Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Artist: Trdoživi
Label: Self-released
Release: 2016
Runtime: 42:40
Rating: 4/5
Trdoživi are a punk rock band from the Slovenian Littoral, more precisely a crew from Branik in the Ajdovščina area (home of Rihemberk castle), perched right below the hills of the Komen Karst. With the album »Poreklo«, which came out in the dying breaths of last year, they’re crashing back onto the scene after eight years. Their predecessor »Kamen spotike« dropped back in 2008. If you’re tough and alive, you live a tough life. Which means that if you survive, you get tougher and tougher and, as a result, built to last. A true hardy survivor. Don’t worry, we’re not talking about a band of freshwater stinging critters. This time these are the guys who sting with a real whip of primal, razor-sharp, old-school punk rock rhetoric, true inhabitants of dry land, namely: Klavdijo Čebron (bass, vocals), Boštjan Vodopivec (drums, backing vocals) and Miha Gerzelj (guitar, backing vocals).
So this is the crew that made it through the leap from socialism to post-socialism, an old guard now hurtling headlong toward Abraham (that’s fifty, in Slovenian slang). A guard that, by the way, back in the days of strikes and rebellion in the eighties, with its faith in justice and honesty (even if those are imagined illusions, in the hands of neo-capitalist manipulators), kept punk on its feet, was the opposition option, was the voice of the street, the voice of the people. The album »Poreklo« couldn’t have a more fitting title, and it says everything about the band. What you hear is what you get. The band doesn’t recognize or tolerate any detours into cosmetics or window dressing. Just a middle finger pointed up, straight into the eye of capital and the high treason of those who tore the country out of the people’s hands more than 25 years ago (and, as a result, limitlessly humiliated the personal dignity of its citizens) and who today »self-manage« their servitude to Brussels and the USA. »Poreklo« unfolds along those lines too. It’s a rebellious battle cry of old farts. An untamed cry that, in its essential authenticity and boundless intellectual honesty, knocks the listener off their feet in an instant. It’s a textbook document of old-school Slovenian punk rock mockery, with an unmistakable undertone added by the Karst bora wind howling through the album like nothing else.
Even though Trdoživi look like a species of dinosaur on today’s Slovenian music scene, their new awakening is all the more appreciated, because musically they’re a relic of the old punk rock school and “upbringing” that has almost vanished from the current scene. For a moment, Metlika’s Indust Bag woke up too, remember? Oh right, Tolmin’s Rodoljubac, anyone else? Ah yes, Kočevje’s Pankeroschi. And who else?
That kind of energetic vibration, embodied by the album “Poreklo”, is something we can’t get today from the young guard of bands establishing themselves under the banner of alternative rock art culture. Nor is it fair to demand it from them. Simple as that. A different generation, raised differently, so they understand, perceive and create noticeably different music, which they still call punk, even if it only “tickles” the ears and doesn’t know that famously sacred anger that the desperadoes of the old-school rock’n’roll craft, Trdoživi, can still hit and enchant with.
There’s no shortage of sarcasm, self-irony and honest, healthily wiseass sides on this album either. In that respect, the black humor of bands from the Littoral like Zmelkoow, Ana Pupedan and, in our case, Trdoživi, practically gets passed around like a proverb (Po bndimi, Pejn pokozlan). Of course there’s a pile of flubs on the album, which only adds extra nobility, color, smell and taste to the age-old mold of the players. When you hear an album like this, it blasts you back to the golden days. To the early nineties, and you think Slovenian second-generation punk rock has been born again! At least for a moment. Anyway, »Poreklo« is an album mostly stuffed with sped-up rock’n’roll wrecking balls, cobbled together from three to four chords, mildly deviant, dissonant turns, and not overly precise vocal execution. Elementary, rudimentary, primal. The way it should be in the true sense of punk and rock’n’roll. It has roughness, sharpness, unbridled quanta of heart-spewed fury. Even though Trdoživi, with their veteran status and all their modesty, probably wouldn’t even dare admit it outright, the album »Poreklo« works exactly like that. One of a kind. Lost in time and space. An uncut diamond of the alternative rock underground that keeps fighting its way through and surviving on its own. Fearless! For all that, it sounds young and untamed, so over time the tag of »evergreen album« is bound to stick to it.
Trdoživi – Modre luči:
Lineup
Klavdijo Čebron – vocals, bass
Miha Gerzelj – guitar, backing vocals
Boštjan Vodopivec – drums, backing vocals
GUESTS:
Edi Žorž – second guitar solo on track no. 7
Blaž Škrbec – synthesizer on track no. 11
Blaž Stubelj – baritone saxophone on track no. 14
Boco – vocals on track no. 14
Production
David Šinigoj
Tracklist
1. Moč in energija
2. Poreklo
3. Kačji pastirji
4. Modre luči
5. Pomlad
6. Vaša muzika
7. Živeči
8. Na grad
9. Lončeni prostor smrti
10. Slovo od Rihemberka (poetry by Simon Gregorčič)
11. Po bndimi
12. Tramvaj
13. Hej hou
14. Mona
15. Super vera
16. Pejn pokozlan
17. Gruden
