Author: Sebastijan Videc
Photos: Sebastijan Videc
Venue: MC Pekarna, Maribor, Slovenia
Concert date: 24.01.2015
Ticket price: €8 presale; €10 on the day
The news that a great night out was on the way in the dead zone of January gigs was more than welcome. And since this happy occasion went down in Maribor, even better – Styrians are proverbially hospitable, and the drinks are always cheaper than in the Central Slovenia region. Only the DARS motorway crew soured the trip a little, but never mind. After about a year and a half, the merry boys from Vojvodina, Pero Defformero, were coming back to Slovenian stages, and they brought the Sarajevo crew Flatline along with them.
The Bosnian rock scene includes quite a few big names of the so-called Yu-rock scene, but what’s going on in metal? You’d be surprised how many bands are making music in that country, though most of them more or less stay in the underground. Flatline are one of them. This very month the guys are marking ten years together, which they’ll celebrate at the end of January with a show in their hometown of Sarajevo. It’s been a good six years since their debut »Posttraumatic Lullabies«, but the band hasn’t been sitting still. They’ve shared stages with big names like Tankard, Sepultura, Biohazard and others, and in between they’ve been writing new music too, which they played in Maribor alongside the songs from the debut. They call their style »posttraumatic experience metal« – but the fact is that on stage their hardcore roots clearly dominate. The body language on stage follows suit, especially with singer Jasmin. The music itself is also built on an HC sound, but it wanders between different styles – from thrash and death to classic heavy metal, which makes them extremely interesting. You can tell these guys have years behind them, because despite the thin crowd in the hall, they delivered their set solidly and professionally.
After a very short break, Pero Defformero took the stage – a band that has blurred the line between Serbian folk music and heavy metal. At first thought, fusing two such different genres might seem impossible, but the brilliant mind of Saša Friš pulled it off. Especially once he brought in the charismatic Biške as his vocal partner in crime. Although the band’s beginnings go back to the early nineties and this year marks 20 years since the first album, simply titled »Pero Defformero«, the band’s real story started in 2003, after they got back together. The 2009 album »Undergrand« pushed the band onto stages across the former Yugoslavia, »pa čak i šire«. That’s how they slowly made their way to Slovenia too, and over three Ljubljana shows in recent years they proved they’re real performers, while the packed crowds proved they’d adopted them as their own.
So what’s changed since their last visit? Mainly that the Peros have released a new album, and that they’ve gained a serious rhythmic boost with the arrival of Divlje Jagode’s original bassist, Andraš Išpan – Bandi. Bandi showed his loyalty to both bands with a shirt reading Pero Defformero in Divlje Jagode’s trademark red lettering. With »mladim, lepim i glupim« Srđan on drums, Bandi rounds out a hard-hitting rhythm section, ruled over by band founder Saša Friš, who masterfully commands his six strings and who clearly isn’t getting his hair cut anytime soon. And then, of course, there’s »gospodin u bjelom odelu sa zlatnim lancem«, Biške. Although it’s a turbo folk parody, the music itself is seriously high-quality heavy metal, which with a different vocalist would surely stir up completely different feelings in listeners. But there are plenty of bands like that already, and it’s precisely their uniqueness that has earned the Novi Sad crew a huge, loyal fan base all across the Balkans. What to expect from a Pero Defformero show, you might ask? For the usual low ticket price, you get a heavy metal concert, a variety show and some stand-up comedy on top. Biške nails the imitation of a »pjevač« – from little stories about Novi Sad to poking fun at metalheads. Even a small technical glitch with the mic didn’t throw him off. And speaking of the new record – lots of parody bands break out with their first album and then seem to run out of steam on the next ones. The Defformeros skipped that problem, because Gotičarka, Kauboj, Ferrari and the other hits from Undergrand have clearly been joined by Teretana, Metal Sviraću and other successes that the crowd already treats like folk classics. Great sound in a slightly odd hall, where the stage isn’t much smaller than the floor, just crowned the whole night. And of course there were the wild Styrians, who set off a mosh pit, stage diving and even crowd surfing during the »metal trio« of both Gotičarkas and Metal Sviraću. As we learned from the band after the show, there’s a chance they’ll visit the capital again before summer. Given their huge popularity across the former Yugoslavia, and Bulgaria too, the question is why we haven’t seen them on the small Metaldays stage in Tolmin yet.
Setlist
Pero Defformero
1. Ferrari
2. Preko Brega
3. Silvana
4. Ostavljen Sam Ja
5. Odlaziš
6. Ekstra
7. Čerka Đavola
8. Gastarbajter
9. Sedmica na Lotu
10. Fejsbuk Stana
11. Gotičarka
12. Gotičarka 2
13. Metal Sviraću
14. Kauboj iz Bosne
15. Jaroslava
16. Žalim Draga Ispalo Je Sranje
17. Došli Smo Do Kraja Puta
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18. Teretana Svakog Dana
19. Volim Te
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