Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Ljubljana / String's Bar / Slovenia
Concert date: November 21, 2014
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: €0.00 (free entry)
Only the second show this year from the great godfathers of the Slovenian metal and rock scene, the legendary boogie metallers Lene kosti, announced at the former Scratch Bar (recently renamed Strings Bar), was that little tickling sweet of sheer indulgence dropped into an already more-than-packed fall concert calendar. A hailstorm of punters hit String’s Bar. It’s well known that after Lene kosti reactivated in 2008, their old fans, who grew up alongside them on the streets of Nove Jarše through the eighties, never forgot them. This time was no different. Old faces, same old place. Loyal to the grave. The room was also packed with a crowd of younger fans of the hard-hitting tradition, and, most importantly, there was a nice crop of women in the audience, proof of the eternally youthful mischief and magnetic pull that this band’s charismatic stage presence keeps up, even in the mature years of their career.
That’s enough of an intro to a show that, as expected, was split into two parts! With a 20-minute break in between. As per usual, I showed up late to the venue. You know how parking is in that Trnovo corner of Ljubljana, right? You’ll lose your mind. »String’s Bar« was boiling while the band lured the crowd in with their best-known, by-now-folk classics, drawn mostly from the album »Do or Die« (2010), but written back in the early eighties. The seriously refreshed lineup, whose core is the ultimate, original, founding and therefore eternal duo of the always good-humored brothers Marc and Giovanni Kavaš, delivered exactly what you expect from Lene kosti. “Boogie” penetration to the bone!
This is a band that can bring a crowd to an unbelievable state of wildness, or to impulses that can quickly lead to a carefree exposé of hedonistic excess. The “dancing fish” at the String’s Bar taps proved as much (see the photo gallery). Even after the regular set ended, with the clock long past eleven at night, the crowd wouldn’t let the band off the stage so easily. At the end of the show, after the obligatory encores, the band even had to repeat some songs by popular demand. Beer flowed in rivers, and there was no end to the goofing around. Simple as that. You’d be hard pressed to find bigger “grown-up kids” in the music world anywhere on this little planet than Marc and Giovanni. And the energy they radiate remains unbelievably contagious.
Even though they’ve hardly played any stages this past year, the band is superbly tight. Most of the players are seasoned and battle-hardened, and young Jan Tehovnik, whom we watched in early October with his band Pyroxen, has built up and refined his stage presence even more. The kid sings phenomenally, he’s got a great feel for the musical point of Lene kosti, and his at times extremely high yet always melodically authoritative vocals grabbed everyone’s full attention a few times during the show, as his extreme screams ripped through the air of String’s Bar. The sound was excellent, the volume just right for a small room. The energy of the night recalled Scratch’s farewell gig with Eruption, when it was so insanely packed you couldn’t even get to the taps for a beer.
The set list featured classics like I Got The…, Do or Die, Stones Of Death, Rock Power, Play With Fire, the breakneck Warrior, Nightmare – a song with one of the most monstrous riffs of the band’s career – the wickedly flirty Sunrise, the must-play homegrown staple Russian Girl, as well as the famous »Ironija na Dragonji«, or more properly Iron Dragon (played by popular demand, after the obligatory encore, one more time). Songs from the album »Penetrator« weren’t missing either, including the title track, plus Spread Your Legs and Let’s Rock, and the band brought back to the set list tracks from »Park Bar« with considerably freshened-up arrangements, such as Highway to Nowhere, Lady Evil and Fly in the Sky. Toward the end of the set the band threw in a surprise, tackling Revolution, one of Judas Priest’s more recent creations. It slotted into the rest of the band’s repertoire phenomenally.
Lene kosti remain commanding. In everything they take on. A new album is in the works, with over half the material already written, and that’s a promising sign, since the energy in the camp is great and the members are bound by tight cohesion and mutual encouragement, so the time to make a new record couldn’t be better. Let’s hope we get the band’s new album toward the end of next year. If you happened to skip String’s bar this November Friday because of other obligations, your first shot at a make-up exam comes on December 27, 2014, at Lene kosti’s traditional concert at Rollbar, which is really right on their home Jarše turf. See you there!
Photo Gallery
