Location: Ljubljana / Gala hala (AKC Metelkova mesto) / Slovenia
Date: 10.11.2010
Over the years, the metal underground has only gotten more colorful, heavier-sounding and more explicit in its lyrical themes. There are plenty of names carrying the banner for extreme sounds, and lately we can honestly say that we Slovenes are a lot less deprived than we used to be. That’s thanks in part to the fact that the crew at Dirty Skunks, full of drive and ideas, keeps luring more and more stars of metal subversion into our lodges. November’s harvest was outstanding, and among everything on offer, what really shook heart and mind was the promise of a high-calorie kick in the gonads: an extreme alliance of grind, death metal and a ton of technical variation, all in one single package. The names that glued eyes to the posters were Misery Index, Grave, Arsis, the lesser-known Canadians The Last Felony, and the elder statesmen of gore grind, the former Gorerotted, who a few years back became (just) Rotted.
Gala Hala may not be the most prestigious place to host a gig, but in its twenty-year history it has already put on a pretty impressive number of acts and, above all, a wide range of sounds. This show was like an extreme, multi-layered metal cake, and the first in a series of thorough beatings belonged to English death grinders The Rotted, who rose from the ashes of gore grind band Gorerotted in 2008. Their rather primal mix of grind themes smells more of punk than death metal, in a death’n’roll kind of way, rather than explicit death metal. This package of noise didn’t rest solely on newer material, the album Get Dead Or Die Trying and the accompanying covers EP Anarchogram; The Rotted also dug into the older part of their musical catalog on stage. The bald-headed trio of vocalist Ben McCrow, drummer Nate Gould and bassist Reverend Trudgill is rounded out, or aesthetically countered, by the long-haired, pigtailed guitarist Tim Carley. He was the least audible of everyone on stage, but then nobody expects first-class acoustics at Gala Hala. And let’s face it, the ambience of our Gala Hala was just right for a first-class mental switch-off, soundtracked by zombie stories, party sarcasm and nihilistic black humor. Vignettes of zombies, necrophiles, festering abscesses and pure adrenaline kept coming, and the action both on and below the stage was anything but indolent. Strictly no bullshit is really the imperative that The Rotted faithfully deliver on, mixing the influences of Entombed, Napalm Death, SOIA, Motörhead and the likes of Vader. Babyslice’s vocals (McCrow can also be affectionately called Goreskin) tore heads off even the pickiest listeners with energetic growls, and many eyes were fixed on Fluffy Offalstench, or rather Tim “Rotted” Carley, who coaxed a whole lot of top-notch yet gloriously filthy-sounding riffs out of his Les Paul copy over the grind foundation. Sweat’n’roll had quite a few highlights, and one of them was definitely the track Stab Me Till I Cum, which, with its punkish grind’n’roll honesty, wrapped up the half-hour set more than successfully.
After the playful opener, it was time for some heavyweight bone grinding. The Canadian quintet from Montreal, with their brutal metalcore/deathcore alliance, sounds like someone trying to pet you with a bulldozer. The dynamic, tattooed vocalist Joss Fredette plants a foot on the monitor and thunders out vocals that Svarun himself would be happy with. A little more benign is the monotone guitar duo of Dom Grimard and Felix Roberge. Vince Menard rattled off an outpouring of drummer’s rage, and the constant effort of bassist Sébastien “Seb” Painchaud was downright terrifyingly in-your-face. The latter has so far written onto his CV stints with Withdraw, Trails Of Anguish, Vatican (Can) and, whoa, Ion Dissonance. If the crowd doesn’t know all the songs from the albums Aeon Of Suffering or the newcomer Too Many Humans, you can hardly expect singalongs. The Last Felony is actually a rather monotonous explosion of noise that tries to bring down the entire hall with decibels, and you can fault them for generic and pretty predictable breaks. The new generation of Montreal noise dominates with extremes and bets on a fairly simple recipe: pour into the bowl the fast fingers of modern death metal, a bit of “groove” and the primal feel of good old death, hope for some receptiveness to black metal atmosphere, then season it all heavily with core and breakdowns. The Quebec five-piece serves up sonic madness and, without compromise, reaches for something that damn well reminds me of, I don’t know, The Black Dahlia Murder … Too Many Humans is really the kind of material that could easily earn the label “soundtrack to a worldwide cataclysm”. Despite everything, the second round of harder-baked pleasure was nicely served.
Softer, more technical and above all more polished was the next course, from the fingers of Arsis. A mix of thrash, technical death in the manner of Chuck Schuldiner, and black-metal-ish vocals (in case Petrozza-style Kreator wasn’t defined enough for you), plus a pedigree that reaches into power metal, guarantees pleasure. The Virginia quartet meets every expectation, and the fairly organic bond between returning drummer Mike Van Dyne and reconfirmed bassist Noah Martin is topped off by a superb guitar duo: the pretty-boy Legolas that is Nick Cordle and the hoarse but excellent father of the band, James Malone. The songs are balanced and free of needless waffling. Arsis are original, and with finely measured, precise solos they always hit the nail on the head, nicely defying the notion that you could get too full of melodic death metal too soon. The proof is four outstanding records: after the string of albums A Celebration Of Guilt from 2004, United In Regret from 2006 and We Are The Nightmare from 2008, this year neatly and pedantically brings Starve For The Devil. Technicality, a ton of unbelievable riffs, inventive tempo changes, tasty, short and sweet solos and weighty lyrics give them a stamp that until now only Swedish phenomenon At The Gates, and a rare few other chosen ones inspired by God or hell, could claim.
After an hour of musical excess and an almost rococo aesthetic, at least as far as the music goes, the moment came for the feelings to thicken again and the clouds of darkness to pile up. Grave are undoubtedly one of the oldest still-active death metal bands from Sweden, and their timeline reaches back to 1986, when they operated under the name Corpse. Devoted to recording a heap of demos, they gave birth to their full-length debut way back in 1991, and Into the Grave remains one of the sturdier milestones in defining a new era of death metal brutality. The somewhat slower but still devastating crawl of rhythm and greasy guitars approaches the definition of sludge metal or doom, and the hesitant limping and slowing down of life energy brought about less energetic reactions below the stage. Microphones adorned with chains and a skull on the guitar amp as vintage scenery, a darkened stage, and after the intro, the opening track You’ll Never See from the now far-off year 1992 set the standard for high-quality vintage sound. The first man and elder of the now hellish trio, vocalist and guitarist Ola Lindgren, did the job with distinction, and backed by the greasy bass of Tobias Cristiansson and the quality drum-kit destroyer Ronnie Bergerståhl, he served up first-rate sepulchral morbidity. Most of the songs came from the old part of the catalog, and the albums Fiendish Regression, As Rapture Comes and Dominion VIII were left out entirely. The millennium sound was defended by the tracks Rise (from the album Back From The Grave) and newer material from their latest release, the completely fresh but very much back-to-the-old-sound record Burial Ground. The air was gradually running out, and the track Obscure Infinity was tailor-made for dropping into a full coma. “Slowly the air fades out / and I know that I soon will die / In pain I choke, in fear I will die / A part of my body remains after death / opens the porthole for my eternal rest / Take me away, pull me over the edge / I don’t want want this pain, I just want my death / A slow death by suffocation / turns my dreams to reality / End of my fucking existence / dead for all eternity!” Poetic and in tune with the state of the airless Hala. It was precisely the debut Into The Grave that formed the central axis of this outpouring of cryptic fury, and after the closing track Soulless came a state of total catharsis and an airing-out of thoughts and emotions, with the promise of something completely different.
“Something completely different!” And how, my dears. After the cycle of slow rot and system collapse came the time for a high-octane pick-me-up and a shift into a higher gear. This time in the form of the undisputed heavyweights of Baltimore deathgrind, Misery index. If Maryland is known mostly for the king of rock Elvis, the new millennium is more about critical musical opposition to the nonchalant dumbing-down of minds in the manner of Bush Jr. Part of that critique of the total collapse of values and the hopeless sinking of the world economy is this much-awaited moment of measuring the suffering index. After the opening chords of a short first soundcheck, the lights dimmed and the full sound of the now complete lineup hit from the speakers. The second guitarist’s duties, after the departure of Sparky Voyles, were brutally filled by Darin Morris, otherwise fully busy in the band Criminal Element, who parried the remaining trio of original members quite confidently and sharply. The vocal duo of guitarist Mark Kloeppel and Jason Netherton, and the battery salvos of drummer Adam Jarvis, got quality backing from the left side of the stage. A set of well-honed songs took us through the entire discography of the Baltimore alliance. There was no shortage of tracks from the first record Retaliate or from my favorite, Discordia, and they also filled our ears with the album Traitors and did a solid promo job for the latest, still studio-fresh Heirs To Thievery. The film of total grind rolls, with wild concert synergy between crowd and performers. Misery serve up The Spectator, Heirs To Thievery, Traitors, We Never Come In Peace, the brutal Theocracy, Conquistadores and, at least I think so, Ruling Class Canceled. The will to resist and stoically stand on the sidelines passes for many. The battle lines are closed up and we are all winners! The hybrid genome of death metal and HC punk and authentic primal grind is reminiscent of Dying Fetus, of which both Netherton and Voyles are former members. And some bold soul might add Suffocation to the list as confirmation of the devastating energy of full surrender. Radical anarchism and left-leaning themes, somewhat masked under the imagery of corpses, weave through the whole host of shortcomings of the modern age, and the salvos of perfectly polished critique are complemented, also thanks to the latest record, which took a huge step forward. In both production and content, songs like As The Carrion Call, the already mentioned The Spectator, as well as Plague Of Objects fit nicely into the string of the band’s work so far. The beauty is ground down to the end this time, and the string of critiques is full of wonderful reasons to completely demolish the shaky foundations of a rotten society. Misery Index are a reason for contentment, for when the heads of those guilty for the complete collapse of the system start to fall by the dozen at the killing fields of today’s crippled society.
Gala Hala shook and roared. The plaster was crumbling and blood was racing through the veins damn fast! With loud ringing in sore ears and smiles of satisfaction, hordes of happy chosen ones left the scene of the Ljubljana massacre. Many who were eager to hang out with their heroes of noise got their wish during and after the show, since everyone was full of endorphins and the positive atmosphere that we in Slovenia know how to conjure up. Knowing that this gig set a pretty high bar of quality, at least as far as extreme music goes, I can say with certainty that this year will have a hard time topping it, or will do so damn rarely. The gig cake was perfect and crowned with an icing of shrapnel, grenades and polished revolt. Ljubljana succumbed to hordes of corpses and took on a lovely stench of death, and you could feel the thunder of intellectually refined Antichrists and heretics in the air. But let’s leave God out of it this time. Treated to a superlative of superlatives, we could contentedly tick off yet another phenomenal gig, one you have every right to regret if you missed it. Such good steel alliances don’t come to our lodges all that often …
author: Rok Klemše
photos: Rok Klemše
THE ROTTED: 1. Drink myself to Death 2. The Howling 3. A Return to Insolence 4. Dawn of the New Error 5. Angel of Meth 6. Only Tools And Corpses (Gorerotted) 7. Stab Me Till I Cum (Gorerotted) 8. Nothin But a Nosebleed
THE LAST FELONY: 1. Do Not Defend Me 2. No one Would Notice If You Died 3. Overrated Existence 4. Televisionary 5. Too Many Human 6. …We are Future Housing Developpements For Maggots 7. Quandary
GRAVE: 1. You’ll Never See 2. Turning Black 3. Christi(ns)anity 4. Liberation 5. Semblance in Black 6. Still Hating Life 7. Obscure Infinity 8. Rise 9. Dismembered Mind 10. And Here I Die Satisfied 11. Into the Grave 12. Soulless
MISERY INDEX: 1. Embracing Extinction 2. Defector 3. The Carrion Call 4. Traitors 5. The Spectator 6. Ruling Class Canceled 7. The Great Depression 8. Retaliate 9. Ghosts of Catalonia 10. You Lose 11. Conquistadores 12 Heirs to Thievery 13. Manufacturing Greed 14. We Never Come in Peace 15. Theocracy
