Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Sarajevo / Cinemas Sloga Club / Bosnia and Herzegovina
Concert date: 26.01.2014
Attendance: 400
Two thirds of our plague-ridden Balkan tour were behind us by around midnight on Saturday, 25.1.2013, and the Zagreb show hadn’t even cooled down yet, but the anticipation for the final third of our tour was already thick in the air. In fact, this was the real reason for the whole project in the first place. So we didn’t turn around and head home from Zagreb, but pointed the car toward the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo. The reason wasn’t just the Iced Earth show, but also the perfect chance to check out one of Europe’s metropolises and see what the Bosnian metal scene looks like.
On the way to the Croatian-Bosnian border we mostly talked about the show we’d just seen, and before we knew it we were standing in front of the border guards and our first (luckily also last) problem. The numbers on the license plate of our trusty ride didn’t match the insurance policy. Lesson learned: if someone swipes your license plates, swap your insurance policy and green card before you cross the border. Luckily they let it slide, and our night drive continued over countless bends (with so much roadkill along them that American hillbillies could cook goulash by the hectoliter) and on toward Sarajevo, where we arrived in the early morning hours.
Wiped out, we first collapsed into the beds of our guesthouse for a few hours (we’d arrived several hours before the announced check-in, but the friendly staff took us in anyway), then headed out to explore the city a bit. Baščarčija, probably the capital’s best-known street, is a true blend of East and West, and Sarajevo really is another world, which hits you when you get greeted for good morning by prayers echoing from countless minarets. A walk through town uncovers plenty of historical secrets, and standing at the spot where Gavrilo Princip set off the start of World War I fills you with an unbelievable feeling that you’re standing on a place that had such a huge impact on world history. Obviously we came to Sarajevo for the culinary goodies too, so we stuffed ourselves silly with čevapčiči, burek and pita, spent the afternoon parked over a few rounds in the lovely ambiance of Sarajevska Pivara, and in the evening headed for the venue.
Club Sloga is located right next to one of Sarajevo’s main avenues, Marshal Tito Street, and directly across from the Ministry of the Interior. It used to be a cinema, and today the hall is mostly dedicated to concerts, this time hosting a metal show for the first time in ages. Since the hall is still built around the cinema’s architecture, it spreads over two floors, the ground floor and an upper level lined with nifty booths that offer an excellent view of the hall and the stage. Given the reputation of Ljubljana’s Sloga, we gave the seats a thorough inspection before settling comfortably into the booths, hehe. The ground floor felt completely different, since it wasn’t clear at all how the crowd would manage between the tables and chairs that were pushed almost right up to the stage. There wasn’t much floor space for moshing, but while checking out the club we bumped into Warbringer guitarist Balmor Lemus, and we fell into a great conversation. He dropped some interesting anecdotes, the best one being this: years ago Lemus played Los Angeles with his former band Exmortus, right when thrash was having its big comeback. The show, with Warbringer, Fueled By Fire, Toxic Holocaust and Bonded By Blood on the bill, was also checked out by label vultures of all kinds, and everyone got a deal after the show except Exmortus.
For the third time in a row the opening greeting came from the Australians Elm Street, who, to their obvious great delight, got to play in front of an already practically packed club. Their set was fiery again, youthfully wild and hellishly energetic. The boys strolled down Elm Street like a tornado, swept the Sarajevo crowd off its feet, and sank toxic heavy metal riffs and Perkovič’s devastating drum salvos into it like Freddy’s sharp claws. The Croatian drummer pounded his kit like an animal again, and frontman Ben Batres once more took care of reliable leadership and getting the crowd going. On the third go, Elm Street managed to win me over completely, and it was easy to get into their somewhat generic heavy metal, which, with the feverish Bosnian crowd, faded like Halford’s heterosexuality. Elm Street definitely did better in Sarajevo than on the previous two days combined.
That Sarajevo was truly hungry for hard-hitting metal showed even more clearly during Warbringer, when a proper mosh war broke out on the floor and didn’t look like ending until the break. The Americans took the stage like rabid dogs again and sprayed Sloga with the napalm of brutal thrash. Lemus convincingly and reliably replaced Laux (temporarily?), flying up and down the guitar neck without a slip while also showing lively, energetic stage presence. Mottsman looked ridiculous again with his jazzy bass stance, but the bass lines popped like they should, and so did Anderson’s skins. The star shone brightest once more in charismatic vocalist Kevill, one of the biggest vocal psychopaths in metal, whose stage presence is simply perfect for Warbringer and lifts the band as a whole to an even higher level live. The boys blasted past in the blink of an eye with crushers from all four albums, once again confirmed and cemented that they’re the best thrash metal band of the new era, and proved that thrash as they play it (especially the new tracks from IV: Empires Collapse) can still sound fresh, convincing and so hard-hitting that it’s a joy to whip your hair around to it (hehe). Warbringer in Sarajevo may not have been as convincing as in Zagreb, but it was still wild, unhinged, aggressive and uncompromising. Dave Mustaine’s words describe Warbringer best: »Take no prisoners, take no Shit!«
The cherry on the cake The kajmak on the čevapi in Sarajevo was American veterans Iced Earth, who brought Set’s plague to Bosnia with the new record Plagues of Babylon. The response from the metal-starved crowd was phenomenal from the first note of the taped intro to the last goodbye, and I haven’t seen or heard such a loyal and loud audience in a long time. Iced Earth once again delivered a top-notch, well-rehearsed show too, and even the otherwise grim and serious Troy Steele showed a bit more life. Besides his brilliant soloing, Steele even threw the crowd a few smiles, while Appleton (dressed in Sarajevo in a kitschy Iced Earth tracksuit, no less) once again proved to be rock-solid vocal backup for Block, Dette of spectacular fame pounded and roared from behind his raised kit, Schaffer delivered his proverbially insane rhythm sawing, and Stu gave another dazzling vocal and frontman performance in Sarajevo too. Still, Block was clearly worn down by the third show in a row, or maybe by the cigarette smoke, because his voice audibly and quite noticeably grew more fragile toward the end of the show. That was probably also why Iced Earth cheated the Sarajevo crowd out of two songs, The End and Red Baron/Blue Max, which this exceptional audience definitely didn’t deserve. The band’s slightly cold, distant and routine playing was also a bit of a distraction, and at times it was painfully obvious that the guys use exactly the same speeches, whole moves and facial expressions every night, which wasn’t a big problem for the support acts. Still, the highlights were once again the unforgettable tracks from Something Wicked This Way Comes, which drove the crowd completely nuts, same as the beautiful Watching Over Me and the ever better and stronger anthem V, during which Stu even hurled a Guy Fawkes mask into the crowd. The final anthem, Iced »motherfuckin’« Earth, suited cold Sarajevo perfectly, and it was also the perfect finish to our three-day journey. It was unforgettable and worth every kilometer, and the Iced Earth show was also a sort of herald that the metal scene in Sarajevo is slowly waking up, and maybe another similar »tour« awaits us in the future.
Setlist
1. Plagues Of Babylon
2. Democide
3. Dark Saga
4. V
5. If I Could See You
6. Disciples Of The Lie
7. Among The Living Dead
8. Burning Times
9. Blessed Are You
10. Vengeance Is Mine
11. Cthulhu
12. My Own Saviour
13. A Question Of Heaven
—encore—
14. Dystopia
15. Watching Over Me
16. Iced Earth
Photo Gallery
