Morarock Festival 2008 – Day Two!

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 3 October 2026

Concert date: June 21, 2008
Attendance: 2006
Ticket price: 350

Morarock festival, held in Moraro, a little town in the Slovenian borderlands of Italy less than ten kilometers from Stara Gorica, was interesting this year mainly for its metal offering. The festival ran four days, with the second and third days going metal. Friday, June 20, 2008, was reserved for Italian heavy metal, with Vision Divine headlining. Before them came Black Raven, whom I missed thanks to leaving Ljubljana late and some clumsy navigating behind the wheel (in Italy), then Derdian and the more seasoned Elvenking and White Skull. So, a pretty strong lineup of Italian heavy metal.

Unlike in Slovenia, where thrash and death metal are all the rage among young bands, the new Italian bands lean heavily on the ossified templates of classic melodic heavy metal. On top of that they pile a bigger or smaller dose of pomp and other decorative, “deliberate overkill” in the form of all kinds of long-winded orchestral arrangements or choir chants. I’m speaking very generally here, of course, there are exceptions everywhere. Italian heavy metal is very strong, but the locals tend to overlook it. The market is saturated, people have seen and heard it all, or at least they think they have. So the turnout was pretty meager. Between 350 and 400 people showed up over the course of the day, and of course not all of them were standing in front of the stage.

The festival location is wonderfully well chosen. It’s a park setting with lots of shade, which comes in very handy during these muggy June days. Where the lindens were green…

DERDIAN: 18.45-19.20
Derdian, from Milan, were the second band on stage, a little before seven. These guys cultivate your typical Italian heavy metal. Metal melodic charges, bound to chasing big melodies. A full sextet took the stage, with two guitarists and a keyboardist (besides the rhythm section and vocals). At moments they pulled toward their countrymen Domine, but with a much clearer, less obscure, yet operatically polished vocal, strong in every register. You can draw parallels with Sonata Arctica and Rhapsody Of Fire. The guys won me over with their technical polish. They just serve up a very instant, predictable copy of a copy that’s been heard a billion times. Sadly. During their set the double bass drum pedal was a bit annoying, though a charge-style metal band can’t possibly do without it. But it was decidedly too loud. The same went for the bass lines, while the guitars sounded rather muffled. The guys deserved better sound. You can also tell the band is very young and doesn’t have a polished stage act yet, the kind that would impress a hard-to-please guy like me. By then, about fifty people were scattered in front of the stage.

1. Beyond The Gate
2. Screams
3. Nocturnal Fire
4. Betrayer
5. Eternal Light
6. The Hunter
7. Cage Of Light

ELVENKING: 19.45-20.30
Elvenking are another bunch of power metal merrymakers reviving tales of little elves and mushrooms, good wizards and wicked witches. Elvenking played with a slightly altered lineup, since bassist Gorlan happily got married and went off on his honeymoon. So their buddy Daniele, who otherwise plays in Chronic Hate, filled in for the night. The band played as a quintet, with violinist Elyghen of course, who added a mild gothic-folk flavor. It fit the essence of the band’s melodies nicely. Elvenking have been around for ten years and they’re no greenhorns anymore. That was more than obvious, because they delivered a nicely polished show. Singer Damnagoras was especially a treat, leading the band on stage with authority, and Elvenking were the first to get some real noise back from the sparse crowd. Unlike the bands before them, they were the first at the festival to get nicely balanced sound, where you could really feel the violin in the mix. The band is busy recording a new record, “The Scythe”, due out in mid-September. So they boldly opened the show with the title track, brand new. There were 80 people in front of the stage, and the front row even went wild with the band. The guys and the girl surprised everyone with a cover of Twisted Sister. What could it possibly be? We’re Not Ganna Take It. In a softened, technically more polished version, of course, where the vocal sounded almost too pretty and melodic. Still, it fired the crowd up nicely, which was of course the whole point.

Elvenking set list:
1. Intro
2. The Scythe
3. Jigsaw Puzzle
4. The Wanderer
5. Infection
6. The Divided Heart
7. Pagan Purity
8. We’re Not Gonna Take It
9. Poison Tears
10. The Winter Wake

WHITE SKULL: 21.05 – 22.15
The fourth band on stage were the seasoned White Skull. A sextet with two guitarists and keyboards, they didn’t serve up quite as rhapsodic a form of metal as the bands before them. The reason is the raw, forward-pushed guitar riffs the band favors. They come across as very Teutonic and recall some Germans a la Grave Digger, except that White Skull have a female singer in their ranks who definitely doesn’t growl. The crew has had quite a successful career. They’ve seen the big stages of Europe’s biggest festivals (e.g. Gods Of Metal 2006, etc…), and their European tour with Grave Digger in 2000 is well known. In short, as far as the performance goes, White Skull took the quality of the stage show to an even higher level than Elvenking. The hour helped too, since it had nicely gotten dark and evening had fallen, so the stage under the spotlights took on a special charm during the metal marches. What I missed about White Skull is that they don’t work on their look. Singer Elisa in particular gives off the look of a little ragged, dirty doll. The girl could cash in on her looks much better and add to the band’s appeal. Okay, I’ve meddled in the band’s politics enough. On keyboards, White Skull were helped out on stage by Alessio Lucatti, the keyboardist of Vision Divine, who thus played twice on the same night.

After initial trouble, with the bass line and drums too loud again, the band got the sound tuned even a bit quieter, which paid off. The guitars breathed clearly in the riffs. The vocal was expressive and front and center.

White Skull delivered a superbly tight and compact show, you can tell the band has a lot of mileage, close to 600 gigs played in their career. The soloing of Malmsteen wannabe guitarist Danilo took your breath away with its precision and extreme speed, as the man squandered an ocean of notes. As it turned out later, White Skull were the quiet moral winners of the night, since the crowd later didn’t raise quite such a ruckus, and the area in front of the stage thinned out a bit too (fewer people watched Vision Divine). White Skull are an excellent “live band”. They’re recording a new album, which will come out in the second half of this October.

White Skull set list:
1. Tales From The North
2. The Roman Empire
3. Head Hunters
4. Anubis The Jackal
5. Kriemhild Story
6. High Treason
7. Marching To Alesia
8. The Killing Queen
9. Cleopathra
10. The Dark Age
11. After The Battle
—encore—
12. Embittered
13. Asgard

VISION DIVINE: 22.45 – 00.25
A sextet made up of Olaf Thorsen (lead/rhythm guitar), Federico Puleri (rhythm guitar), Christiano Bertochi (bass), Alessandro Bissa (drums), Alessio Lucatti (keyboards) and returnee Fabio Lione (vocals), who is the most internationally known name of the bunch, since the man is the singer of probably the most successful Italian power metal band, Rhapsody Of Fire. Vison Divine were originally conceived as a solo studio project of guitarist Olaf Thorsen, who is also the guitarist of Labyrinth.

Surprisingly, the band kicked off the show with material from the album “Stream Of Consciousness” (2005), even though it’s not their freshest record. A nice change of pace right from the start. The band cultivates that, in the most primal nineties tradition, truly baroque-frilled power metal, a logical continuation of Labyrinth, with a strong progressive touch on one side and, of course, nothing but ambient orchestral passages on the other. That’s how the show at Morarock festival went too. The band put a colorful mix of songs from all their albums in the set list, and Fabio Lione proved that his voice is still wonderfully well preserved, strong and expressive from the middle through the high to the highest registers. His excellent singing was crowned by yet another superbly tight performance by the band as a unit. Thorsen was in exceptional soloing form throughout the show, and rhythm guitarist Federico skillfully chased him, at least in the double tercet harmonies. Really, it’s redundant to say that the individuals in the band are already so experienced, especially Fabio and Olaf, that the element of convincing stage presence and execution subdued the crowd in front of the stage without any trouble. There were somewhat fewer of them than for White Skull, which was surprising. Still, the people know the band’s catalog very well, and for example the performance of Out Of The Maze brought out amazing interaction between crowd and band. It’s hard to find the reason why there were a few less people in front of the stage, considering that in terms of quality of execution (on stage) Vision Divine mow White Skull down. Maybe they’re a bit too demanding, even though watching Thorsen is a real treat, a finger-licking pleasure in his hair-splittingly precise, ultra-sonic-fast solos, which often crisscrossed with the keyboard solos. In sync.

The band fired the people up especially with the Iron Maiden cover Wasted Years, which Lione had no trouble with and nailed completely confidently.

I hate pigeonholing like this, but since Labyrinth’s show way back in 2001 in Stuttgart before Helloween, I had the honor of seeing one of the best performances by any of the Italian power/prog metal bands. Sadly, the miserable turnout dampened the festival’s mood a bit, which lacked that electric charge in the air or real feverish euphoria, but that’s how it goes. In Italy they have too much of everything, and promoters of gigs for smaller to mid-sized bands always end up with the short end of the stick when organizing them. And yet they persevere. Thanks to the organizers. Besides the excellent music, they also offered very affordable food and drink prices, which were worth taking advantage of. For those of you on a budget, I recommend ordering a “spritz” at gigs in Italy (a spritzer: a deciliter of mineral water and a deciliter of red or white wine), for just €1.50.

Vision Divine set list:
1. Intro
2. The Secret Of Life
3. Colours Of My World
4. Perfect Suicide
5. First Day of Neverending Day
6. New Eden
7. Out Of A Distant Night (Voices)
8. Taste Of A Goodbye
9. Alpha & Omega
10. The Fallen Feather
11. Out Of The Maze
12. Versions Of The Same
13. God Is Dead
14. Wasted Years
15. Send Me An Angel