On Tuesday it wasn’t just the air temperature that was climbing (which made the daughter of the mountains look all the more gorgeous). The temperature at the venue was rising too, as the number of good gigs we caught kept going up. Hand on heart, this year’s lineup looked pretty poor at first, but there turned out to be quite a few things worth checking out.
To kick off the second day we treated ourselves to some easygoing NWOTHM from young Swedes Kairos, who come from Gothenburg, the cradle of melodic death metal. The Swedes properly warmed up the early afternoon with punchy, energetic heavy metal that offered absolutely nothing you haven’t heard before, and Tom Hamstrom’s vocals are rather lacking next to similar singers. But the band made up for it with a confident, sharp performance and a more modern-sounding take on heavy metal. In a good half hour Kairos presented their freshly released second album Queen of the Hill and got our neck muscles nicely warmed up for the rest of the day.
Next we headed to the New Forces stage for a shot of rum and the German The Privateer, who are reviving the historic tradition of German pirates (feel the sarcasm?). The very name of these folk/power metallers from Freiburg makes it clear that the girl and the guys listen to way too much Alestorm and watch too many Pirates of the Caribbean movies. They’ve painfully obviously ridden the wave (pun intended) of popularity of Alestorm and clichéd, pirate-sounding power folk metal, and the live violin of their sweet violinist doesn’t help it much. The mostly German crowd in front of the stage had a blast, even more so when the band handed out inflatable sabres and let them row across the venue floor. For Alestorm fans probably great, for everyone else The Privateer sound just as lousy as Alestorm. The one and only true metal pirates are and remain Running Wild. Period.
Third up on the main stage was Infected Rain. They’re a Moldovan band whose style reminds of Jinjer. In recent years the band has drawn attention mainly thanks to wild singer Elena Catarge, whose voice can serve up brutal screams or pleasant melodies. Infected Rain also deserve praise for giving it everything they had in the extreme heat. The band clearly has enough experience to pull off their set. Broadly speaking Infected Rain play metalcore, but you can also pick up on nu metal elements, which is surprising given that hardly anyone reaches for that genre these days.
The death/thrash metal machine Esodic closed the New Forces stage on Tuesday, without a doubt one of the better bands of that stage among those we saw. The foursome, formed in Amman, found out during their career what it’s like to be a metalhead in an Arab country and were hounded by repressive authorities, purely because of their looks and the music they listened to and played. That’s partly why the members scattered all over the world, and after several years they got back together to play Metaldays. The band performed as a trio, with Zed Amarin (drums), Marwan Kayyali (guitar) and John Sawicki (bass, vocals), and in a good forty minutes played their painstakingly birthed debut Mirrors of Disgrace (2018) in full. Even though Esodic are basically a two-guitar band, they sounded excellent as a trio thanks to Kayyali’s fluid and beautiful playing, which nicely covered the space of both guitars, so the missing second one was noticeable only at moments. Amarin’s devastating drumming and John Sawicki’s raw vocals and rattling bass did a superb job too. While you could still hear a bit of nerves and a few minor slip-ups in the first song, the band drove the rest of the set home like a storm and surprised with colorful (and not cheap-sounding!) oriental inserts. Sawicki deftly (if clichédly) renamed one of the band’s central songs, Jordanian Heart, to Metal Heart and dedicated it to everyone in front of the stage, who rewarded the band with some moshing and even a small wall of death.
Every year in the festival’s history there’s some exclusive show, and this year’s was definitely the performance by extreme progressive metallers Alkaloid. The band is made up of seasoned musicians who previously played in Obscura, Dark Fortress, Necrophagist and others. Sadly, because of family obligations the band couldn’t play with their third guitarist Danny Tunker (God Dethroned, Aborted), but guitarists Morean and Christian Muenzner coped just fine. Alkaloid started out calmly with the song Kernel Panic in the style of eighties progressive rock, then the whole thing exploded into death metal. Singer Morean showed exceptional vocal skills here. It’s an excellent example of combining deep growls with clean vocals. With the songs Cthulhu and Azagthoth Alkaloid emphasized darkness and morbidity in the style of Morbid Angel. It still wasn’t the real speed you can hear on the album. But you didn’t have to wait long for that, because when Alter Magnitudes dropped, drummer Hannes Grossmann blasted all over the place while the guitarists served up fast neoclassical riffs. The most complex, chaotic and progressive stuff the band saved for last, with the songs Chaos Theory and Practice and the epic Funeral For a Continent. Short but sweet, and Alkaloid proved they have no equal among today’s bands described as progressive.
If there wasn’t enough retro rock the day before with Lucifer, you could scratch that itch with Icelanders The Vintage Caravan. The band is three young guys who want to revive the golden days of Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, Cream and a few other psychedelic rock outfits. The nostalgia was just right, but the songs aren’t convincing enough to stand out from the average. It felt like The Vintage Caravan latched onto the retro rock trend that Graveyard, Witchcraft, Kadavar, Rival Sons and others stood out with. Sonically the band is definitely convincing, but their songs simply don’t have enough “balls” to really bring them to the fore.
The next act on the BB stage would fit in better at Punk Rock Holiday than at Metaldays. Ritam Nereda are Serbian hc/punk/oi! veterans who have been going nonstop since 1986. Sticking out quite a bit from the rest of the lineup, the band still got a nicely packed venue moving and delivered live.
With the French outfit Rise of the Northstar it was the turn of those who swear by harder-hitting hardcore or even crossover. The band showed incredible potential with their performance, reflected above all in the heavy guitars, good sound and a very strong stage presence. Inventing something new in hardcore itself is very hard. Still, Rise of the Northstar surprised not only with their music but also with their outfits, which glorify Japanese culture. Their repertoire showed punchiness in the style of Hatebreed, while the aggressive hip hop vocals bring Biohazard to mind. In short, it could happen that in a few years the band will be headlining festivals.
Homegrown heavyweights Noctiferia had the honor of playing at a very favorable time and managed to draw a really nice crowd in front of the stage. As has become the norm lately, the band devoted themselves exclusively to their later period and played only songs from Slovenska Morbida onwards. Noctiferia showed up in a very high-quality light this time, which we’re used to from the guys, and the new drummer Urban Krč was a positive surprise, stepping into Matjaž Gergeta’s shoes without a hitch and mercilessly torturing the drum skins. With an outstanding stage light show, a touch of exclusivity was added by the fact that Noctiferia played the upcoming album Reforma in full for the first time, on which they took on Laibach covers. Dressed up in Noctiferia’s roar, they sounded very interesting on first listen, and Tanz mit Laibach worked especially well, in a completely Noctiferian way. For a more thorough opinion you’ll have to listen to the album (which features big names like David Vincent, Attila Csihar and Jorgen Munkeby), and even better, hear it live in a more fitting and intimate hall atmosphere.
Finnish humppa metallers Finntroll lured people to the main stage with different, polka rhythms, and drew a big crowd. The Finns marched onto the stage decked out in troll ears, then turned Tolmin into a dance floor of Finnish polka. Surprisingly, the band played quite a few of their more black-metal-leaning songs, and otherwise caused the biggest explosion at the venue with the classic Trollhammaren. There’s nothing to say against the Finnish trolls’ onslaught, their show was very solid, but my ear has a hard time digesting folk metal and headed instead for the gothic horror of Swedes Tribulation on the BB stage. The Swedish foursome are already well-known faces on Slovenian stages, having last played here in March of last year with the then-fresh record Down Below, so it was expected that the Swedish dark lords would once again play a proper show. That’s exactly what they did, putting on probably the best gig of the festival’s second day. Both the sound and the lighting, fitting the atmosphere of gothic horror, played into their hands. At moments it’s admittedly a bit hard to watch guitarist Jonathan Hulten’s effeminate posing, but you quickly forget it amid the superb performance and the thunderous vocals of frontman Johannes Andersson. Tribulation dedicated most of their set to the current album, led by the epic Nightbound with a riff that creeps under your skin like Bela Lugosi’s fangs, and of course the cosmic Strange Gateways Beckon was not missing either. Excellent!
The last act on the Lemmy stage on the second official day was announced as England’s Architects, who should have played years ago but had to cancel because of the illness of the late guitarist Tom Searle. Architects finally made it and confidently presented their songs. The band could boast a powerful sound, which especially came into its own on the breakdowns, as well as a polished performance. Architects above all showed what dimensions metalcore actually has. With the song Naysayer they even bring in chaotic hardcore. Above all they approach things in quite a technical way, so nobody can accuse them of not knowing rhythm. But on the other hand there’s a lot of emotion, shown through singer Sam Carter’s clean vocals. With their repertoire the band focused on more recent material, so the first albums don’t come into play here. Among the songs played were Holy Hell, These Colors Don’t Run, Gone With the Wind, Doomsday and others. You could especially sense that the band wants to show something more than just chaos and emotion. On the latest releases there are more and more keyboards, which enrich the sound and make Architects that much more pompous. Architects undoubtedly delivered, and it’s clear their hard work has paid off over the years.
Fittingly for the band’s name, Tuesday wrapped up on the “woodsy” BB stage, which Norwegian progressive black metallers In the Woods… took for the first time. The cult outfit split up at the turn of the millennium and reunited in 2014, and since then they’ve released two quality studio albums. They played the lion’s share of their hour-long set from the latest one, Cease the Day, going back to the cult debut only with … In the Woods. Given that the band is quite hard to catch live anywhere near our concert stages, nobody knew exactly what to expect, but the Norwegians convinced and enchanted from the very first moments. Their music rolled between the rawness of black metal and meditative “folky” moments, and thanks to the many unexpected twists it’s not hard to call In the Woods… avant-garde either. The Norwegians’ show offered a lot and was a fitting end to the festival’s second day.
Photos of Kairos, The Privateer, Esodic, Ritam Nereda, Rise of the North Star, Noctiferia, Tribulation: Nina Grad
Photos of Infected Rain, Alkaloid, Finntroll, Architects, In the Woods: Sebastijan Videc
Video: Sebastijan Videc
Text on Infected Rain, The Vintage Caravan, Rise of the Northstar, Architects, Alkaloid: Primož Novak
Text on The Privateer, Esodic, Kairos, Ritam nereda, Noctiferia, Tribulation, Finntroll, In the Woods…: Rok Klemše
