Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Komen / Slovenia
Concert date: 01.07.2016
Metal Mania is a festival with a legendary reputation on home soil. It had its good moments and its bad ones, but the festival in the heart of the Karst, with its homey vibe, always delivered way too many unforgettable moments. Musical ones and the ones on the sidelines. Metal Mania is gone, but Live After Death is faithfully carrying on its legacy, this year for the third time in a row, if I’m not mistaken. There’s no place in the world, except maybe the confluence of the Tolminka and Soča, that stirs up more nostalgic feelings than the legendary steps, which in all their concrete discomfort are somehow so comfortable that you can sit on them all day without any trouble. This year the football pitch stage was once again taken over mostly by local acts plus a few bands from neighboring countries, and for an even more summery vibe, the Cuban ladies serving cocktails were on hand.
The honor of opening this year’s festival fell, in line with the saying that the world belongs to the young, to the young thrash force from Primorska, Black Reaper. The guys have been diligently racking up live mileage over the past year and it’s only paying off, because on stage they come across like a well-oiled war machine that knows no mercy. The band’s tightness is a level higher every time I catch them, the guys are confident and self-assured up there, and Rok’s mop gets longer every time. The varied riffing conjures up mostly Slayer, Exodus and Kreator, but with this much energy and likability you can’t accuse Black Reaper of being overly generic. The band’s technical chops as a whole are impressive, and first and foremost the destructive power of young drummer Patrik, who rages behind the kit like some Andy Galeon (given the youth and the thrash, you can’t avoid comparing Black Reaper to Death Angel). Black Reaper were an excellent late-afternoon kickoff to two days of partying.
We then paddled into similar genre waters with another Primorska crew, Woli Wo from Grgar. Their rawer, more brutal thrash is built on simpler riffs and rhythms, which doesn’t mean it hits any less hard. Quite the opposite, as Woli Wo attacked Komen like Satan out of the woods. The mix of punk and thrash had a soothing effect on the sparse crowd in front of the stage, and thanks to the early hour, the »tiredness« this »alco-weed thrash metal« band is known for hadn’t yet come through too strongly. Beni’s Abbath-style growl brought a bit of wintry atmosphere to sweltering Komen, hehe.
With Eruption we stayed in thrash metal waters, and we weren’t complaining. After the latest lineup change, in which Nika Krmelj (GMB) replaced Škofa on bass, the band has been busily racking up mileage following a short break from the stage. Even though this was only their third show in the new lineup, Eruption proved they’d prepared thoroughly for the change, as the band’s tightness is still at a very high level. The guitar duo of Andrej Čuk/Grega Kamenšek was once again chopping up riffs like the chef/ninja in those Japanese restaurants who cooks right in front of you, Nika’s bass rattled like tank treads, Tegla bombarded everything around him, and Buco once again justified his name as one of the best frontmen in the country right now. Eruption are currently recording their third studio album, and we can’t wait to hear what February 2017 will bring!
The genre leap came with Mist, and since evening was starting to fall, a bit of doom and slower rhythms fit nicely. Like their predecessors, the gals and the one beard show plenty of gig mileage, some of it racked up abroad. So they once again charmed us without any major trouble with retro-sounding doom, genre-wise close to Black Sabbath, Pentagram and Candlemass, which with Nina’s vocals takes on a sinister, witchy air, like a gathering of the devil’s concubines. With Blaž joining the band, the guitar parts got a bit stronger, so the riffs on the newer creations feel heavier and more convincing. I hope the band proves and confirms with a studio debut as soon as possible that they’re not just another trendy doom band with female vocals.
One of the festival bands I was looking forward to most was Ater Era, a black metal force from Slovenian Istria, which also returned to live stages at the start of this year after a hiatus of a few months. The trio took the break to prepare their third studio album, due out this year and announced by the single March to Abysmal Void. Ater Era also served up a hefty dose of new material at Live After Death, marked by even more elaborate atmospheric parts. It’s precisely those that make Ater Era even more special in our country (and beyond), as they work in perfect balance with the brutal parts, which represent the eternal struggle against the forces of darkness and the power of nature. The guys enrich their music with numerous elements atypical for black metal, and S.S.’s vocals sail reliably and majestically between the rawness of the black metal outbursts and the calmer, atmospheric parts. In a good hour, Ater Era delighted us with, besides the new tracks, a few crushers from the debut In Autumn’s Solitary Deckline and its follow-up Beneath Inanimate Grime. But with concentration slowly slipping, thanks to the long songs and the long set, it ended up being a bit too much to chew by the end.
The first and only heavy metal course of the first day was served up by Stare device, the new incarnation of the legendary Requiem, which, besides Marko Slokar, the father of numerous immortal anthems, consists of Jurij »Egzi« Čotar on vocals, Domen Lahajnar (guitar), Matjaž Winkler (drums) and Jani Lah (bass). Of them all, Egzi truly stepped into the absolute biggest shoes, as he handles the vocal duties once performed by Primož Romšak and Sergej Škofljanec. Egzi does the job confidently, there’s not much to fault vocally, and as a frontman he knows how to fire up the crowd at the right moments. It’s true, though, that the Requiem anthems are so firmly lodged in the ears of the local heavy metal/hard rock crowd that the vocal differences are at times hard to overlook. Still, the crowd was clearly hungry for heavy metal, singing along the whole time to the choruses of hits like Zvedno nebo, Rock’n’Roll naj živi, Kaja, Križarji and Slovenska. The energy on stage was right too, the vibe in the air positive, and the closing anthem Stare device an expected finale. Let’s hope Stare device will offer some original material in the future too.
The close of the first day fell to the “witching hour” of Ljubljana’s hellish trio Hellsword and an honest dose of old-school, blasphemous black/speed metal. The old-school rush made a fitting finale, and with the new track Call of the Sepulchre, Hellsword warn us that the new Evil is always just around the corner.
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