Artist: Pomaranča
Label: PAN Records
Released: 1993
Rating: 5/5
Your only hope of getting your hands on the original CD from the legendary Pomaranča, with material from their golden era in the first half of the eighties, when heavy metal was still young, is hidden in a compilation released in 1993 called “Nekaj Peklenskih”. To be more precise, it only covers material with Zlatko Magdalenič in the lineup. So at the helm is the classic and, at the same time, best lineup of the band. That also means there’s nothing on this compilation from the album “Orange III.” (1985).
You might wonder how anyone can put out a compilation based on just two released albums. Well, it’s not quite so innocent, because the songs Soldat, Mladost, Alkohol, Goba zla, Mleko z noži and Krvave čipke aren’t on the albums “Peklenska pomaranča” (1982) and “Madbringer” (1983). So this is material that was never released, practically like uncovering a lost treasure.
With their debut “Peklenska pomaranča”, Pomaranča brought heavy metal to Slovenia (and the former Yugoslavia). They were pioneers of the craft here at the time, with few or almost no bands as bold, flirting with and challenging the trends of the day as dictated by the bands of the new wave of British heavy metal, led by Iron Maiden and Saxon, then the original metal fathers Judas Priest, or the Germans Accept and Scorpions. “Madbringer”, which came out a year after the debut, cemented Pomaranča’s status even further, gave the guys an even clearer profile not just in the former Yugo, but surprised audiences abroad too. Both albums are represented on this compilation with a total of 11 songs, “Madbringer” with five, “Peklenska pomaranča” with six, which is a good deal more than half of both albums put together. But we’ll go reinventing the wheel on those another time and put them under the microscope of musical analysis; for now, let’s give ourselves over to the charm of the six lost gems on this compilation.
The very start of the compilation is something special: listening to tracks 1 through 5, it feels like hearing an album that should have come out before “Peklenska pomaranča”. Pomaranča, who were blessed with an exceptional talent for writing decisive, confident motifs right from the start, were conceived as a quintet, with one guitar and keyboards, which puts them much closer to the arena-sized classic hard rock acts of the day like Queen, Rainbow or UFO (I almost said Whitesnake, but they had two guitars), than to the young, hot, trendy metal assault troops of Iron Maiden, or on the other side, Judas Priest. Pomaranča are oddballs, whose line between hard rock and heavy metal is especially carefully blurred and awfully hard to pin down. The song Goba zla, for example, is a properly chilling mini EP with a daring keyboard insert, typical of the good old prog rock tricks. No wonder it didn’t make it onto the debut, because from the very beginning Pomaranča wanted to shock the “jugoraja” scene with sharpness, speed and volume, which the lyrics demanded, full of bedroom perversions, defiant devil-horn flashing and a whiff of occult tendencies. Soldat alone confirms that Pomaranča are a child of the classic hard rock bands that flourished especially after 1975 and that confidently built on abandoning the twists of blues rock. Soldat is an incredible song. The feeling it captures, one that inevitably leads to doom and mourning, is extraordinary. Not a ray of hope. The song Mladost confirms the classic (seventies UFO) approach, with a lazy sway between pre-chorus and chorus and a splendid “a la Schenker” outro solo from Popovič. In Alkohol the playful bass line sways almost funk-style. A slight R&B haze clings to the song’s chorus, so you’ll miss less if you take the MK III Purple classic Might Just Take Your Life as a rough reference, rather than the MK.II Purple classic Woman From Tokyo (listen to the riffs of the three songs mentioned and compare the moods). The peak among the five lost gems placed at the start of the compilation is the fifth one, Mleko z noži. An intense rock ‘n’ roll treat! Strange that this song didn’t make it onto the debut. In terms of reach, going by the album “Peklenska pomaranča”, Mleko z noži is definitely the debut’s lost song. The closing track, number 17, is the last lost gem. And definitely one of the best songs ever to come from this band’s pen. The multi-part vocal harmonies are far more polished, and the three-part guitar harmonies, whose absence on the first two songs the band made up for with atmospheric keyboard motifs that complemented Popovič’s solos, are with us every step of the way. Krvave čipke is a song that hinted at where the band would have gone had Magdalenič stayed. There are no keyboards in the song anymore. Instead the anthemic and the bombastic take center stage, and the ceremonial closing motif is especially fine. Despite the pronounced heavy steel slapping, the band’s songwriting style again doesn’t hide the hard rock roots of the bands listed above. It’s a song you can say couldn’t have been composed any better, given its remarkable thematic cohesion and the atmosphere it captures. A point that confirms that the original Pomaranča lineup was buried far too early to play out all its ideas and creative energy, which certainly wasn’t in short supply. Krvave čipke is proof that the band’s evolution was violently cut short.
This compilation is an extraordinary document of a bygone era of a new rock birth, one that left an indelible mark on the late Yugoslavia. That birth wrote a good chunk of rock history. We should be proud of it. Pomaranča brought Slovenes closer to foreign trends in the eighties and cleared the path for other young hopefuls who looked up to them, wanting to be even louder, even sharper, even more arrogant and depraved, and, all added up, shocking. The birth of heavy metal in Slovenia! This, my dear friends, is a compilation for all of you. Old and young. A seriously worthwhile document.
Lineup
Zlatko Magdalenič – vocals
Mijo Popovič – guitar
Tomaž Žontar – keyboards
Marko Herak – bass guitar
Franc Teropšič – drums
Production
Dečo Žgur (1&2), Braco Doblekar (3,-16) & Pomaranča (17)
Track list
1. Soldat (3:40)
2. Mladost (4:09)
3. Alkohol (3:35)
4. Goba zla (3:44)
5. Mleko z noži (3:53)
6. Mora (3:03)
7. Šminka (3:25)
8. Moja Smrkljica (3:39)
9. Moli (3:50)
10. Uniformiranci (5:51)
11. Orgia (7:42)
12. Madbringer (4:45)
13. Got To Be (4,08)
14. Your Eyes Call Me Back To Tokyo (4:08)
15. Release (4:47)
16. Let The Child Be Born (4:59)
17. Krvave čipke (4:02)
Album length: 74.29
