Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Skwhat / Sisak / Croatia
Concert date: 10.04.2009
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: 75,00HRK
Quo Vadis are considered one of the most respected bands in their homeland, Canada, and they hold the same status in the technical death metal scene. In 2004 they released the brilliant album Defiant Imagination, and just when it seemed that, after ten years in the game, brighter days were finally ahead, last year came the shocking news that brilliant drummer Yanic Bercier, charismatic vocalist Stephane Pare and session (but excellent) bassist Dominic Lapointe were leaving the band. On top of all that came the health problems of the band’s mastermind, guitarist Bart. But Quo Vadis stay solid, persistent and stubborn! With a new lineup they set off on a short European tour, … And Who Prays For Satan?, and it brought them to the Croatian town of Sisak, to the club Skwhat.
First on stage were local boys Gebiss Destroyer, who play a kind of mix of grind, death and black metal. The guys sawed through their half hour the way you’re supposed to, even though they bring absolutely nothing new to the genre they play, and at times sound like a pretty average copy of something like Brutal Truth. The two growlers handle their job solidly, the drums are dynamic and destructive, while the guitar lines are sadly rather uninteresting and sung out, and the absence of the bass guitar is all too audible. Still, Gebiss Destroyer played uncompromisingly and energetically, and clearly got pretty good support from the rather small crowd.
Next up on stage were experimental/technical death metal outfit Avicularia from the neighboring town of Velika Gorica. The guys released their debut Born to Be Vile just today, and they played a few tracks from it in Sisak too; their good half-hour set was reportedly also recorded for an upcoming live EP. In a “take no prisoners” style, Avicularia massacred Skwhat with technical death metal heavily influenced by bands like Immolation, Gorguts, Origin and Necrophagist. Guitarists and vocalists Igor and Domagoj squeezed out the last atoms of their strength and dominated with both brutal vocals and fairly experimental guitar lines. Thanks to the weak sound, those unfortunately came out rather muffled and muddy, but you can tell the guys have a lot of potential, though they still lack some mileage and quite a bit more individuality and originality. The core of Avicularia’s music is built on long instrumental passages in which both guitarists, as well as the rather static bassist, get to breathe, while the animal of a drummer, full of great ideas and colorful transitions, does an excellent job.
Finally, around eleven, we got the Canadian technical (melodic) death metal champions Quo Vadis. After they tuned up and set up the stage themselves, the lights went out, the usual pompous, symphonic Quo Vadis intro kicked in, and then straight into the shot of the phenomenal crusher Silence Calls the Storm from the album Defiant Imagination. Unfortunately, the sound gave this incredible five-minute mini-masterpiece of technical death metal a hard time with annoying whistling, but even that didn’t change the fact that Quo Vadis are coming back in great shape. The new lineup is already superbly tight, and despite a few minor slip-ups and many skeptics (myself included), Quo Vadis still run like a well-oiled machine. The biggest worry was the drummer’s seat, since Yanic Bercier, one of the best and most underrated drummers in metal, is no easy man to replace. Well, despite my initial doubts, Patrice Hamelin (Martyr) did a fantastic job, and Yanic himself would be proud of a show drummed like this. Patrice’s feet flew over the double pedal as if on a bet, he pounded the toms without mercy, and he didn’t forget for a second the “trademark” Quo Vadis use of cymbals that made Yanic’s drumming so recognizable. The second worry was the bassist’s spot, since the inhumanly good bass lines on the last album were played by none other than the god of metal bassists, Steve DiGiorgio, while live the bass duties were just as well handled by Dominic “Forest” Lapointe. Bart didn’t have to look for long, since he found the new “bassist” in his own band. Roxanne Constantine stepped into the bass spot; she had already helped the band as a keyboardist and is also “to blame” for the classical parts on the album Defiant Imagination. Roxanne proved right from the start that she’s every inch a bassist, handling the demanding bass lines like it was a joke. The guitar duo, of course, does its job spectacularly, “with flying colors”; fantastic riffs follow one another, and Marc-Andre Gingras and the band’s mastermind Bart Frydrychowicz pass out-of-this-world solos back and forth like a ping-pong ball. Besides the killer sound, Bart gives everything on stage even though there’s little left of his original knees (the band took a few months off because of his knee surgeries, which left him with a nice chunk of hardware in there) and he limps like an old soldier. He thrashes, screams and practically tumbles into the front row with his guitar. You can hardly get more genuine contact with the crowd. Last but not least, there’s the new vocalist Trevor Birnie, who replaced the excellent Stephane Pare. Unfortunately, it’s the new vocals where the band stumbles a bit, since Trevor is not necessarily a worse vocalist, but definitely a pretty different one from Stephane. The 17-second opening growl in Silence Calls the Storm made him nervous, so he growled it out in two parts. In general, Trevor isn’t used to the fast-sung lines yet, which he often swallows, and he frequently mixes the deeper growl with higher, almost grindy screams. From a vocal standpoint, Trevor is thus a considerable disappointment; let’s hope he’s still warming up. As a frontman, though, he does an excellent job, building a genuine and energetic connection with the crowd, and with the song Tunnel Effect, with Bart’s help, he even managed to create a “wall of death”. They split the hall into Zagreb (where they played the day before) and Split (where they played the day after) and, with a jump into the song, created real chaos in front of the stage. No need to waste words on the setlist: in an hour and fifteen minutes they strung together a best-of handful of songs from three studio albums, and played Defiant Imagination in its entirety. Whether it’s crushers from that album like Break the Cycle, Fate’s Descent dedicated to Chuck Schuldiner, older classics like the incredible On the Shores of Ithaka, Absolution and Hunter/Killer, or mid-tempo masterpieces like Dead Man’s Diary, where Roxanne’s bass playing shines, Quo Vadis don’t miss. If the band’s fate was on slightly shaky ground just a few months ago, Quo Vadis are coming back strong, and if the girl and the guys play like this in front of barely a hundred people in Skwhat as though they had the fifteen-hundred-strong crowd from the Defiant Indoctrination DVD in front of them, there’s nothing to fear for the band’s future!
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist
Quo Vadis: 1.Silence Calls the Storm 2.Absolution 3.Break the Cycle 4.In Contempt 5.On the Shores of Ithaka 6.Tunnel Effect 7.Hunter/Killer 8.Fate’s Descent 9.Dead Man’s Diary 10.To the Bitter End 11.Point of No Return: Mute Requiem 12.Legions of the Betrayed
Photo gallery
