Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Kranj
Concert date: 16.04.2016
Shutting down Kranj’s Trainstation for good would be a huge loss, not just for Upper Carniola but for the whole Slovenian alternative scene. And not only musically, since what the club does reaches way wider than that. Luckily for everyone who has hit up their events over the years in one way or another, the Kranj crew managed to sort out the mess, even though there’s still a ton of work ahead of them. But given their drive and the effort they’ve put in, going all the way back to the legendary Bazen, I have no doubt they’ll clear the last hurdles too. And they’ll treat us to even more Metal Weekends, like last Friday and Saturday, the second one in a row. Over two days, eight local bands stepped onto the stage of Trainstation SubArt, and on Saturday we caught Sen, Battle X, Hellsword and Extreme Smoke 57.
First up at nine, in front of a pretty thinly scattered crowd, was young progressive death metal outfit Sen, whose Saturday night sadly didn’t go all that smoothly. The girls and guys barely got through a single song without (minor) mistakes, which might not have been so distracting if the complexity of the music didn’t make it even harder to follow because of it. Sen certainly don’t lack ideas: the songs are built from intricate passages, plenty of dynamic shifts and the band’s solid instrumental chops, which clearly feed on the one and only Death (fittingly, the classic Flesh And the Power It Holds got a decent rendition too), and there’s even a flute solo slipped skillfully into one of the tracks. Nina’s vocals follow the band very confidently, suitably raw and aggressive, but her authority gets undercut by how lost she looks during the longer instrumental parts and pauses, when she doesn’t know what to do with herself and gives the impression she’s in a doom band rather than a death metal one. Despite an ill-suited closing punk cover that was completely out of place, Sen show great potential, and with a few tweaks we could be looking at one of the more promising local metal acts.
The night picked up much better with Maribor thrash force Battle X, who hit Kranj with a proper energy bomb. The guys put out their debut Imminent Downfall at the start of this year, played almost all of it, and proved themselves one of the strongest live bands we’ve got. The performance was top-notch: the guitar duo of Filip Gornik/Jaka Črešnar fired off varied, well-thought-out riffs in endless bursts, while the rhythm section thundered accordingly. Battle X look hard toward Bay Area thrash (primarily Metallica and Exodus), but that’s not a problem, since their thrash sounds honest, fresh and convincing, thanks to Jaka’s excellent vocals, helped out in all the right places by gang vocals (most convincing in the album’s title track, which they also shot a video for), which only spice it all up. Thanks to a funny, self-assured frontman, Battle X managed to squeeze more energy out of the crowd, and even a bit of moshing, and the cherry on top was a crushing take on Blacklist.
After a long absence, Hellsword returned to Kranj, and the trio once again flung open the gates of hell at Trainstation with their old-school black/speed metal without much trouble. The little hellions were met by a rather anemic crowd, but Hellsword didn’t mind much, since they trampled Kranj like Damien trampled his nannies. The Ljubljana trio served up a cherry-picked selection from the EPs Blasphemy Unchained and Sounding the Seventh Bell, a few new songs and some interesting covers. The riffing and soloing of Ironfist’s guitar once again cut into the flesh of young virgins, while the rhythmic blasphemy of Mike Manslaughter and Marko Massakr stomped all over Jebus without mercy. The new songs, with a bit more complexity, promise a lot, and Hellsword pleasantly surprised with their covers, the Venom classic Witching Hour and GG Allin’s punk nastiness Bite It You Scum.
A very fitting finale to the second metal weekend in Kranj came from Extreme Smoke 57, the grind elder statesmen of the entire former Yugoslavia, who don’t play like a band with twenty years of history behind them but with the energy of kids who’ve just started their musical journey. Boco apologized right at the start in case his performance turned out a bit weaker due to tiredness, but there was no trace of that, all you heard was his thunderous growl, which roared on to the very end without a shred of fading power. The loud, clean sound coaxed proper sonic tornadoes out of the instruments, and the short, bouncy grind blasts trampled the still-attentive crowd, despite the late hour, like a buffalo stampede. Boco wasn’t the only one who filled the stage, as the rest of the members held back not one bit either, while serving up tight riffing and d-beat rhythms. Extreme Smoke 57 fired off a bunch of tracks from their many releases, presented the new EP Corruption Deteriorates, and sent everyone home with a truly energetic F.O.A.D.
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