Author: Rok Klemše
Location: Komen na Krasu / Slovenia
Concert date: 09.08.2007
Attendance: 700
There’s no better way to wrap up the festival summer than with a small, intimate festival on Slovenian soil. For the fifth time, Metal Mania Open Air shook the sleepy little village of Komen out of its slumber for a few days. Metal Mania is a special kind of experience: a festival where the (excellent!) local bands do most of the burning, joined by a handful of bigger-league headliners, and it has become something like Slovenia’s own Wacken. Most of the homegrown metal crowd pours in for a weekend of catching up with old friends, boozing and, last but not least, great music. Yeah, yeah, what better reason do you need? After a short, peaceful Sunday drive (read: maniac No. 1 with a heavy foot on the gas, blasting Death, Exodus, Annihilator, …) that got stretched by an unplanned detour (yes, the paths of metal are thorny), we cracked open a well-earned can of beer a bit before five and pitched our tent (any proper scout would have crossed themselves and probably compared us to the duo from A je to?) on an already nicely packed meadow. Guitars were already ringing out from the grounds, where the stage gets bigger every year, and it was time to head up front.
17.00 – 17.30 BLEEDING FIST
The (dis)honor of kicking off the festival went to coastal thrash metallers Bleeding Fist, who were already going full throttle at five. Despite the early hour, when most people were still boozing in front of their tents, they managed to lure a few people to the front. The trio from the coast has only been around for a good two years, but they’re incredibly hardworking and active when it comes to recording their own material, with a studio album (Immortal Hate, 2006) and a pile of demos already behind them. You can tell they could use a few more miles on the live odometer, and another guitar would fit them perfectly, but the guys tore uncompromisingly through half an hour and confidently played their own take on thrash, which they themselves call chaos thrash. The music of the band, led by mastermind Ettiene Cheller, sounds like a mix of Slayer and Venom with a dash of their own flavor. Ettiene is a really good frontman, because on stage he comes across as a roaring, raging war machine! Why do I say that? Because off stage he seems like a super friendly, mellow guy (Ettiene, I hope I haven’t ruined your image, heh heh). The guys played three tracks from the new demo Funeral…, Conquering Apocalypse, Funeral Smell and Death War Carnage, and closed with the punchy, raw Primordial Need. “Raise some fucking chaos!!!”
Bleeding Fist setlist:
1. Intro
2. Conquering Apocalypse
3. Death War Carnage
4. Funeral Smell
5. Evil Dead
6. Primordial Need
17.45 – 18.15 ERUPTION
There wasn’t much time to dawdle, since the next band was already getting ready on stage, which made the covered area on the right, with its “refreshing beverages”, all the more tempting. If you were fuming about the alcohol prices at Metalcamp, Metal Mania was your redemption. Half a liter of beer (and cold, too!) for a measly €1.50, 3 dl of bamboo for the same price, and so on. Metalheads’ eyes were positively glowing. Hey, we do drink a little now and then… Armed with a beer, I camped out in front of the stage, which was taken over by promising thrash/speed metallers Eruption. The guys from Ljubljana have been “putting the h in thrash” since 2005, and this year they put out their first demo with four original, hard-hitting thrash tracks that immediately get the blood (erm… beer?) pumping in every true thrasher’s veins. The guys played like their lives depended on it! The crowd was eating out of Buco’s hand, an apocalyptic mosh pit was raging below the stage, and the man himself screamed like the little devil from the Exodus classic Deliver Us To Evil. Half an hour of thrash adrenaline was still too little, but the guys presented their demo, which would easily fit into the golden age of Bay Area thrash, and paid tribute to the great Paul Baloff with two excellently played Exodus classics, A Lesson in Violence and the eternal thrash anthem Bonded By Blood (Buco, some people should never sing Exodus? :p). It may sound worn out, but with a performance like that you really realize that we metalheads are bound by blood!
18.30 – 19.05 INFIDIA
After half an hour of venomous thrash attack came something for the gentler souls: Styrian band Infidia took the stage, and it was time for half an hour of excellent melodic power metal led by the charming singer Tina. Infidia have a brand-new EP, Led By The Light, and played all four great tracks live, including Vision, Losing My Dreamland and Alive, plus Starchild. The Infidia crew really breathe as one, the girls and guys are superbly in sync, and the vocal trio of Tina plus backing vocals from keyboardist Katja and guitarist Erša sounds punchy and extremely convincing. Tina was great as a frontwoman too (er… frontwoman? that works, right?), and she had no trouble warming up the ever-growing crowd. The real surprise, at least for me, came with the Edguy hits Tears of a Mandrake and Superheroes and the eternal metal classic by giants Savatage, Gutter Ballet. Tears of a Mandrake gave Tina some vocal trouble, but she made up for the slightly weaker moment with superbly sung Gutter Balet and Superheroes. “We’re Superheroes!”
Infidia setlist:
1. Awakening
2. Vision
3. Tears Of A Mandrake
4. Losing My Dreamland
5. Alive
6. Soulburn
7. Starchild
8. Gutter Ballet
9. Lunaine
10. Twist of Fate
11. Superheroes
20.10 – 21.00 AMBASSADOR OF SIFILIS
Eight in the evening is the perfect time for spreading sexually transmitted diseases, and the guys from the Zasavje region, Ambassador of Sifilis, handed them out most generously. The guys’ joker-ish show is always a damn good time and this time was no different, though a bitter aftertaste was left by the absence of Handsome Damjan a.k.a. the Styrian Nightingale, who introduced the Ambassadors to the world of pop ditties they always wanted to reach and conquer. Oh well, Damči was with us in spirit anyway, or rather in the form of a huge Styrofoam phallus on stage, and the guys were so disappointed by his absence that in a fit of rage they revealed Murko’s mobile phone number to the broad Metal Mania audience. Anyway, if the particular humor of the syphilis fishwives isn’t your thing, the guys play excellent death/grind metal, forming the holy Slovenian grind trinity with Dickless Tracy and Vulvathrone. A prime example is the grind growler Death Area, but nobody tops the brutality the guys reach with I Want it That Way (upgraded, of course, with fantastic choreography by the porn quartet Ron Deremy, Roko Sigafredi, Peter Nordh and Lee Stone(d), spiced up with expert boy-band fellatio poses). Fainting and screaming from the gentler sex in the front rows goes without saying. But the night hit its peak with Škandal, which is actually a duet between Damjan and the Ambassadors, and which the guys played on their own because of his absence. Our excellent pop scene should be afraid… Sifilis is coming!
21.25 – 22.30 THE STONE
By half past nine it was dark enough to get grim and kvlt, and the demons from the land of burek, ćevapi joints and Ceca climbed on stage: Serbian black metal champions The Stone. The guys, who keep Serbia pagan, are in their eleventh year this year, with five albums behind them, the latest released in January this year. The Stone marched on stage in full battle gear, with leather covered in studs and spikes and bugga bugga corpse paint that outgrew its scare function long ago. The lit candles on stage conjured a gloomy, morbid, graveyard atmosphere and we were instantly a step closer to hell, while Nefas’s vocals were brutal enough to make even the dead laugh. In a good hour The Stone gave us a solid cross-section of their career, and even I, not exactly the biggest black metal fan, was won over by their quite melodic, quality black metal, which on top of that is mostly sung in Serbian.
23.00 – 00.30 DYING FETUS
The headliners of the first night were another treat for all fans of death/grind metal: the champions of the genre, the fathers themselves, Dying Fetus, were on stage! The blood in my veins froze at the very first brutal scream of the classic Epidemic of Hate, and then nothing could stop Dying Fetus for an hour and a half. The dual vocals of guitarist John Gallagher and bassist Sean Beasley didn’t come from human vocal cords, and their contrast makes the brutal onslaught even more dynamic. The crowd went nuts! There was no end to the headbanging and moshing, the band was visibly pleased, so they happily reeled off classic after classic. The legendary Americans have been grinding since 1991, and all that stage mileage really shows. Their long career has produced five studio albums, all superbly covered by the setlist. The blasphemous duo Raped on the Altar and Skull Fucked from the debut Purification Through Violence, the legendary Kill Your Mother/Rape Your Dog, and Killing on Adrenalin, which they used to close out with the excellent album Killing on Adrenalin… I could keep listing, but there’s no point. The setlist was a dream! Yes, yes, for an hour and a half Dying Fetus massacred us with adrenaline, the guitar wizardry of John and Mike is enviable, and the rhythm section of Sean and Trey is devastating! The title of the band’s fourth album is the best description of what they do – “Stop At Nothing!”
Dying Fetus setlist:
1. Epidemic of Hate
2. Fate Of The Condemned
3. We Are Your Enemy
4. One Shot, One Kill
5. Insidious Repression
6. Purged Of My Worldly Being
7. Justifiable Homicide
8. Bringing Back The Glory
9. Schematics
10. Pissing In The Mainstream
11. Kill Your Mother, Rape Your Dog
12. Raped On The Altar
13. Homicidal Retribution
14. Skull Fucked
15. Praise The Lord (Opium Of The Masses)
—encore—
16. Grotesque Impalement
17. Killing On Adrenaline
00.45 – 01.40 DEKADENT
The honor of closing out Friday night went to probably our best black metal band, Dekadent. Led by band mastermind Artur Felicijan (Artur lent his vocals to the Noctiferia albums, Per Aspera), their phenomenal debut album Manifestation of Seasonal Bleeding came out last year and has racked up countless positive reviews, many of them even in the foreign press. Dekadent are an incredible talent captured in a sound that has the ability to hook you instantly. A diabolical, brutal sound that’s nevertheless full of energy, mysticism, despair and sadness is what makes Dekadent so unique. Late into the night, Dekadent managed to create an incredible atmosphere that charged the air with electricity, the guys thoroughly showed off their masterful command of their instruments, and Artur kept us wide awake with his icy screams. Dissident Dream, Kres, Vigred, … Hats off, guys! Dekadent have already announced that Metal Mania was their last show of this year, as they’ll start preparing for the new album, The Deliverance of Fall. I’m waiting for it with open arms.
The first night was over (way too) quickly. A nightcap went down well before bed, and after a wet day the tent was just the right choice for recharging the batteries for the next day.
Words: Rok Klemše
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
17.00 – 17.30 BLEEDING FIST 17.45 – 18.15 ERUPTION 18.30 – 19.05 INFIDIA 20.10 – 21.00 AMBASSADOR OF SIFILIS 21.25 – 22.30 THE STONE 23.00 – 00.30 DYING FETUS 00.45 – 01.40 DEKADENT
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