Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Jerneja Jerak
Location: Ljubljana / CUK Kino Šiška / Slovenia
Concert date: 07.03.2015
Attendance: 350
Ticket price: 22,00€
The Finns in Lordi hardly need a big introduction. The 2006 Eurovision winners came back to Slovenia for the second time, with their seventh studio album, »Scare Force One«, in their pocket. On 13.03.2009 they played Cerknica, and at the time it looked like the school gym they were playing in was going to go up in flames from all the pyro. This new assault by the grotesque yet hugely entertaining and lovable zombies delivered one of the nicest concert treats of the first quarter of the new gig season.
The schedule ran like clockwork. To the minute. At exactly eight o’clock, the revamped Ljubljana crew Tomcat took the stage. Cheeky hard rock heavy rockers! The band went through a complete transformation in December 2014, when bandleader and bassist Grega Šujica was left on his own practically overnight. But he very quickly rounded up the right partners in crime, and the dark clouds over Tomcat were chased away in no time. Guitarist Izzy Armstrong and singer Žiga Krasnič, from Black Dynamite, jumped into the lineup. Rhythm guitarist Domn Žbun and drummer Anže Bizjak »Bizi« joined as well, and the crew was complete. The band got 40 minutes and grabbed everyone’s attention right away with a brand-new opening song. Freshness, drive and commitment. Three words that are keeping the revamped lineup running right now. Vocalist Žiga spent the first few minutes still looking for the right »stage pose«, then loosened up and really let his vocal cords fly. The band had clearly rehearsed hard, and it showed in an extremely confident and tight performance. They made great use of the stage, with plenty of posing, movement and dynamics. A few small slip-ups (Žbun’s solo in the wrong key near the end of the show) didn’t spoil the really great impression the band left behind. Three new songs hint that a new album is brewing. Of course the band didn’t skip the older stuff either, like Hangovewr, Dirty Old Mind and Adrenalin. The sound and lights were great too! Tomcat made fine use of the excellent conditions that opening acts don’t usually get.
Next up were the Swedes Dirty Passion from Debaser in Malmö. The quartet of Kriss (vocals, guitar), Chrissie (guitar), Nasty (bass) and Mike (drums) are old friends of ours. They played at Sputnik café three years ago. What’s more, they shared the bill with Tomcat back then, too. As the opening act. Before L.A. Guns (the Tracii Guns version). And it was a March day then as well. A party hard rock band that channels the naughtiness of old-school acts like Ratt, Dangerous Toys, Love/Hate, Junkyard, Killer Dwarfs and L.A: Guns. You can definitely feel the rock’n’ roll premise at times in the rhythm and riff foundation, and the band is damn superbly tight. Great energy, cheeky and goofy. Among other things the band played Different Tomorrow, plus the new Shame, Hallelujah, Los Angeloser and Zip Of Fire from the freshly released third studio album »Dirty Passion«. Outstanding soloing from Chrissie, the rhythm section locked in solid, and a potent, screaming yet melodic lead vocal. Everything in its place. Everything just as it should be. The Swedes are incredible musicians. Whatever they take on, they throw themselves into it with such zeal that the perfection of their playing never stops amazing.
And then Lordi. Their shows are always a bag full of fun. Since the new album is called »Scare Force One«, the stage was dressed up as a military base – an airfield. Right from the start a cute girl skipped onto the stage and mimed Morse code signals for landing. Then Lordi jump in. The stage lights up as they blast into the new single Nailed by the Hammer of Frankenstein. The crowd closes ranks. Small, but extremely devoted and fired up. Mostly young people. A dozen dads and moms came along as chaperones. And in the second row in front of Ox on the left side, all by himself, the most honorable Finnish ambassador, who works in Ljubljana, went wild with the band throughout the show, reliving his teenage days, when he was very likely a huge Kiss fan. Lovely. Zombilation in full swing. Lordi definitely borrowed a lot of their stage theater from the one and only Alice Cooper. Ox and Mr. Lordi aren’t as tall as they look on stage, of course, since they wear boots with soles several inches thick. That trick was also seen somewhere way back in the day (Kiss). Before Lordi, a respectable number of people cheered on both Tomcat and Dirty Passion, but once Lordi came on, it was clear that most had simply come for Lordi. The crowd was hell of a crowd. Judging by their tender years they probably watched the cartoon Monsters, Inc. at home to warm up, but you really have to congratulate them, because they knew the lyrics of every single song. Even the new ones. After the »Babez for Breakfast« track This is Heavy Metal, the band hit them with their best-known song, Hard Rock Hallelujah. A surprise at first glance, but when you run through the arsenal of their hit singles, it’s clear that plenty of volleys were still left on the setlist!
Each member of the band also had a solo spot of their own, which of course gravitated toward keeping the horror stage theater going. Ox, for instance, ripped open a martyr and dragged his guts out. Of course, most of the attention among the rubbery zombies went to Mr. Lordi. He showed up on stage with a new prop for almost every number. The funniest were the surgical ones and the assorted butcher cleavers and gigantic knives, with which he carried out, among other things, a lobotomy and of course saved the patient. The blood blessing wasn’t missing either (it wasn’t real, of course), there were plenty of metal clouds of thick smoke (though it also »smelled« a bit like insecticide – ah, chemistry….), his rattling with a circular saw was fun too, and quite a few victims got dismembered.
The band, meanwhile, was very tight. Nothing to complain about. Professional! You can tell Mr. Lordi can’t hit the high notes as well anymore, so he adjusts his vocals in the tougher chorus melodies and sticks to the mid-range. A few backing tracks were used for the vocal harmonies. Mr. Lordi won the crowd over even more when he addressed the audience between songs with simple strings of Slovenian sentences. It wasn’t hard to figure out that the first thing he mastered was the Slovenian names for sexual organs. He passed the exam with flying colors. He only botched a few of the hissing and shushing consonants.
Three quarters of an hour of unbeatable horror comedy, in which the band, besides the songs from the new album, of course also leafed through the rest of their discography and lined up the obligatory hits Devil is A Loser, It Snows in Hell, Deadache, Not the Nicest Guy, and in a hot finish Who’s Your Daddy, then closed the show with the breakthrough single Would You Love A Monsterman?!
There could easily have been at least 150 more people at the venue. Even if this isn’t exactly your musical taste, you’ll definitely laugh until you cry. That’s a guarantee only Lordi can deliver with their horror brainchild. Finnish national heroes, with monuments built to them, parts of the city of Rovaniemi (where Lordi come from) named after the band, and even a special Lordi drink similar to Coca-Cola! Will Slovenes ever honor a hard rock band this way? Someday, on another planet.
Setlist
LORDI:
1. +ETA (intro)
2. Nailed by the Hammer of Frankenstein
3. This Is Heavy Metal
4. Hard Rock Hallelujah
5. Deadache
6. Hella’s Kitchen (keyboard solo)
7. Hell Sent in the Clowns
8. Blood Red Sandman
9. Drum Solo
10. Give Your Life for Rock and Roll
11. Don’t Let My Mother Know
12. Bass Solo
13. How to Slice a Whore
14. It Snows in Hell
15. The Riff
16. Sincerely With Love
17. Amen’s Lament to Ra II (guitar solo)
18. Not the Nicest Guy
19. Devil Is a Loser
—encore—
20. SCG7: Arm Your Doors and Cross Check (intro)
21. Scare Force One
22. Who’s Your Daddy?
23. Would You Love a Monsterman?
Photo Gallery
