Artist: Grad
Label: Dallas Records
Release: 2007
The Croatian crew of alternative rock healers known as Grad, after a good two decades of making merry, finally delivers proof of their live power in 2005. Palach uživo is the band’s first such raid, one that was probably bound to end in a sure-fire triumph for the six guys from Rijeka. After the warmly received fifth studio album Glad, which you can read a review of at THIS address, Grad treated their worshippers that same year to this more than solid live release, which, thanks to its toughness, opens a new chapter in the history of this seriously interesting band.
Palach uživo is an intriguing concert journey recorded on December 29, 2005, in their hometown of Rijeka, with the exception of a short but very welcome bit of studio bonus material dating from 2007. It boasts some impressive mood-hopping, fueled by tireless melodic waves, tamed in turn by an above-average level of playing quality. Stylistically, Grad don’t experiment with straying far from their own studio-set course live either, which you can ultimately spot in the batch of songs that closes out this document. Most of them fence themselves in around predictable arrangement-level borrowing from the questionable musical legacy of the nineties. Still, Palach uživo is actually a very dangerous alternative rock sword, masterfully forged in places, and it cuts both ways! On one hand, the album “burdens” you with a feeling of gloom that’s already been chewed to death in the past, but the guys, and this is a big plus in their favor, often break it up at totally unexpected moments with impulsive outbursts of sawing metal-punk elements, polished off with listenable pop-rocker rhetoric.
Palach uživo stretches across a good hour and a half of atomic splitting of self-sufficient indifference, which, unlike many similar Slovenian experiments, sounds surprisingly digestible. The band works as a whole, and all their elements, however contrasting they might seem, practically breathe with one another, so Grad effectively dodge any kind of stereotypical bombardment. If we’re really looking for a needle in a haystack, it’s worth mentioning that in the future Grad might do well to tilt their gaze in some other direction too, one that would put up more decent resistance to the monopoly of mostly MTV-oriented fairy tales. The resulting layering, which would soon follow as a welcome sonic upgrade, would no doubt be a bullseye. As it is, for most of the album we can mostly just give in to dreamy melancholy, from which we’re jolted awake by the direct-delivery kicks of songs like Ima li nešto, America or Kotač, which, thanks also to the ever-present, confidently dictated backing vocal harmonies, get the blood pumping every single time.
So Palach uživo is an album with plenty of reasons for carefree, ideally satisfaction-filled enjoyment, both for the more commercially minded consumers and for those of you who expect something with a more concrete musical pulse from live documents like this, rock & roll, so to speak, treated as instinctively as possible with mostly alternative tools.
Lineup
Dean Škaljac: vocals
Igor Stevanović: guitar
Orijen Modrušan: guitar
Saša Đanić: bass
Danijel Benčik: keyboards
Slobodan Grujičić: drums
Production
Mario Juničić
Track list
1.Vjetar u meni
2.Kreni
3.Licem uz lice
4.Riječi
5.Glad
6.U balonu
7.Budiš me
8.Biti normalan
9.Do sumraka
10.Eni
11.San
12.Nebo
13.Kako da zaboravim
14.Ljudi
15.America
16.Ima li nešto
17.Vodi me
Bonus tracks:
18.Voda
19.Kotač
20.Stvari
Album length: 74.59
