Metal Camp 2012 – Day Two!

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik

Location: Tolmin (confluence of the Tolminka and Soča) / Slovenia
Concert date: August 7, 2012
Attendance: 12,000
Ticket price: €109.00 (one-day ticket) / €142.00 (seven-day ticket)

Day two of this year’s Metal Camp did kick off a string of folk metal acts, which are obviously in the spotlight of the mass metal trend these days. The late-night set by Italy’s Krampus had already hinted at it: for everyone who hadn’t had enough of getting their eardrums flogged after Machine Head, they kept spoiling them with their onslaught on the main stage long into the night. And yet, all told, day two was cut to the measure of death metal fans. Mostly thanks to the excellent Kataklysm and the phantasmagorical returnees At The Gates, the main draws of day two of this year’s Metal Camp. But let’s take it from the top.

The early part didn’t look like that at all, though. The folk metal tint that would gild the festival from day three onward fell to the speakers of the local bands Brezno and Avven. A septet for a septet, you could say. Brezno are a bit younger than Avven in terms of years on the scene! At four in the afternoon, in the middle of hellish heat, they took the stage, where a great crowd was waiting for them, confirming that bands who bake metal riffs with a dash of Celtic pastoral are still hugely popular. That Brezno are »growing« and getting better month by month was confirmed by their Metal Camp set too: well warmed up from their recent joint show with Arkona in Ljubljana at the end of July, they delivered a tremendously tight and convincing performance. With their presence they filled Metal Camp’s big stage and announced, with a revamped lineup, that there’s only one road for Brezno: the road to their first proper studio album, which will open the doors to recognition on the international scene. The songs that rang out from the stage, Glasnik, V nebo, Dolina pogubljenih, Žanjica, Bitka, Krst and Glas preteklosti, show a successful marriage of Slovenian traditional melos from folk heritage with the pedigree of the metal riff.

Avven released their second studio album »Kastalija« last year. They were actually pulled onto the main stage from the second stage at the last moment. What Brezno announced before Avven, Avven drove even deeper with their stage presence. The supportive crowd was almost »milk-toothed«, let’s say barely of age, if not whole hordes of sixteen-year-old boys and girls, and it gave itself over completely to the party under Avven’s anthemic rock-metal firing-up, kicking up a nice cloud of dust that made a smoke screen in the heat while a conga line of »choo-choo trains« rolled through during the band’s set. With their look and style, Avven involuntarily (or deliberately) recall Siddharta crossed with a Celtic pastoral element, a quip whose character is deepened by the vocal approach and the singer’s very presence on stage, then his Gibson »sunburst« Les Paul, and certainly the songwriting principle itself, which manages to squeeze out predatory anthemic-ness in choruses that get under your skin fast (Zmaji, Ros). Avven can also be a good example to other Slovenian bands, because watching their show, there’s no shortage of hints that stage presence counts at least as much as the voice. So a polished outward look, a unified wardrobe with which Avven try to highlight their musical character and musical essence, is a method many of our bands still lack, while Avven are already practicing it very boldly. That’s why it’s an important cue for any potential conquest of the international scene, too. The space in front of the stage, filled excellently, especially with Slovenian youth, confirms the band’s growing popularity and how firmly its music has taken root.

Madball are a legendary New York hardcore band who need no special introduction. Boxers with heavy tattoos, scars and snarling mandibular prognathism who inspire anything but a friendly view. Tearing pit bulls, then, who don’t hide their mafioso duality, as in the middle of their flagrantly violent posture they keep turning to constant confession before his highness in the sky. But let’s leave that, it’s seemed grotesque forever. Three quarters of an hour of rolling extreme rage across Metal Camp, cutting punk rattle infused with a breakneck cannonade of thrash-ified riffs and the frenzied escalations of the beast Freddie Cricien, without whom it’s hard to imagine Madball, was thrilling! The man worked out as much as a man can work out during a set. Starting with Get Out, then For My Enemies, Empire, We The People, the insertion of the long-lost Agnostic Front song It’s My Life, which came out in 1989 on Madball’s debut EP »Ball Of Destruction«, all the way to the closing crescendo with Heavenhell, Infiltrate the System and the final banger Hardcore Stil Lives, we enjoyed an authentic, direct execution boiling with hellish voltage that left no prisoners in its blitzkrieg. Only total devastation. During Madball the crowd visibly thinned out and, above all, kind of »melted« in abundance, which partly suggested that genre-wise, even if they don’t hide thrash metal elements, Madball at a festival like Metal Camp aren’t a band the crowd is massively looking for among all the performers. A better fit is their upgrade, Hatebreed, who still had to wait a day for their Metal Camp set.

Finntroll were next, and of course they turned all the feelings upside down! Boozy debauchees who lately, with their new releases, no longer manage to impress as they did years ago, when their arrival on the scene and lucid blend of black metal and biting, daft Nordic folk cheekiness so pleasantly spiced up the music scene. Unbelievable, but before the show started a real black foaming river came rushing toward the stage from every corner of the camp. People dressed and decked out in traditional Nordic garb: kilts, horns, Viking helmets, painted faces and of course the intoxicating stench of spilled alcohol derivatives wafting off the breath of the crowd…. The booze orgy began, and the band didn’t hide their great mood at the sight of the wild audience in front of the stage. In a running time that approached a full hour, the songs rolled by: Nattfödd, Födosagan, Slaget Vid Blodsälv, Jaktens Tid, an interesting cover of Insects, originally by the American new wave experimentalists Oingo Boingo, taken from the album »Nothing to Fear« (1982), the newer Solsagan and Under Bergets Rod from the current studio album »Nifelvind« (2010), and the »folk-ified« beer rager called Trollhammaren in the closing part. The mix of lucidity and a Nordic-cold, malicious roulette of stinging melodies, which together really recall a stumbling drunk troll who can’t wait to pull some stupid stunt, proved that Finntroll are a hot live attraction, tailor-made for everyone who wants to switch off and take a one-way flight of a bottled liter of Finnish vodka straight to the forehead of the daft

Now, Kataklysm, as the first band on the bill, ran into some sound hiccups, which meant that early in the set, during the opener As The Enemy Sleeps, they played for a while without bassist Stephane Barbe. Even so, the death metallers from French-speaking Montreal, Canada, kicked off the show as if it hadn’t thrown them off the rails one bit. Jean Francois Dagenais with his massive wall of riffs, and above all the excellent growler Maurizio Iacono, backed by the dependable drumming finesse of Max Duhamel, instantly conjured up a feeling of apocalypse, just as the band’s very mission and name suggest. Soon the missing Stephane was back in the game and the quartet kept crushing it with full force. Iacono easily took first place among the frontmen that day in the category of most resourceful and likable link-between-songs guy. His funny dialect of English turned the scary-looking mountain of a man into a cuddly teddy bear who, on top of that, actually sounded sarcastic in his banter. Kataklysm are oddballs, just as many of the things Quebec has given us in music history up to this day are special, starting with the absolute musical »nutcases« Voivod. Despite the gloom and doom the guys created through The Night They Returned, It Turns To Rust, the newer Push the Venom and At The Edge of The World from the current studio album »Heaven’s Venom« (2010), then The Awakener, Shadows And Dust, Crippled & Broken, As I Slither, Taking The World By Storm and Iron Will, it was also nicely chiseled with melodic inserts from guitarist Jean Francois, and we were also treated to the occasional sweetness of extremely fast, chopped-off sequences of hyperblasts (Shadows Adn Dust), created by Duhamel’s sixteenth-note snare. Even though fewer people watched Kataklysm in front of the stage, they bewitched Metal Camp with their flawless execution, technical complexity and sincere, giant-rolling march of doomsday blackness that only the essence of Kataklysm metal can create. »If you have a metal heart, than you have an Iron Will!« singer Maurizio Iacono announced the song Iron Will in one of his addresses to the audience. Headbanging well beyond the limit, until the neck vertebrae cracked! Madness and one of the highlights of the festival’s second day, an excellently executed overture of death metal perfection to the long-awaited At The Gates set.

One of the founders of doom metal, Paradise Lost offered a nice change of genre, not just on day two but across this whole year’s Metal Camp. If not the only British band to stand at the front of the big stage at this year’s edition, they arrived in Tolmin with a new album in their pocket called »Tragic idol«. The thirteenth studio album in total proves that the band is returning to the bosom of its primal music. Paradise Lost play in what is practically their original lineup of Greg MacCintosh (guitar), Nick Holmes (vocals), Aaron Aedy (guitar), Steve Edmondsson and the newcomer, ex-The Haunted and Cradle Of Filth, At The Gates returnee (!) and Brujeria drummer Adrian Erlandsson. So Erlandsson played Metal Camp twice. All this newfound, excellent working chemistry in the band was confirmed right at the start of the set by the great new song Honesty In Death. Night settled over the festival grounds and the sentiment full of doom melancholy worked at full efficiency as the band uncompromisingly revived a batch of songs from Widow, Erased, Forever Falirue, One Second, The Enemy, to the new Tragic Idol and Fear Of Impending Hall, and brought the show to an end with Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us and Say Just Words. Sound authentic to the bone, energy and atmosphere icy and as real as can be. Nick Holmes was in commanding vocal form especially in the first part of the show, then had some trouble in the middle, but toward the end his voice returned to its initial form. Paradise Lost on stage were true to their musical paradigm. Sullen, unyielding, morbid faces. Only Aaron Aedy lightened up his face from time to time, while his buddy Greg MacCintosh on the far left is still the band’s first icon and figure, one who speaks for himself. With hair nearly down to his knees, face aimed at the floor, grim gaze and fervent guitar playing, MacCintosh radiates the stage presence of a quiet chief and the band’s ideological leader. By this point the crowd had swelled to its highest numbers, and the band, perfectly tuned and delivering a compact, dynamic show, created a phenomenal concert and thereby signaled that their return to Slovenia in October this year, when Paradise Lost play at Kino Šiška (Ljubljana), is a must-attend show!

And finally, the most anticipated set of the festival’s second day. Returnees to the scene and one of the founders of melodic death metal of the good old Gothenburg school! At The Gates. We can say that The Haunted’s breakup was beneficial in this respect. With all sympathy to The Haunted’s fans! The reactivation of At The Gates is undoubtedly a dream come true for all the ultimate devotees of death metal in all its forms, as revealed to us by the exploratory musical genius of the creators of this metal genre.

You’ve probably been, in your own concert odyssey, at a show by a reunited act that fired its machinery back up after many years of silence. An act that stopped at the peak of its power and inspiration. At The Gates are exactly one of those: they quickly put out four albums, which are today considered ultimate death metal classics of pioneering value (when we talk about the Gothenburg branch of death metal’s development). After the breakthrough with the »Slaugher Of The Soul« album in 1995, At The Gates split in 1996. So, kind of on the way to the peak. Expectations of At The Gates at Metal Camp were high. At The Gates were picked as one of the festival’s »headliners« with an hour-and-a-half set, and mouths were certainly watering at the thought of a setlist that, one way or another, could be nothing short of dreamlike.

And sure enough. From the first bar to the last, the band made it clear that they hadn’t run out of charge at all. The dogged work of Bjoerler, Larsson and Erlandsson in The Haunted has strengthened the bonds between the musicians, and At The Gates approached the stage work literally fanatically! In the setlist they actually played the whole album »Slaughter Of The Soul« (1995), and with that act alone made up to the fans for all the years of absence from the »death metal« scene. From that album they skipped only the instrumental closer The Flames Of the End. That the show was in the sign of that studio album is also evident from the closing part itself. The regular set was wrapped up by Need, and the encore was opened by the excellent, sorely missed Blinded By Fear, which brought the fantastic atmosphere back to the peak of the godless orgies that conquered the Tolmin area one last time this evening, with not even the most hidden corners of Trenta, the source of the Soča included, standing still, and it probably gave a proper shake to the wandering ghosts of the fallen of the Isonzo Front from Tolmin to Kobarid, too.

The guys’ decision to play the whole »Slaughter Of the Soul« album was probably also down to the fact that until their reunion they hadn’t played much of it live, since the band’s breakup followed soon after its release. Despite the ominous incarnation of the gateway to hell they’d created, the guys wore serenity and joy on their faces the whole time at being together again, as they chewed through the repertoire with extreme dedication and incredible focus. Tomas Lindberg’s vocals are preserved and unblemished. Rasping that practically shot lightning out of the throat! From the first to the last second of the show. Swedish perfection of exceptional tightness in the performance, brilliant interplay, and an excellent sound picture throughout the concert. At The Gates lived up to all the expectations placed on the day-two headliners and swept the competition of the day away with vehemence in every aspect of stage performance. The chemistry in the crew is extraordinary, and let’s hope the band puts out its new studio album as soon as possible, which will be its fifth overall. A performance that was among the highlights of this year’s Metal Camp, if not the very peak!