Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Cvetličarna Mediapark, Ljubljana
Concert date: November 1, 2011
Attendance: 350
Rock the Nation, one of Europe’s biggest booking agencies, has spent the last few years cooking up a colorful menu of festival tours under the banners Heidenfest, Paganfest, Thrashfest, Full of Hate, Power of Metal, Hatefest and Neckbreaker’s Ball. That last touring behemoth finally made a stop in Slovenia too, and this time it served up… well, a rather sorry plate of mixed grill with a few meager sides that did little more than crowd the plate. In the past, Neckbreaker’s Ball had bands like Arsis, Behemoth, Kataklysm and Devildriver on hand to snap necks, but sadly this tour is also turning more and more into a conveyor belt of chewed-over bands aimed at a not-too-demanding younger crowd. Still, the organizer made the evening easier to survive with a genuinely hospitable gesture: right at the door, they pressed a shot of homemade mead into our frozen hands (and throats).
A lineup of no fewer than six acts promised a proper marathon of a gig, but after the starting pistol went off, the night didn’t so much sprint out of the blocks as shuffle out like an old nag. Thanks to the early hour, Finnish melodic death metallers Omnium Gatherum stepped onto the stage in front of a handful of diehards who filled the first (and only) row below it. The Finns have obviously grown up in the school of Swedish melodic death metal, In Flames and Dark Tranquillity, except that, unlike their teachers, they bring a lot more keyboard elements and melancholic, Finnish-sounding passages into the mix. The keyboards occasionally came off a bit too pushy, as they work far more convincingly in a supporting role behind the guitar riffs. Omnium Gatherum focused mostly on their current record New World Shadows, and the band delivered the material confidently and with total commitment. Maybe even too much commitment: vocalist Jukka, with his clichéd, generic growling and his efforts to rile up the (practically nonexistent) crowd, along with the posey soloing of guitarists Markus and Joonas, acted as if they were playing to a crowd of hundreds, and it came off as downright funny. The band’s energetic set was of course more than welcome, and the young Finns certainly don’t lack energy, but at times it seemed like Jukka would have put on the same show for a lonely tumbleweed rolling across the floor (and courted it like Kevin Spacey courting the plastic bag in American Beauty).
The thrash replacement for the dropped-out Death Angel (who preferred an American tour with Testament and Anthrax to Neckbreaker’s Ball) was Swiss band Gurd, who, according to their singer, last played here 13 years ago. The Swiss can boast a good fifteen years of activity and ten studio albums, the latest of which, Never Fail, they also presented as part of Neckbreaker’s Ball. Gurd weren’t exactly a standout, but their energetic and aggressive groove/thrash did get a bit more movement going in front of the stage. The thrash bears from Bern were lively and explosive on stage, sure, but their vision of thrash quickly turned repetitive and predictable. On top of that, they strung together painfully obvious influences from bands like Metallica, Sepultura and Exodus, and their guitar and vocal lines, even the drumming, were generic rehashes, almost shamelessly copied from those giants.
Bavarian wolves Varg brought a bit more energy to the stage, and with a confident, feverish set they finally managed to light a fire under the impatient crowd. Decked out in war paint and gear, the band tore into their half hour like starving wolves and raced through all three of their records so far. Their energetic set unfolded amid pompous, soaring instrumental parts and some interesting solutions with a shortage of folk instruments (thank God). Frontman Freki worked the crowd well, and it was surprising to see that the band even has a decent number of fans here. It was interesting to hear lyrics sung exclusively in German, in a more serious take on pagan/black metal without the goofy odes to booze, beer and the rest of the clutter most of today’s folk metal bands go in for, and it gave the experience an even stronger stamp of its own. Varg did their job confidently and managed to shift the evening into a higher gear. Only their standout cover of Rammstein’s Links 2 3 4 fell a bit flat.
Denmark’s Mercenary also tried to shift the night into a higher gear, but they honestly “stalled” and ground the gearbox more than once. The Danes, mostly thanks to Rock the Nation, which shoves them onto just about every one of its tours, keep playing tirelessly across Europe despite numerous lineup shake-ups. Mercenary recently released the album Metamorphosis, which clearly got the most attention, but with every new record the Danes sadly drop another rung in quality. Where are the days of the excellent albums Everblack and 11 Dreams? Metamorphosis is a very fitting title, because with this record Mercenary swim even deeper into the waters of radio-friendly metal. The album is yet another confirmation that the guys have been in constant, steep decline ever since 11 Dreams, the last truly good release from this band. The slide began with the departure of bassist Kral, who also handled the harsh vocals, and the final nail in the coffin was the exit of the excellent vocalist Mikkel Sandager. All the vocal duties were taken over by new bassist Rene Pedersen, which sadly didn’t make the band any better. The growls are painfully generic, and the aggression, epicness and atmosphere that Mercenary built so well on their first three albums are being wrecked by a growing share of sugary clean-sung choruses and moronic riffs. Rene unfortunately comes nowhere near Mikkel’s conviction or Kral’s brutality, and with his weak vocal performance and moronic banter (he shone especially with his calls for a wall of dancing; what the f**k?!), the band’s stage presence is sadly fading too.
With the set from Swiss folk metal outfit Eluveitie, it became crystal clear that for most of the crowd, they were the only headliners of the night. After a good three hours, the space in front of the stage truly filled up for the first time, and Eluveitie sent the young crowd into a wild dance to the sounds of whistles, violin, bagpipes and hurdy-gurdy. Where all this huge enthusiasm for the band comes from, and the fanatical worship of folk metal among the youth in general, is not entirely clear to me, but Eluveitie did their job solidly and confidently. For that we can thank mostly the inexhaustible energy and charisma of vocalist Chrigel, who kept the crowd effectively in his grip with extremely catchy and even aggressive melodic death metal, which in places makes a real foundation for neck-breaking. And that’s actually not far from what Dark Tranquillity delivered a little later. Thanks to the poor sound, though, the mix of folk and melodic death metal came off like the racket of a drunken polka band, since the folk instruments never really came through and the melodic guitar lines occasionally vanished into thin air. But the crowd wasn’t having it, and at every one of Chrigel’s commands they “moshed” and created circle pits (which you could, by the way, stroll through completely calmly and unhindered on your way to the bathroom).
After a proper festival-style run of bands, the time finally came for the dark stillness of Swedish Gothenburg to blow across Slovenian stages once again. Dark Tranquillity are today actually the last band of the big three of Gothenburg metal (along with At the Gates and In Flames) still carrying out their mission the way it should be done. The band’s latest record, We Are the Void, showed that the mix of heart-wrenching, melancholic beauty and beastly aggression still works, and that’s probably why Dark Tranquillity are finally starting to enjoy the fruits of a long career. Despite their headliner status, Dark Tranquillity presented their still strong and seriously potent vision of melodic death metal for just over an hour. That left no time for the classics, which I missed quite a bit, but the Swedes, led by fantastic frontman Mikael Stanne, who works the crowd with his charisma with one hand tied behind his back, made the best possible use of the time they were given. In a good hour they strung together songs from the current record and its predecessor Fiction, which is probably the band’s most successful album so far, and they didn’t forget a handful of eternal melodic death metal classics either. The song The Mundane and the Magic, with its canned female vocals, was probably a bit pointless and never really came into its own, but throughout the whole show, picturesque projections reigned in the background. They superbly accompanied the look of the soundscapes Dark Tranquillity were painting, and surprised during the performance of Zero Distance, which was accompanied by a yet-unreleased video (its unmistakable look was the work of graphic artist and guitarist Niklas Sundin). The Swedes finally managed to properly warm up the necks, but sadly the crowd stayed colder, thinning out during their set, and it was more than obvious that the younger generation doesn’t yet know how to appreciate the bands that helped create the genres, and instead turns with the winds of popularity, which at the moment happen to be blowing toward folk metal.
Photos: Nina Grad
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