Location: Kino Šiška, Ljubljana
Concert date: 17.10.2013
Attendance: 500
Impericon’s market-and-music caravan was back in Slovenia over the past weekend. CUK Kino Šiška gave it a market square and a stage. The German/European online hub for all things hardcore teamed up with the local gig-organizing duo Umazana dihurja to bring us (no less than) seven acts, more or less of the metalcore persuasion.
The fusion of metal and punk tradition, it seems, brings visual and expressive novelties that demand an update at the level of the listener’s eye/ear. Today’s support for music scenes and preachers of the one true whatever-it-is shows up in trading goods – so-called merchandising is the band’s tool for staying alive, and it no longer matters how long or how well they’re still standing. At the same time, it’s also how the fan’s belonging to the community gets shown/measured. That belonging is expressed through iconography on the listener’s uniformed look. Authentic, right?
On the borders of the modern-metal musical lineup, then, it seems the contemporary hardcore caravan is spreading and cementing an ever more visible idea of the Empire, and a strategic plan is taking shape: If you’ve already divided, uniform them; collide them, by all means, so you can split them further!
The wall of death in hardcore-metal gig folklore expresses exactly that. Two more or less forcibly separated sides of the crowd run into each other, or simulate the crash – no talk of moshing here, buy your expression first!
Bewildered by a (too) uniform base of fans scattered around the venue, waiting for their enlighteners from three great nations and one shared Empire, I only managed to focus when the first band, Australia’s Hand of Mercy, reminded me quite (un)safely, once again visibly/expressively, of the champions of this genre hybrid and their countrymen, Parkway Drive. With the latter, I dare to sum up, success came only after they were cleansed of stylistic division (as in: this is metal, this is core…?) and followed their own idiom, both audible and invisible, proving the identity of mixed-genre expression.
If my listening eye doesn’t deceive me, of course, the drummer of the Australian HoM was wearing a shirt with a screaming UNFD logo – the label Unified, formed by merging two smaller ones. Doesn’t the (un)safe look of that name, just on paper, recall some United-Nations-style machinery that “takes care” of world peace so effectively, just as the German Impericon, its European kindred spirit, “nicely” and above all “impartially” brings people together? As a bit of off-the-record trivia, I’d point out that to avoid legal action from the Italian clothing brand Imperial Clothing, the name had to be replaced with either Imperation or Impericon. Both names come from mashing two terms together, one of them even abbreviated
(-con.: conspiracy). Imperation joins the words generation and empire.
We had to vote on it, the all-seeing and all-hearing audience! How folksy!
After an opening 20-minute set, the music program continued with a more progressive metalcore take, also from Australia, Northlane. What I’d single out there is the innovative vocals, which, combined with the agreed-upon instrumental standard of mixed-genre, add to the band’s distinctiveness. The singer also packs it nicely into a brand with excellent, people-bonding banter between songs.
Because of work obligations in the form of an RL team meeting, I unfortunately had to skip the next band, America’s Hundredth. Maybe it’s worth pointing out that these hardcore guys are distinguished by their non-profit Hope for Humanity, where they raise funds to help humankind. Hopefully not the Bono way? (note: the singer of U2)
Right now they’re working on a project for clean and, above all, free water for everyone who’s been deprived of this basic resource for one “profit” reason or another.
The second half of the night, with a similar running time as before, was led by France’s Betraying the Martyrs, who in places recall bands like Born of Osiris, though the technical side of their playing often “plays tricks” on them. Apart from the iconography and symbolism (read: the cross in the logo’s name on the banner), I didn’t notice anything Judeo-Catholic. Perhaps the fundamental, Old- and New-Testament, religious (re)velation was hidden in the distortion of the performance, the impurity of the traveling sound, or the subliminal messages of Catholic metal?
I’d stop at Australia’s I Killed the Prom Queen, yet again. What do 10 extra minutes on stage mean at events like this? For the fused genre itself, say, the split CD is a very important factor. In the band’s early days, in the last decade of the previous century, it helps cut costs. I killed the promo(tional) queen? Anyway, if the other side of the CD features an increasingly noticed, preferably local up-and-comer (Parkway Drive), then the 10 minutes are roughly proven. Of course, plenty of other things happen in a band’s development, but they don’t significantly affect the length of the set. The last piece of evidence I’m submitting is the IKTPQ vocalist, reportedly the most regular guy so far, a former bassist of The Red Shore, who warmed us up to the point where San Diego’s Carnifex took the stage.
I wouldn’t fuss too much over the death-core label, since it falls into the context all by itself, just as Carnifex “fell” into the unifying caravan, joining the others as a replacement for yet another representative of the hybrid, Miss May I. If the Carnifex mix is a bit more metal, there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s also proven by the somewhat clearer and fuller sound heard that Thursday evening in the temple of the Slovenian alternative-urban scene. I’d single out the upcoming album (April, 2014). The new song they played has the same components as their Australian contemporaries PD, which proves the identity of mixed-genre expression. In other words, their own voice outside any unifying, typical idea.
The cliché of the death-core label itself is proven by the last act, the not-at-all-likable American Emmure. A matter of taste, huh? Die!
Photo gallery
