Authors: Rok Klemše, Primož Novak
Photos: Nina Grad
Video: Primož Novak
Venue: Gala hala, Ljubljana
Concert date: 11.11.2013
Attendance: 350
The fall concert season is already in full swing and has served up an incredibly varied mix of genres — we’ve had black, death and thrash metal shows — and this time Ljubljana got a tour that doesn’t exactly stop in our neck of the woods very often. The genres the bands played aren’t exactly staples on our stages either, but at least half of the acts who took the Gala hala stage more than lived up to their billing. The reason for last Monday’s show was the new record from Swiss-German The Ocean, but the even bigger draw may well have been their support act, those Norwegian jazz/metal lunatics Shining.
The night kicked off with French quartet Hacride, who put out a new album this year, Back To Where You’ve Never Been, which got mixed reactions, though maybe more positive than not. Live, though, it wasn’t exactly clear what Hacride wanted to play. The emphasis was on groovy rhythms, atmosphere and the occasional bit of technicality. The vocals left a slightly bitter aftertaste, coming across like an extension of some angry nu-metal guys from the nineties, with that mix of screaming and singing. You could call Hacride technical nu-metal, though they probably get the nu-metal label mostly because of the vocals, even though the vocals never reached for hip-hop lines. Hacride could have shown themselves in a better light. From the new album they played Introversion and Overcome, which wasn’t the best fit for promoting a more than solid record. After that the band played an older track, Perturbed, and then the focus shifted to atmosphere, with songs from the album Lazarus. Hacride have a sense for technicality and groove, but not to the extent of Gojira, if we’re talking French bands. Their songs simply don’t have enough interesting parts to grab a bigger crowd. With a better choice of songs, Hacride could have proven themselves more. They’ve got potential, but they’ll need to put in more work.
By all logic the quality curve should have swung upward with the next act, but instead it went dead flat or even dipped down. Up came Polish post-rock outfit Tides From Nebula, a name totally unknown to me, but sometimes even complete unknowns deserve a bit more attention. Not this time. Just the look of the guys, with their slicked-down hair and totally non-metal appearance (not that there’s anything wrong with that), made it clear they’d be the black sheep of the night. And they confirmed it with the very first notes: they served up long, repetitive and therefore hopelessly boring instrumental stretches, which are admittedly the essence of post-rock, but this was a living bore. If the calmer, dreamy parts in bands like tonight’s headliner are a chance to dig into the atmosphere and only part of the whole, then everything Tides of Nebula offered was one single dreamy snoozefest. The guitarist was a pain too, with his little dance moves that would be more at home in some hipster urban club.
Third time’s the charm, and how true that saying proved to be this time! And this time Monty Python’s “And Now For Something Completely Different!” really fit too, because the Norwegian musical psychopaths Shining took the stage. Going by what I’d heard, I’d never have believed that this avant-garde musical octopus started out as an acoustic(!) jazz quartet, because what Shining play today is the perfect musical score for a diagnosed schizophrenic mind. In what Shining throw into the blender and pour straight into your middle ear, you can hear total John Zorn-style jazz avant-garde and fully improvised free jazz excursions, progressive rock, classical music and (black) metal. Shining explored this unique mix down to the last detail on the landmark album Blackjazz (2010), and this year’s One One One is its logical follow-up. But nothing could have prepared us for what Shining did in Gala hala. The opening blow, I Won’t Forget, was pure musical chaos, which spiraled into nothing the moment frontman Jørgen Munkeby slung a saxophone around his neck and led everyone into extreme free jazz psychosis, while his instrumental buddies tortured their instruments like they were being hauled off to some Siberian gulag – the pounding on the black and white keys reached downright apocalyptic proportions, and the drummer switched styles like it was nothing, one moment hitting pure jazz tricks, the next pulling blast beats out of his sleeve. Insane. And Shining sent us into total madness at the end with a superb, eleven-minute interpretation of the King Crimson classic, 21st Century Shizoid Man. Shining were the absolute high point of the night, and I almost feel sorry for The Ocean, who have to work their asses off every night of the tour to match the impression of their predecessors, even though those only played for three quarters of an hour. Too short, but brilliant!
The headliner to take the stage was an old acquaintance of our stages, Swiss-German collective The Ocean, who are presenting their just-released sixth studio album Pelagial on this tour. Since their beginnings the band has dressed their albums in a strongly conceptual nature, explored to the bone. If on Precambrian they touched on the formation of the Earth, and on the double album Heliocentric/Anthropocentric on astronomy and a critique of Christianity, on Pelagial they venture into still unexplored territory of the globe – the deepest parts of the oceans. The Ocean played Pelagial in full, slowly lowering us through the ocean’s depth zones. The blue-green stage lighting fit the bill, underlining the dark tone of the music even more. The Ocean proved once again that with their experimenting and progressive songwriting they’re still one of the most unique “post metal” acts around, and they also showed up with an extremely energetic performance – drummer Paul Seidel coaxed mighty crushing waves out of a minimalist drum kit, while guitarist Jona Nido, with his “Gers-style” guitar acrobatics, came close more than once to knocking every light off the ceiling. Usually energetic vocalist Rossetti stayed more in the background this time, but that was mainly down to the primarily instrumental nature of the new record; still, he stepped up at just the right moments, convinced with a good vocal performance and successfully got the crowd going (even though the crowd was a touch smaller than during Shining). In an hour and a quarter, the oceanic collective took us down to the very bottom of the sea with broken rhythms, unusual structures and complex approaches, and if on Heliocentric/Anthropocentric Copernicus and Galileo would have been headbanging with joy below the stage, on Pelagial it would have been Verne and Cousteau. Despite a good, even excellent show, though, The Ocean also faded a bit next to the superb Shining.
Hacride written by: Primož Novak
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