Paranoid Open Air 2009 – Day One (2009)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Author: Rok Klemše

Location: Avtopoligon Ljubečna, Celje
Concert date: 12.08.2009
Attendance: 0

We’d been waiting for it like a man dying of thirst waits for water since the day it was announced – Paranoid Open Air 2009! With a seriously varied and killer lineup, the festival had us hyped from the moment it was revealed. It also carried on the tradition of Metal Mania Open Air, which used to go down in Komen, and last but not least it was a great way to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Paranoid, the first Slovenian metal webzine, which has been holding the Slovenian metal scene together under its wing for ten years now. A truly venerable milestone like that called for something special, and instead of throwing a private booze-up, the organizers put together an unforgettable festival. A festival for us! POA 2009 took place at the Ljubečna test track near Celje, and even though plenty of people had voiced skepticism about the festival grounds, the place proved to be ideal the moment we arrived. The only thing missing was a bit of shade, but even organizers aren’t almighty.

The honor of opening the festival went to local boys Eliminator, who wrung the last drop of sweat out of us under the scorching afternoon sun. Since we’d already sweated out our first welcome beer while pitching tents in the worst of the August heat, the beer that was available at a reduced price during the first band each day really hit the spot. This was another way the spirit of Metal Mania lived on, with the slogan “Early bird, noon track” (©Peter Gregorc), and it drew a bigger crowd in the early afternoon hours too. And boy, did we thrash to Eliminator! The tireless gigging shows – the tracks from the demo And You Think Your Holy have become recognizable enough that the crowd gets into them with ease, and the new songs get your neck moving just as nicely and show that Eliminator are far from resting on their laurels.

Shutdown, a hard ‘n heavy outfit from the Primorska region, poured more gasoline on the afternoon heat. The lads have lately become a fixture on stages all over Slovenia and are diligently racking up live mileage. It shows on stage – they’re tight down to the last note and as energetic as a band playing heavy metal mixed with hard rock influences (or the other way around, whichever you prefer) should be, and the charismatic, hyperactive vocalist Egzi in particular owns the stage. In a good half hour, the band served us juicy heavy metal anthems like the excellent originals Valkira and Križarji, for which guest vocalist Katarina joined the lads on stage, sang a lovely duet with Egzi and made for a nice surprise. The good-looking youngsters threw in dessert with rusty diamonds too, proving they get better from gig to gig!

The first big name of the festival was German technical death metallers Obscura. However you want to pigeonhole them, Obscura were without a doubt hotly anticipated, and they confidently delivered an uncompromising storm of excellent death metal. The band recently released the fantastic Cosmogenesis, which completely overshadowed their debut and can easily be counted among the brightest moments of technical death metal, right up there with albums like Testimony of the Ancients, Symbolic and Focus. And that’s even though Obscura build precisely on the influences of bands that paved the way for progressive and daring death metal – Atheist, Death, Cynic and Pestilence. Luckily, Obscura took only the best from those giants and added an unmistakable stamp of their own! The crowd probably had no real idea what Obscura had in store, because quite a few mouths were catching flies, but even though Obscura are a technically complex band, a mosh pit and headbanging broke out in no time. No wonder, because Obscura are confident and razor-precise live, and when you’re getting shot at from one side by the phenomenal riffs and spaceship solos of the Kummerer/Muenzner duo, and from the other by wild drumming and even more breathtaking bass playing from Mr. Jeroen Paul Thesseling – who also handled bass on the Pestilence classic Spheres, and who effortlessly runs his fingers over a six-string fretless bass in Obscura – there’s nothing left to do but surrender yourself to the wait for your neck to snap. Despite a solid hour-long set that took us through the cosmic genesis of tracks from the new album – Anticosmic Overload, Universe Momentum, Incarnated, Orbital Elements and others – Obscura left the stage way too soon. An unforgettable premiere for this excellent band on our soil, and we can look forward to it like little kids, because Obscura are returning to Slovenia as part of Bonecrusher Fest – on January 19th at Kino Šiška! The title of one of the tracks from Cosmogenesis describes all too well what we’d do with Obscura on stage – Infinite Rotation!

And just when you think that after Obscura’s unforgettable set your brain can’t take any more mind-bending riffs and inhuman bass and drum work, the organizers hit you with the legendary American band Atheist. They’re part of the holy quartet of technical death metal, and came back to the scene in 2006 amid the current trend of cult bands reuniting. At first it was only for a few shows, but luckily the get-together turned into a proper reunion, and the band’s masterminds, vocalist Kelly Shaefer and drummer Steve Flynn, are already cooking up a new Atheist record. True fans know what a mark this band left on the music scene, and the atmosphere before the set matched – nerves and impatient anticipation. Maybe even more so for those of us who’d seen Atheist the weekend before POA at Brutal Assault, given that they only played a measly half hour in the Czech Republic. Well, this time we got our fill, because Atheist carved out a hefty hour and took us into the wonderful world of daring death metal that was seriously ahead of its time. With their groundbreaking three albums – Piece of Time, Unquestionable Presence and Elements – Atheist wrote themselves into history as one of the most unique death metal bands, mixing the basics of the genre with technical riffs, jazz fusion elements and Latin rhythms. The legendary Americans took us on a short trip through history with classics from all three albums, and it’s impossible to say during which one the crowd’s eyes glowed brighter and the heads were banged harder. Led by Kelly Shaefer, Atheist guided us through the wonderful and unusual world of Unquestionable Presence, Piece of Time, Air, Mineral, Mother Man, And the Psychic Saw, On They Slay – tracks that are live proof of why Atheist have the name they have. The instrumental four-piece also deserves nothing but superlatives; new guitarist Chris Baker brilliantly played all the genius riffs and nailed all those fantastic solos, while for bassist Tony Choy it’s hard to find the right words. Choy is without a doubt one of the biggest names on bass in metal – among other things he’s earned his keep with Cynic and is currently back in Pestilence – but he’s probably most at home in Atheist. You could listen to Choy’s insanely good bass lines all day, and it’s a real joy to watch his fingers as he pulls off incredible bass wizardry. We expected a lot from Atheist, and we got it!

And if we got one of the biggest names in technical death metal, why not one of the biggest names in doom metal too? The organizers didn’t ask themselves such silly questions and delivered the peak of the festival’s first day with the legendary Candlemass, one of the greatest representatives of the doom metal genre. The doom giants were founded in 1985 by bassist and the only remaining original member Leif Edling, and with their debut Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, released the following year, they laid the foundations of doom metal. Despite swapping a fair number of singers, the band has kept up the high quality of its releases to this day, since absolutely every album is more than excellent, and the latest one, Death Magic Doom, is no different. Candlemass greeted us with a proper epic heavy doom crusher from that record, If I Ever Die, and right from the start created a fantastic atmosphere that didn’t let up until the end. The perfect sound only lifted it all further; the guitars were just the right amount of mighty and doomy heavy, the bass and drums crushing and rolling slowly, and Robert Lowe’s (Solitude Aeternus) phenomenal vocals flawless from start to finish. The atmosphere of the show built from song to song, all the way up to what was probably the peak, the ten-minute goosebump-raising masterpiece A Sorcerer’s Pledge. But the new tracks Bleeding Baroness and Hammer of Doom crushed too, as did unforgettable classics like Mirror Mirror, Of Stars and Smoke and A Tale of Creation. The incredibly charismatic, fantastic frontman Lowe beat even the king with a rainbow and bid us farewell with “Don’t do drugs kids!” So much for the proverbial gloominess of doomers, hehe. Without a doubt, Candlemass delivered one of the best concerts ever seen in this country, and this is something you could really watch non-stop!

The lullaby for the night came from Serbian black metallers Kozeljnik, a side project of the guitarist from The Stone, old friends of Slovenian stages. A little blasphemy before bed always goes down well, hehe.

Photos: Rok Klemše