us on 20.12.2008 at the Gromka club in Ljubljana, nor before Grave Digger in February 2009, also in Ljubljana.

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