Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Lene kosti
Label: Self-released
Release: 2012
Length: 44:38
Rating: 4/5
intro:
Unbelievable how time flies at poisonous speed! It wasn’t long ago that Lene kosti, the reunited Slovenian agents of the heavy-iron fatherland with granite metal roots, put out their first real studio debut, “Do Or Die”. It’s a high-flying piece of work that makes no secret of its big ambitions and full-throttle drive together! With it, the band paid off its debt for a slumber that lasted far too long, and in Lene kosti’s case that slumber ended in a great rebirth. Not only did “Do Or Die” finally fill the sizable chapter that had been missing from the Slovenian metal story up to then, it’s also an album graced by a recognizable and unique metal breadth, and its outstanding qualities flung the doors wide open for Lene kosti onto concert stages and successful self-promotion. I’m obviously talking about Europe beyond the Slovenian borders here.
background to the album:
Given how outstanding “Do Or Die” was, there must have been some creative stage fright in the Lene kosti camp before recording the new one. Is it possible to make a successor that, if not better, will at least follow “Do Or Die” with dignity? An album that can at the very least hold its own, in its musical expression, with its excellent predecessor.
“Penetrator” was actually finished in a rush, right before the band headed into the studio (early October 2011), and the raw, freshly composed material was honed to its final polish during the recording process itself, which wrapped up by December 2011 — lightning speed for the metal scene in Slovenia. But the fear that this was too fast was totally unnecessary! On the album, Rok Večerin W.U.K.O. laid down the drums and did a superb job, successfully filling the shoes of the hard-to-replace Requiem drummer Miha Nedoh, who played drums on “Do Or Die”.
the songs:
Looking at the material, it can’t boast that kind of thematic variety or deviation from the basic metal stance, but then the sheer pursuit of the primal axis of classic metal on “Penetrator” doesn’t really allow for that anyway. With their new ideas, Lene kosti once again drew the attention of two prominent German musicians who had already taken part in “Do Or Die”. The first is singer and bassist Mat Sinner (Sinner, Primal Fear), the second guitarist Manni Schmidt (ex-Rage, ex-Grave Digger). Their contributions give “Penetrator” an extra noble exterior. Mat Sinner laid down a vocal duet with Dr. Evil on the song Spread Your Legs, and the pairing of the two vocalists works remarkably well. Out of several options the band offered him, Sinner probably picked Spread Your Legs precisely because of its mild rock connotation, the same one Let`s Rock has. Those two songs are the moments on the new record that inherit the most character traits from “Do Or Die”. Manni Schmidt stuck his solo into the title track Penetrator. He used his signature grip, the “guitar hand”, the trademark sound that also adorns his songs for Grave Digger. An excellent solo with carefully placed notes, smartly seasoned with pull-offs and tremolo bar work, it proves that for all his strict musical professionalism, Manni approached Lene kosti’s new material with great respect. If two musicians as esteemed as Manni Schmidt and Mat Sinner on the modern Euro-power metal scene can pick out qualities in the essence of Lene kosti that are worth contributing their share to, that fact alone is an indicator that Lene kosti’s music is truly something special.
The album opens with a bang. The songs The Cage and Penetrator practically compete over which one will steal the crown from the other. Both have “arena-style” choruses, and that feeling comes back in several of the other songs that follow them on the album. Arena-style? The band built simple “crowd shouts” right into the core of many choruses, which automatically nudges the listener to join in on the shouting — the feeling isn’t much different from finding yourself in the middle of the delirious crowds of a Roman arena at a gladiator fight. It’s a combination of the hammering ultrasonic roll of the double bass drum pedal with primally doom-laden, simply executed metal riffs, where the bulk of the melody is carried by Milan Krušič’s vocals. That goes especially for the venomously wound-up songs The Cage, Penetrator, Die You Bastard and Refuse To Die. The last of these has yet another fantastic solo by “Dyz”, and on the other side a motif that strikingly brings to mind Judas Priest’s Exciter. As elementary as it gets. And fully effective. The notion of a guitar phrase is damn well known to Lene kosti.
The song Heavy Artillery, set over a ravenous “Maiden” galloping rhythm (picture a souped-up version of Time For Love from “Do Or Die”), creates a new mood on the album, and Tears Of Sadness, which comes right after it, is a half-ballad dedicated to Milan’s late mother. This song proves that Krušič has grown further as a performer over the past two years, since he takes the verses even more fluidly in his search for melody, which of course brings even more color into the songs and strings together deeper nuances between the different moods. With its excellent melody and gradual build-up of mood through a “crescendo” in the singing, Tears Of Sadness shows that Krušič can be plenty sophisticated and subtly sensitive when the moment calls for it. Fuel is added to the fire by the girlish backing soprano vocals of trained singer Inez Osina.
Two songs stand out from the wound-up “face-slappers” on the album: the already mentioned Heavy Artillery, set over the “Maiden gallop”, and the half-ballad Tears Of Sadness. Besides those two, Devil In Disguise and 13th Warrior stand out as well. Devil In Disguise is actually the second part of Uninvited Guest from “Do Or Die”, and in it Milan Krušič, with his utterly wicked stance, comes close to the vocal solutions of King Diamond himself. The heavy-rolling track is briefly lifted out of the cauldron of evil by a clever acoustic interlude in the middle, where Krušič, with his preacher-style tune, evokes King Diamond just a notch more. The closing 13th Warrior is the album’s special song. It’s the point in their career where Lene kosti have so far flirted most directly with power metal. It has the charisma of an epic, bombastic seasoning, for which the main credit goes to Marc Kavaš’s sparkling, finely polished, subcutaneously seductive melodic guitar ornament arching over the riff, then the highly compatible yet suddenly shocking twist of atmosphere into an oriental melody motif, and the charging (lead) rhythm of the song itself, which easily sketches before your eyes the historical point of every military march. From running French grenadiers to Spartan hoplites. To give you a rough idea of the mood, 13th Warrior is basically a hybrid of a “Germanized” Saxon from the album “Lionheart” (2004) and Judas Priest’s One Shot At Glory. This song quietly hints at where the musical evolution and maturing of Lene kosti could head in the future.
Giovanni`s Mojo is an extra song for those of you who’ll miss the boogie touch of the band’s earlier work across the album. The whole song belongs to Giovanni Kavaš, and it rather immodestly shows off the musician’s tremendous talent, which raises the question of why he doesn’t perhaps start some bluesy-boogie-flavored side project of his own.
production and DYZ’s contribution:
More than ever, the need, if not the outright demand, for relentless solo machine-gunning comes through. So Domen “Dyz” Justin got even more room to help shape the crushing picture of the atmosphere created on the album. His solos on Refuse To Die and The Cage are welded in the spirit of the world’s greatest masters of metal playing, like Alex Skolnick (Testament), Craig Locicero (Forbidden) or Gary Holt (Exodus). Dyz cranked the sound to the max. The guitars are sharp as a razor and sting like the most sharpened hornet stingers that swarmed down on humanity in the fury of Judgment Day. The sound embodies an excellent contrasting balance of building blocks that achieves a crushingly raw and white-hot, living effect. As if you suddenly found yourself in the burning flames of a fire falling from the sky onto the Earth! Dr. Evil’s vocals are placed within this extraordinary contrast between the rolling double bass drums, the wound-up, thickly booming bass and the massive wall of sound of the guitar riffing. He’s nagging annoyingly again, which no doubt gratefully suits the arrogance-filled punk-rascal stance of Lene kosti! This time Milan takes quite a few more verses with clean vocals compared to the “screaming” of “Do Or Die”. And on the “Penetrator” sound, his voice seems to come from a pit, a cave abyss, sounding wicked and merciless, sunk slightly into the sound picture itself. The album carries an overall dark and doomy atmosphere that has no time for selling pumpkin seeds and planting flowers. I can say that with its extraordinarily wicked sound, “Penetrator” has also brought a new era to the production of metal albums in Slovenia! A new qualitative milestone, with which Slovenia has come much closer to the achievements of the world’s best producers in the field of harder music genres.
conclusion:
That’s how it always is when manly, hairy and bearded old warhorses, defiant “Zaporozhian Cossacks” who’ve lived through half of the era of man and have all the Punic and Spartan battles behind them, take up playing metal. The incorrigible scoundrels, formed by the eternal and famous triangle of the Kavaš-Krušič-Kavaš creative alliance, haven’t let us down this time either. Simple as that. With the experience these guys have, the music that guides and inspires you is masterfully steered and directed the whole way through. In a way, calibrated like fine machinery with wisdom, knowledge and a wealth of experience so that it always hits with maximum effect. Both in the playing itself and in the listening. And that’s the most a musician can actually offer you. And the sages of Lene kosti fully understand this principle and follow it!
“Penetrator” is an album that shook off the boogie prefix. It had clung to Lene kosti since time immemorial and is documented just as clearly on the otherwise much-praised “Do Or Die”. There’s an immediate danger of getting caught in the treacherous trap of genericness when you dress up in the bare template of hammering out the primal form of heavy metal. Boogie always brought Lene kosti winning points of tantalizing eclecticism. And yet “Penetrator” also brings Lene kosti a new winning poker hand of aces, since with it the band managed to fight for an important place on Slovenia’s heavy metal scene. It kept all the musical peculiarities that make the band unique. “Penetrator” gives the band the right stamp of classic heavy metal purism, about which we can say the following: “What Judas Priest are to Britain and what Accept are to Germany, Lene kosti are to Slovenia!” So with the album “Penetrator”, Lene kosti kept their eclectically recognizable art face! And in the final tally, that was the main thing about all of it! We got a new excellent album, which is a standout for the Slovenian metal scene and as such can proudly go toe to toe at any time with the releases of all related bands from Western Europe and North America. Melody, energy and aggression are closely fused with the message-driven approach of the Teutonic school of German metal, which throws the doors wide open for Lene kosti to at least break through successfully into central and western Europe, if not something more.
Lineup
Milan “Dr. Evil” Krušič – vocals
Marc Kavaš – guitar
Giovanni Kavaš – guitar
Aaron Cernatič – bass
Rok Večerin “W.U.K.O.” – drums
GUEST MUSICIANS:
Manni Schmidt – guitar, solos on track no. 2
Mat Sinner – vocals on track no. 8
Ines Osina – backing vocals on track no. 4
Domen Justin “DYZ” – guitar, solos on tracks no. 1 and no. 6
Production
Domen Justin DYZ
Tracklist
1. The Cage
2. Penetrator
3. Heavy Artillery
4. Tears Of Sadness
5. Let`s Rock
6. Refuse To Die
7. Devil In Disguise
8. Spread Your Legs
9. Die You Bastard
10. 13th Warrior
11. Giovanni`s Mojo*
*…bonus track
