Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Tolmin, Slovenia
Concert date: 13.07.2011
Attendance: 10
Wednesday, the golden middle of the festival, packed in the biggest crowd of the whole thing thanks to its gargantuan headliner. No surprise there, since Wednesday was a day painted black and red by the mighty Slayer. Proof of that came bright and early, when the first “SLAAYEEEEEER!!!” chants started ringing out over breakfast. But the day was still long, and before Slayer a few interesting acts hit both stages, ones you simply had to catch.
First of its kind that day, German outfit The Ocean took the main stage early in the afternoon. Their music experiments with progressive songwriting and carves out one of the more unique “post-metal” sounds on the market. The Berlin crew looked like they’d been soaking up sunrays like solar panels, because the guys exploded into a big, chaotic and damn energetic show. That was mostly down to the hyperactive vocalist Rosetti, who seemed to be on every single centimeter of the stage and more than once leapt like a lion almost into the “photo-pit.” In the short time they had, they mainly played tracks from the double album Heliocentric/Anthropocentric, a philosophical critique of Christianity backed up by excellent and convincing arguments. Copernicus and Galileo would have headbanged with joy in front of the stage if they’d read The Ocean’s lyrics. The Germans spun us around the Milky Way with broken rhythms, unusual structures and complex approaches. The only slight letdown was the somewhat too gentle vocals, which Rosetti otherwise pulls off well when mixing them with raw, harsh screaming. Sadly, just half an hour was far too little for The Ocean to really shine as the center of the universe.
Through the middle of the afternoon the main stage was ruled by quasi-pagan, Viking and who-knows-what-else ear-unfriendly bands – Trollfest, Thaurorod, Die Apokalyptischen Reiter and Kalmah – so my personal taste got its fill mostly at the small stage. Even better was cooling off in the Soča, emptying my wallet at the CD stalls and quenching my thirst in the pleasant shade and cool of the beach.
And as the day tipped into evening, after all that lazing around, a hefty dose of dirty, old-school thrash metal hit the spot, served up at hellish tempo on the small stage by Italian veterans Bulldozer. The cult act is defined above all by its charismatic frontman Alberto Contini, dressed in a sort of monk’s habit that makes him look from afar like Anton Lavey, founder of the Church of Satan. Contini looks truly effective spitting out his furious lyrics in Venom fashion from a bloodied lectern. Bulldozer easily got the crowd below the stage into wild, uncompromising moshpits, and necks got no rest as Bulldozer fired off primitive, primordial riffs, oompah-polka drum rhythms and raw, aggressive vocal lines. Bulldozer’s breakneck speed feels like Venom or Tank shot up with adrenaline, while the mystic atmosphere is generously created by the backing-track keyboards and Alberto’s very presence. The mighty choruses came off even more pompous when backing vocals joined Alberto, and overall the band delivered an energetic blast of thrash metal mixed with speed and Venom-style black metal, with Contini hosting the show wonderfully, even in fluent English. Who would have thought the Italians even have good metal bands?
Polish veterans Hate served up an honest dose of blackened death metal, while Norwegian avant-garde black metallers Vulture Industries, who hail from the cult city of Bergen, the smelting pot of black metal, were an extremely pleasant surprise. Vulture Industries create rich ambient with generous use of keyboards, building a powerful soundscape from simple guitar lines and raw vocals that give way to clean, epic vocals mainly in the choruses. Vulture Industries are a truly special and unique band, probably without peer in black metal, because they don’t build their atmosphere on cliché devil worship and painting mugs in corpse-paint, but create chaos purely with instruments and vocals. Chaotic music full of unpredictable, psychotic twists and a fantastic vocal performance conjures up the mood of madness, demonism and schizophrenia painted by the mad lyrics. Definitely one of the nicest surprises of this year’s MetalCamp, and I’d love to see more bands of this caliber in the future, since they’re mostly made for music gourmets and offer a great break from the usually pretty weak bands playing the main stage.
VULTURE INDUSTRIES:
1. Crooks & Sinners
2. Race for the Gallows
3. Hangman’s Hatch
4. Pills of Conformity
5. The Bolted Door
6. Blood Don’t Flow Streamlined
Well, then it was finally time to move over to the main stage, because a pentagram with six letters every metalhead must know was already glowing ominously behind it: SLAYER! The legendary metal name clearly drew the biggest crowd to Metalcamp, and the space in front of the stage was packed to almost the last corner. No other band playing this year can boast a crowd that size. Slayer put out the extremely solid World Painted Blood the year before last, and they painted MetalCamp in blood too, opening with the album’s title track. The follow-up also shone in the bloody light of hatred with Hate Worldwide, and Slayer made it clear right away that they were in top form and wouldn’t be taking prisoners on the Metalcamp battlefield. Like a rabid wolf lunging at a helpless doe, the band threw themselves into a brutal set full of devastating thrash anthems and eternal thrash metal classics. Araya did his job phenomenally on vocals. Not once did his voice crack, and he spat out his vocal lines like a general giving orders the whole way through. Slayer don’t use vocal harmonies in the choruses (Kerry King is thankfully quiet on stage, hehe), so Tom’s excellent form came across even stronger. Surprisingly, Araya’s voice also held up in the inhuman screams, including the famous intro to the Slayer anthem Angel of Death, which the guys closed their set with. Since guitarist Jeff Hanneman is still recovering from the effects of a spider bite, the phenomenal Gary Holt (Exodus) is still doing the job brilliantly and with total assurance. He played every line with great respect for Hanneman’s work, and you can tell he has Slayer down cold, since he didn’t make a single mistake. On top of that, Holt is also the on-stage driving force, a real animal who headbanged from the first track to the last, while King lounged around more casually at the right end. Araya, thanks to back surgery a year or two ago, is static, but he made up for the lack of movement with earthshaking bass rumble and superbly delivered parts. And the real bone-rattling came, of course, from one of the best metal drummers around, Dave Lombardo. His pounding and uncompromising hammering on the skins, tight fills and devastating bass drums shook every single organ in my body. There was admittedly too little communication with the crowd, especially from Araya, but Slayer just aren’t a band that bellows “mosh, mosh!” the way Anthrax and Scott Ian do… Slayer are just.. evil, hehe. Tom Araya only has to flash that trademark wicked grin and the people below the stage break loose in gigantic moshpits. Slayer ramped up the tension extremely successfully toward the end, led by more and more classics – Mandatory Suicide, Ghosts of War, Seasons in the Abyss, and then a closing quartet of eternal hits that sent us south of heaven, where blood rained down on us and we were toys of black magic, and at the very end Mengele got us in his hands. This probably wasn’t the best Slayer show of all time, but it was an excellent and ideal “thrash ’till death” from a legendary band.
SLAYER:
1. World Painted Blood
2. Hate Worldwide
3. War Ensemble
4. Postmortem
5. Temptation
6. Dittohead
7. Stain of Mind
8. Disciple
9. Bloodline
10. Dead Skin Mask
11. Hallowed Point
12. The Antichrist
13. Americon
14. Payback
15. Spirit in Black
16. Mandatory Suicide
17. Chemical Warfare
18. Ghosts of War
19. Seasons in the Abyss
20. Snuff
Encore:
21. South of Heaven
22. Raining Blood
23. Black Magic
24. Angel of Death
On Wednesday, elite Swedish black metallers Watain closed out the main stage at half past midnight. You couldn’t ask for a better ending to the middle of the festival, since an ominous, demonic and superbly played set was the perfect send-off to bed. If Slayer ended their set with a hellish triplet, Watain raised the level of the occult and blasphemous one more notch. The spiritual heirs of the cult Dissection, led by charismatic frontman Erik, played a fiery set of expertly chosen tracks, and the stage props underlined the transcendental experience even more – ominous red light for the fast, wicked parts and blue during the epic passages, plus candles and burning crosses. Watain fantastically alternate brutal black metal parts full of aggression and unbridled rawness with melodic, epic lines, which peaked in the closing track, a fourteen-minute masterpiece from the current album Lawless Darkness, Waters of Ain. The ethereal experience grew with every minute of the song and hit its peak when Watain sent us off among the stars and planets with rich arrangements, crazy solos and an excellent performance from Erik. Every hair bristled on its own and goosebumps crept over the skin as Watain raced through the waters of Ain, and fourteen minutes were over far too fast. And yes, the controversial Watain behaved this time and kept their promise to the organizer not to douse the stage and crowd with blood. Watain were like the ferryman on the river Lethe, guiding us through timeless waters and leaving us stripped of our physical bodies somewhere far out among the stars.
WATAIN:
1. Death’s Cold Dark
2. Malfeitor
3. Storm of the Antichrist
4. Satan’s Hunger
5. Reaping Death
6. Total Funeral
7. Sworn to the Dark
8. Waters of Ain
Photos: Nina Grad
Lineup
MAIN STAGE: Rising Dream The Ocean Trollfest Thaurorod Die Apokalyptischen Reiter Kalmah Slayer Watain 2nd STAGE: Illuminata Black Dynamite Kaledon Deadend in Venice Visions of Atlantis Bulldozer Hate Vulture Industries Milking the Goatmachine Taake
Photo Gallery
