Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Sub Sub / Ljubljana
Concert date: 14.01.2009
Attendance: 300
Ticket price: 8/10 €
Not long ago the RockLine crew put on its first gig, with Children of the Night, Železobeton, Stone Orange and Lady’s First on the bill. Now it’s the turn of the team behind the RSQ website, who landed none other than the legends of Slovenian alternative rock, Psycho-path from Prekmurje, for their first big show.
RSQ threw their first big gig to celebrate the launch of their monthly, which means their articles will now come out in print too. They clearly did a great job promoting it and lined up some solid partnerships, because the show was broadcast on Radio Študent, and a nice crowd turned up at the venue as well.
Psycho-path obviously haven’t gotten tired of their new album, The Ass-soul of Psychopath (review HERE), because they played almost the whole thing again. This time they also dug quite a way back into the past and served up a few songs from the band’s early days. For this special show (it was also the band’s fifteenth anniversary) they decided to bring both former members back on stage, and the two gladly took them up on the invitation. A really nice gesture, and the whole thing came off as incredibly genuine and heartfelt. Besides the new songs, which in my opinion will soon earn classic status, they also played some older classics like The Hell Outta Dodge, Air Rager, No-Fi and Tough Cookie. The crowd responded in kind, dancing along the whole time and loving the older “hits” just as much as the newer ones. The atmosphere was truly great. Just when it seemed the show was over, they came back out and treated us to three goodies from the new album. War fired up the audience again with its heavy guitars, while Bekkognition brought a more psychedelic feel. And the night ended with the standard closer, Cookie Jar, where Dominik takes over on keys, the rest of the band helps out on percussion, and Melee adds her unique voice.
Melee may have been a bit more reserved than when I saw them play at Channel Zero, but her performance is always heartfelt and committed. I think she’s the best female vocalist in Slovenia. Unlike many other singers, Melee is very distinctive, with a completely unique way of singing and a one-of-a-kind tone. Jernej and Beko once again showed off all their guitar chops, which are wonderfully varied. At the end of Bekkognition they played a very long psychedelic jam that revealed yet another dimension of what they can do. It’s honestly hard to say who the lead guitarist is, since they trade solos back and forth. For a while former member Denis was on stage too, showing off his guitar skills and taking us back down memory lane. So did drummer Matej (Jernej’s brother, by the way), who also joined in on stage for a bit. The regular rhythm section (Janez and Dominik) played at an outstanding level all night, so I can say the performance was practically flawless and full of surprises on top of that. Only one thing bugged me a little: at the start, Melee was hard to hear, but that was fixed pretty quickly and from then on everything went smoothly.
Psycho-path were as good as ever. With them you kind of know in advance that they’ll put on a great show and play it tight. They’ve never played the stars. With them the music always comes first. You can hear it on their albums, and even more at their gigs, where the energy goes up another notch. In a set lasting almost two hours they didn’t lose the audience’s attention even once, and the crowd more than obviously relished every nuance of these (by now) legendary Slovenian alternative rockers.
Well, if I can’t praise Psycho-path enough, I also have to give credit to the RSQ website for being so well organized, now that it has started publishing its articles as a monthly. Even though they’re our competition, I can only wish them success in our small Slovenian market, and hope we end up with a decent print medium covering quality music. If their promo gig is anything to go by, I don’t think they have anything to worry about.
Photos: Miha Mally
Setlist
1. New Blood 2. Musical Moment 3. Incommunicado 4. Lobo, You Are Crazy 5. Clean Slate 6. Lynch the Girl 7. Yukio Mishima Is Real 8. Tough Cookie 9. The Hell Outta Dodge 10. Recognition 11. No-Fi 12. Ow, Eddy 13. Dehydrated 14. Air Rager 15. Ãœberhand 16. War 17. Bekkognition 18. Cookie Jar
Photo Gallery
