Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik, Jerneja Jerak
Location: Tolmin (confluence of the Tolminka and Soča) / Slovenia
Concert date: 08.08.2012
Attendance: 12,000
Ticket price: €109.00 (three-day ticket) / €142.00 (seven-day ticket)
Day three of Metal Camp served up easily the most genre-diverse, multicolored lineup of the festival. With the arrival of this year’s biggest headliner, the Americans KoЯn, it even went head-first into alternative metal territory!
Urgent business back home in Ljubljana kept this author busy in the morning, so I was late and missed Slovenian death metal quartet Doomed, led by vocalist Mraz (ex-Mora), on stage. The sun was beating down on the stage when the American thrash revivalists (old school revivalists, even, with parallels that dig deep into the legacy of speed metal bands) Warbringer took it. Old acquaintances from Ljubljana shows, then, on the Orto Bar – Gala hala route. The band is well known and accepted among Slovenian metalheads, but it couldn’t pack the crowd in front of the stage, with not even 1,000 heads watching, yet they impressed with their explosiveness! The five-piece, made up of brothers John (guitar) and Andy Laux (bass), brand-new members Carlos Cruz (drums) and Andrew Bennett, plus vocalist John Kevill, played the current album »World Torn Asunder« (2011) here too. After a European tour last fall, which brought them to Ljubljana again (their second time there), the guys pulled off a successful North American run on the Symphony X and Iced Earth co-headlining tour, so there’s no shortage of dynamite and sky-high self-confidence on stage. The old-school package of bullet-belted sergeants, spandex, jeans with »high-top Pumas« and a full-on war march charges through flammable riffs soaked in the poetry of war sermons that holds the band together in the new songs Living Weapon, Shattered Like Glass, Wake Up… Destroy, and in tracks from the first two albums Severd Reality, Shoot To Kill, Total War, Living In A Whirlwind and Cobat Shock. All of it was enough to drive bodies into a wild mosh pit by itself! Proper thrash metal bombardment, with no room to breathe in or out! Too bad the space in front of the stage wasn’t fuller.
A different picture in front of the stage was to be seen for The Black Dahlia Murder, the American metalcore band with death metal influences laced with melodic passages. The angrily digging five-piece, led by the cheeky vocalist Trevor Strnad (is he a Slovenian mountain leaf, after all?), took their name from Elisabeth Short, »affectionately« known as the Black Dahlia, who was murdered in unknown circumstances in 1947! A mass of some 3,000 heads hungry for moshing, who had unknowingly missed it with Warbringer, went into a frenzy. A determined circle pit during Miasma said it all. Once again a curtain of dust up to the sky. Trevor, flaunting his beer belly and a »Heartburn« engraving, was in top form, effectively alternating between screaming core vocals and a lower one that edges toward death metal growling! The band was caught in an ultrasonic sculpture of rhythmic blasts, torn up by vertiginous groove breaks! Total brutalization! The band’s great mood resulted in plenty of praise and thanks from the singer to the great crowd, whose responsiveness fired up the band’s playing even more. At Metal Camp the band presented their current album »Ritual« (2011), and besides the mentioned Miasma they rocketed A Shrine Of Madness, Moonlight Equilibrium, What A Horrible Night To Have A Curse, Malenchantments of the Necrosphere, Necropolis, Everyhing Went Black, On Stirring Seas Of Salted Blood, I Will Return and Funeral Thirst into the air.
The show I was feverishly anticipating at this year’s Metal Camp was the one by the occult American death metallers Nile. First, because I’d never had the luck to see them on stage; second, because it was a show of great expectations, full of atmospheric payoff in the re-creation of a Sethian phantasmagoria! Welcome, then, to the valley of the kings, the kingdom of Egypt, its dark spheres of the occult and mysticism! When the godless Seth strikes from his tomb, the burning horizon of cataclysm comes alive, swarming with insects and crawling scarabs, he raises all the other mummies beside him who want to return among the living, and evil is born! Nile are fantastic musicians and they confirmed it once again in their hour-long set in the middle of this year’s Metal Camp. The only original member in today’s Nile lineup is leader and mastermind, guitarist Karl Sanders, who had the most trouble of the four on stage in the afternoon heat – American fast food claims its victims among men of ample build – alongside the tall, shaven-headed and »Sethian« Dallas Toler Wade, both with »sharpened« Dean guitars, then brand-new addition bassist Todd Ellis and the one-of-a-kind drummer George Kollias – the very incarnation of the perfect metal drumming »robocop«. Together they fully created those feelings, the feeling of being in the middle of the storms of an all-out war epic of ancient Egypt. Military rhythms, an implantation of mood through oriental intro motifs, the dual faces of extreme approaches in the growls of Dallas and Sanders, who practically compete in spewing evil, the exceptional tightness of both guitarists in the harmonized guitar lines, the technical perfection of the repertoire, Karl’s and Dallas’s vocals backed by special echo effects from the mixing desk, and Dallas effectively firing up the crowd, often in the style of »You are amazing MetalCamp!« For the full effect, they should have been given an evening slot, when night descends on the Earth, and Nile should also think about activating special stage sets to dress the stage up as the ambiance of Seth’s pyramid, or at least work out the stage costumes. With his appearance, Dallas would make an excellent embodiment of Seth. The godless and doom-laden grinding of Nile brought the following songs to Metal Camp: Kafir, Sacrifice Unto Sebek, Definig The Gates Of Ishtar, Ithyphallic, Supreme Humanism of Megalomania, Permitting the Noble Dead to Descend to the Underworld, Sarcophagus and the closing Black Seeds Of Vengenace! Great turnout and great crowd participation! But for all of this to really hit home, you have to catch a standalone show by the band in a closed concert venue. Nile remain a band that, in experimental provocation, still pushes the developmental limits of the death metal genre today.
For all of you who wanted to rest your eyes on something beautiful and inviting, the performance by Epica was more than welcome. After a third day of watching raging masters of the metal arts lined up on stage, the lineup was literally screaming for something like this. Such gentle sights, doubled with a sweet-sounding course of events, were conjured up by Epica, a band that made good use of Nightwish’s less convincing career continuation after they dismissed Tarja, although Nightwish nevertheless remain the biggest symphonic power metal band fronted by a female vocalist. Epica, with the comely mezzo-soprano Simone Simons, is a band that knows how to use the available stage space cunningly! Whether it’s big or small. The sextet is the real deal. The dynamic switching of positions on stage, the arrangement of the musicians, firm eye contact with the audience, and above all singer Simone as the constant center of focus instantly win you over, and by creating a unique atmosphere they lead the listener into their musical world of fairy tales and legends. Epica once again brought a somewhat different crowd profile in front of the stage, and at the same time got a truly fanatical response, especially in the first few rows of the festival, where barely a square centimeter of air could be found. With their freshly released album »Requiem for the Indifferent« in their pocket, the band opened their show in just that style with the pre-recorded intro Karma, followed by the expected transition into the new song Monopoly On Truth, which also brought the band physically on stage. Along with it came a completely new member, bassist Rob van der Loo, who replaced the band’s original bassist Yves Huts this year. The operatic gradient grew by the minute, crossed with excellent stage dynamics, aimed metal punch, and the incorporation of neoclassical keyboard and guitar soloing, and above all, as already mentioned, most eyes during the show were constantly glued to Simone Simons, who again and again sweetly caressed us with her haughty, angelic mezzo-soprano. The band was aware of the competition and offered an excellent setlist too, capped by an epic from the second studio album of the same name, »Consign To Oblivion«. Epica also played Storm the Sorrow, Unleashed, Cry for the Moon, Martyr of the Free World, Sancta Terra and Serenade of the Self-Destruction.
Eluveitie, the toughest defenders of "fluting around" in metal, proved with their show that they’re among the most popular and beloved bands of the folk metal genre. What euphoria in front of the stage, insane! In fact, the whole Metal Camp festival seemed to be gathered on the plateau in front of the stage. I remember the band playing in Zagreb, Croatia, in February 2009, in front of the main draw of the evening, Kreator. Back then hardly anyone paid attention to Eluveitie. So in the last three years the band has really grown into a recognizable, leading name in its genre. The fifth studio album, again released on Nuclear Blast Records, titled »Helvetios«, a concept album about the Gallic Wars, is considered one of the band’s toughest albums in its catalog to date. Hence the feeling that, of all the folk bands, Eluveitie unleashed the most distortion-backed decibels at Metal Camp and came off as the loudest of them, since almost 70% of the repertoire was made up of songs from the new album! The octet really is a feast for the eyes. Besides a whole array of the most varied traditional, authentically handmade instruments, such as bagpipes, hurdy gurdy, gaita, bodhran, mandola and various kinds of whistles, Eluveitie also polished a diverse integration of singing styles. There’s Glanzmann’s brutal screaming, combined with his clean vocals, mixed with the female vocal lines of violinist Meri. Infectious chorus melodies bent into harmony with traditional Celtic pastoral tunes naturally fired up the frenzied crowd one after another, showing right away that the new album had already caught on with the audience. Time and again people in the crowd grabbed each other by the shoulders and jumped as one, while the band set an unbridled concert tempo. During the show quite a few people sought medical help at the backstage entrance, where a medical car stood with handy staff, patching up noses and other damaged parts of fragile and delicate human bodies. From the first beat to the last. In an hour and fifteen minutes! A concert charged with extreme intensity, full of hellish interaction between band and audience, it conjured up one of the hottest gigs of the day, and of the entire festival overall! Judging by attendance and the crowd’s intense reactions, it even eclipsed the headliner of Wednesday, the alternative American metallers KoЯn. Eluveitie, a team perfectly tuned on stage, played the following songs: Helvetios, Luxtos, Neverland, Bloodstained Gang, Meet The Enemy, A Rose Of Epona, Inis Mona, Alesia, The Uprising, Kingdom Come Undone, Havoc. The band opened the show with the intro of the new record in the song Helvetios (Prologue), and after Havoc, its pre-recorded outro (Epilogue) rolled.
KoЯn, the biggest act of this year’s Metal Camp and a band that contributed a lot to good festival ticket sales! The universally loved »Americano nu-metallers«, who kicked up dust on the scene with their arrival and began shuffling the top spots of the charts, especially at the turn of the millennium and the start of the new one, with the albums »Follow The Leader«, »Issues« and »Untouchables« . KoЯn remain a band today that doesn’t set many genre limits for itself and often, in its own way, merges seemingly insurmountable barriers between metal, hip hop, industrial and grunge. In short, a band that can’t be put in any little box, a band with the clearly marked attribute of homegrown art charisma. Reginald »Fieldy« Arvizu stayed home, because he and his wife were expecting a child, and things started moving even faster than planned around the time of the band’s Tolmin show, so Fieldy stayed home by his life partner’s side. Stepping into his shoes for the summer festival shows across Eastern Europe was Ryan Martinie, otherwise the bassist of Mudvayne. That left the impression that Fieldy’s characteristic tearing, rattling bass sound simply couldn’t be restored, but at the same time Martinie showed that he’s a slightly more sophisticated bassist, perhaps at moments, if not equal, even more inventive when it comes to using space for greater melodic movement in the lines themselves. Martinie looked like an evil demon on stage. Especially in the moments when strobe beams lit him from below and he bulged his heavily made-up eyes as he looked around. With a numb, icy stare and no facial expression, of course. The KoЯn crew is all extravagant musicians. Munky, with a facial ornament running vertically down the middle of his face that looks like a zipper, built a real sonic backdrop of his experimental guitar playing, but it was the exceptional drumming gourmet Ray Luzier who especially proved his mastery. With his arrival in 2009, KoЯn upgraded above all the groove attributes of their rhythmic rhetoric as well as the provocative exploration that has always driven the band forward. No wonder, as Luzier has worked in the past with exceptional masters of their craft, including Billy Sheehan, Jake E. Lee, Van Halen alumnus David Lee Roth, Tracy G and so on…
The band split their set into three basic parts, or four if you count the encore. KoЯn began the first part with rarities. Jonathan Davis, in his typical approach, shook as if plugged into 220 volts, pulled faces, raised his middle fingers high in the air, and didn’t hold back on the cursing as he delivered verses in the songs Divine, Predictable, No Place To Hide and Good God, into which the band also worked an extended jam on a variation of Porno Creep, from the album »Life Is Peachy« (1996). Here the instrumental side of the KoЯn crew once again drew attention to their great musical skills and talents.
Next came the central part of the show, in which the band thoroughly presented their fresh studio release »The Path Of Totality«, with the songs Narcissistic Cannibal, Kill Mercy Within, Chaos Lives In Everything, May Wall, Get Up! and Way To Far. It’s more than obvious that the band is happy with the new record, which is why they gave the material from it so much attention. Still, it started to bug me a bit that they could have pulled something older out of the arsenal and really blown on their fans’ souls.
The sound was top-notch. No complaints. To ensure a full sound picture and sonic authenticity, the band has two extra musicians on stage: a touring guitarist and another guy who handles sampling, keyboards and special effects. Davis was in a very good mood looking out over the packed »front of the stage«. As is proper, KoЯn built up the concert atmosphere minute by minute, and so in the third part, the closing one, they put forward their (expected) hits Here To Stay, Freak On A Leash, Falling Away From Me, and the regular part of the show was wrapped up by a cover of Pink Floyd’s Another Brick In The Wall, all three parts »tied« together, KoЯn-style of course. Besides the intensity the band developed with its playing, whose theatricality was backed by truly excellent sound, the atmosphere was also boosted by generous stage visuals with projections on multiple screens and a play of spotlights, which left few people indifferent. Still, the level of perfectionism is so high that the impression of immersion and letting go got lost, covered up by a feeling of routine, even though the band offered quite a few words of praise to the great crowd and served up a great performance!
The band opened the encore with Shoots And Ladders, to whose outro they attached the main motifs of Metallica’s cult classic One. That was followed by Got The Life, and after an hour and a half KoЯn wrapped up their excellent show with Blind. Old school, then! A groove voltage for the finale that even Rage Against The Machine wouldn’t be ashamed of in the opening riff and chorus, drenched in the atmospheric embrace of »soundscapes«. In short, a song that is the ideal ending to KoЯn concerts, as it points out once more the band’s roots and the restless, exploratory streak that keeps driving this band forward even today. Davis worked real wonders with his vocals and, in the variety that the KoЯn repertoire demands, didn’t falter in his vocal performance for even a second. A bomb of a show that, as expected, swept the competition away! The third day of the festival was thus closed by the concert peak – the KoЯn spectacle!
The concert pulse on the main stage was cut short this time, though, as a few days before the festival began the legendary Bay Area thrashers Heathen canceled their appearance. They were supposed to play after KoЯn with a half-hour set. Apparently their whole summer festival tour of Europe went south, and the band cited their own financial deficit as the reason they couldn’t make it.
Setlist
KoЯn:
pre-recorded intro Serenity (JDevil)
—part one (“Old and Rarities”)—
1. Divine
2. Predictable
3. No Place to Hide
4. Good God (with “Porno Creep” Jam intro)
—part two (“New Album”)—
5. Narcissistic Cannibal
6. Kill Mercy Within
7. Chaos Lives in Everything
8. My Wall
9. Get Up!
10. Way Too Far
—part three (“Greatest Hit’s”)—
11. Here to Stay
12. Freak on a Leash
13. Falling Away from Me
14. Another Brick in the Wall
—encore—
15. Shoots and Ladders / One
16. Got the Life (with drum solo)
17. Blind
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