Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Tolmin, Slovenia
Concert date: 12.07.2011
Attendance: 10
On Wednesday morning, the scorching sun chased us out of the shelter of our tents bright and early, which is the perfect excuse for a morning coffee in one of Tolmin’s cafés… soon followed by the first cold beer (the saying about fighting fire with fire really holds up!). The untouched nature surrounding the festival is something that makes MetalCamp one of a kind. I’ve been to quite a few European festivals, but not a single one can brag about a location like this, next to an emerald beauty. During the heat wave that stuck with us almost the whole week, the Soča took care of cooling us down, sobering us up and generally making hanging out on its banks a pleasure. Credit is due for the music spinning at Sotočje too, because the DJ has obviously finally swapped out the CDs from previous years. I only managed to hear the MetalCamp anthem once this time! The only thing I missed was the Focus classic Hocus Pocus, hehe. The main stage offered a few highly anticipated bands on Wednesday, while the small stage had nothing overly exciting, apart from our thrashers Keller and the Croatian technical death metallers Infernal Tenebra. Sadly, I somehow managed to skip both sets.
The honor of opening the show on Wednesday went to the local folk metal flag-bearers Brezno. Unfortunately, the heat in front of the main stage was simply too brutal and I skipped their set. From the few square centimeters of tent shade, though, I heard that Brezno did their job solidly, confidently and professionally. Best of luck at Bloodstock!
After Brezno, Kylesa brought the desert sand to the stage, the legendary sludge/stoner metallers from Georgia. It was a huge treat and a surprise to see their name on this year’s lineup, since they don’t play anywhere near our neck of the woods very often, and they stood out sharply from the festival’s “concept,” which is dominated by folk metal bands and often by acts that aren’t fit to even sniff a main stage. In the middle of the hottest afternoon heat, Kylesa wrapped us in a hypnotic trance of heavy chords, ethereal vocals and a rhythm section thick as a ten-ton truck. Vocalist and guitarist Phillip Cope created a great ambience with his dull, almost monotone shouting of the lyrics, and the atmosphere was lifted even higher by vocalist and guitarist Laura Pleasents, only with more aggressive and brutal vocals, almost growls. The energetic bassist rounded out the already rich sound with extra backing vocals, while the keyboards added even more to the mystical atmosphere. Kylesa pushed us straight into some kind of “acid trip” (their music would fit perfectly into Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson and its film adaptation with Johnny Depp), built with long instrumental passages that sounded almost like jam sessions, and apocalyptically weeping guitars. They bring a pinch of experimentation into their music mainly through the use of a theremin, played by Cope, which added a dose of the psychedelic to the experience. The only letdown was that the two drummers didn’t really come across live, since they mostly played the exact same lines, though it was impressive to watch their stunning synchronicity. Perhaps the slightly static performance was a bit of a drawback, but then again, you don’t mosh to Kylesa, you just bang your head in some kind of trance-like, astral state.
As the sun slowly started to retreat, Brainstorm took the main stage, one of the best representatives of European power metal, who deliver an energetic and extremely high-quality show every time. Brainstorm are far from the generic, clichéd sound of bands like Sonata Arctica, Rhapsody of Fire or Statovarius, because they build on their melodic foundation excellently with more aggressive, almost thrash-like approaches. The German band’s live shows are above all marked by the charismatic frontman Andy B. Franck, who, besides his stage energy and talent for working the crowd, also ranks among the very best European power metal vocalists. Andy explodes like a grenade especially in the soaring, pompous and epic choruses, where he proves he’s truly a vocalist cut from the same cloth as Dickinson or Kiske. The only thing that bugs me is that Brainstorm always and everywhere, despite nine released albums and a career of almost fifteen years, play early in the afternoon and get an unenviable three quarters of an hour or barely an hour, while that same day at MetalCamp Wintersun got an almost headliner role with one released album and its still-unreleased successor that they’ve been teasing us with for a good six years.
With the fitting atmosphere of the setting sun, the Swedish masters Katatonia led us into the darkness. The guys led by vocalist Jonas Renkse haven’t been old hands of the death/doom metal they played at the start of their career for a long time now. Which is a shame, because those first records are phenomenal, but Katatonia’s new direction is something you either accept or you don’t, there’s no middle ground. It’s clear that Renkse hasn’t been able to pull off raw growls for a decade, but his clean vocal is more than excellent. With the help of the instrumental foursome, Renkse built a dark atmosphere of melancholy and depression. It’s a pity that the vocal was mixed rather poorly and sunk deep into an overly prominent rhythm section. The sad, desolate feeling that Renkse’s vocal leaves deep in the soul stayed completely untapped this time. Renkse did tie the show together effectively, though, and his joke about their backdrop, the cover of the album Night is the New Day, which they had obviously hung upside down, was especially good. “We thought we would turno ur backdrop around, it look more satanic this way doesn’t it?” The guys surprised mainly by playing one song each from Discouraged Ones, Viva Emptiness and Tonight’s Decision, while the vast majority of the set came from the still-current Night is the New Day and The Great Cold Distance. The Swedes’ cold static quality suited their music perfectly, but Katatonia still left a somewhat cold and bitter aftertaste, since, true to their name, they delivered a truly slightly catatonic performance.
When Katatonia said their goodbyes, there was just enough time for a quick beer, because the legion of damned Dutch death/thrash metallers, Legion of the Damned, was already climbing onto the stage. The Dutch band is almost the equivalent of pressing play on a VHS tape full of old-school cult horror flicks from the eighties, since they draw tons of inspiration from exactly those B-movie brews. When thrashy riffing and Maurice Swinkels’ coarse growling roll over the lyrics, the effect is like a horde of zombies pumped full of adrenaline and steroids, escaped from one of Romero’s classics. Legion of the Damned carved out a good hour of the evening, uncompromising and brutal, and filled their cauldron to the brim with the blood of all five albums, with an emphasis on the latest record, Descent Into Chaos. With Son of the Jackal, for example, Legion of the Damned remembered that good little boy Damien from the cult classic The Omen, and took us the rest of the way on a ghost train through more or less successful references to horror movies, the occult and Lovecraft. Sadly, the guys suffer live from the inconvenience of having a single guitarist, as Richard Ebisch doesn’t cover the space of two guitars satisfactorily, which comes through especially during solos, where the only support is mediocre bass playing instead of the sickeningly good riffing a proper thrash band should have. It’s also not entirely clear to me how Legion of the Damned earned such a good slot at MetalCamp, since they play rather generic and clichédly evil death/thrash. Well, who am I kidding, I’d bet a beer it’s because they’re part of the Rock the Nation roster of bands. I think the German death/thrash masters/madmen Dew-Scented would have fit much better in their spot.
In the case of the next act, you can really see how a strong company behind a band can push it somewhere it doesn’t belong in the slightest, while I could only dream about that without their help. I’m talking, of course, about Wintersun, who played as the second-to-last band of Wednesday night. How a band with a single released album can earn such a position will never be clear to me. Even more so because Wintersun have been stringing us along ever since the release of their self-titled debut in 2004 (!) with the release of its successor Time. Well, at least they played a whole fifteen-second snippet of the new song The Way of the Fire. Bravo, guys…
Luckily, Wednesday’s headliner sobered us up and brought us back down to solid ground. One of the most explosive and stormy performances of this year’s MetalCamp came from the American giants Mastodon, who mix influences of sludge, thrash and groove metal in their music and pour it all brilliantly into a mold of a completely progressive approach that knows no limits. From the very first second of the set and the song Iron Tusk, the guys nailed my jaw to the floor and I didn’t manage to pick it up until the end. I’d heard stories that Mastodon are terrible live and know how to disappoint, but this was beyond all expectations. The guys ramped up an unbelievably energetic performance from song to song and slapped us around for a long time with progressive, incredibly complexly built songs. Mastodon were like a tornado with tons of debris already caught in its funnel: one moment a sludgy, ton-heavy riff smacks you in the back of the neck from below, then from the other side a completely unexpected spectacular arpeggio or a breathtaking solo from the duo Brent Hinds/Bill Kelliher, and while the funnel whirls to its end, the shrapnel of animalistic drummer Brann Dailor’s playing smashes you into a bloody, unrecognizable mass. All four members created a massive wall of sound with alternating vocals, ruled by the charismatic bassist Troy Sanders, though the other three helped out generously. Mastodon are like a roller coaster, full of unexpected twists, masterful buildups, slow climbs and brutally fast drops and turns. With a phenomenal setlist full of crushing anthems and classics, a closing Melvins cover, The Bit, and an unforgettable performance, Mastodon bloodily earned the title of band of the night, and only one other band on the last day blew me away like that …
Photos: Nina Grad
Setlist
MAIN STAGE: Brezno Kylesa Brainstorm Katatonia Legion of the Damned Wintersun Mastodon 2nd STAGE: Frame Rest in Fear Mass Hypnosis Siege of Cirrha Halor Eternal Death Warcult Achren Infernal Tenebra Keller
Photo Gallery
