Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Channel Zero, Ljubljana
Show date: 03/30/2013
Saturday night. Crappy weather again and a soaked Ljubljana again. Nothing new, really, since we’ve been bitching about the weather for the last few months. The weather was probably once more the biggest reason why the show by Serbia’s Infest and Space Eater, who are tearing across Europe on the Deathrashing Across Europe tour, drew a shamefully small crowd. Only about thirty heads gave a damn about the weather and showed up at Channel Zero, while everyone else was obviously at home dyeing Easter eggs, stuffing themselves with ham and watching some cheap Hallmark or Universal Channel take on whatever Easter movie happened to be on. But giving your ears a few hours of rest to the rhythms of thrash metal, and especially the Easter-inspired Infest, was way nicer.
The honor of cracking the first egg this time went to local thrashers Panikk, who keep conquering our stages non-stop on the wings of their excellent debut Unbearable Conditions. This time Panikk fared much better than at the album release party at Ostriga in Škofja Loka. There, sadly, pretty bad sound buried them, but this time the sound worked the way it should. Panikk finally got the kind of expression they deserve. And, as they proved, they know how to deliver it with real punch. Unbearable Conditions has firmly lodged itself in the ears by now, and real thrash wreckers like Dismay, Messiah of Decay and Panic Attack sound especially good live when the guys start stomping through those truly convincing, fat and massive groove parts. Gapa and Nejc tortured their guitar strings convincingly, Grega pounded the drums without mercy like Bruce Lee on Chuck Norris, and to my great delight, thanks to the good sound, Rok’s masterful bass lines came to the fore too. The confident Gapa (in a Re-Animator shirt, no less!) is turning into a better and better frontman with a convincing, unrehearsed approach, and Panikk surprised us this time with the instrumental Away From Realitiy, then put the cherry on top with a superbly executed cover of the Exodus classic And Then There Were None.
Then the Serbian death/thrash metal maniacs Infest shoved us, without mercy, into much more brutal waters, actually straight into fiery rivers of hell. And no beating around the bush. Swim or die! Their look already showed that Infest would be a different kind of musical sodomy. Blood-soaked shirts, studs, spikes and upside-down crosses. Infest were brutal, aggressive and blasphemous. There’s no room for overcomplicating things with them, only for unbridled speed and destructive old-school death/thrash, meaning shots of three minutes each on average! Infest fired away with blasphemous riffs, ear-raping solos, wrecking drums and Vandal’s roaring vocals, and Vandal also served up the best “crab walk” this side of Abbath. You can tell from a mile away that Infest live and breathe what they do on stage, because they’re sincere and convincing about it. Just like Vandal’s announcements, full of praise for his brothers in metal and of digs at that athlete on the cross. It all fit the blessed Easter celebration perfectly and was so endearing that the Space Eater vocalist later spontaneously joked about Vandal’s announcements too. Infest, who are no strangers to our stages, fired off most of the current record Everlasting Genocide (the title track, Stronger Than Any God, Deathrash Sodom) this time and hammered in the nails with older classics like Slavery to No One and Back to the War.
The last blow of thrash metal came from one of the more visible and better representatives of Serbian thrash metal, Space Eater. The band, active since 2004, suffered a tragic blow during its career with the death of frontman Boško Radišić (he died in a fire in 2009), but managed to pick itself up and keeps thrashing without mercy. The guys, who took their name from a Gamma Ray song, released their debut Merciful Angel in 2007 and the album Aftershock in 2010, while last year’s demo Ninja Assassin points to a new record. Space Eater delivered an energetic attack of Bay Balkan Area thrash metal full of effective riffs and confident vocals that impressed with well-executed screams too. Even though Space Eater aren’t reinventing the thrash wheel, they’re extremely convincing and high-quality at what they do, and they win you over with interesting lyrical themes that go hand in hand with the aggressive yet melodic side of the music. Bombs Away hits like a bomb with its theme of the bombing of Yugoslavia (the title of the debut is also the name of NATO’s operation bombing Yugoslavia), Daisy Cutter explodes in the name of the biggest explosive device used in Vietnam, and Ninja Assassin hacks away with riffs like a katana in the B-movie cheese of the same name. Space Eater wrapped up a convincing set with hard-hitting thrash and great energy by closing with the title track of the debut, but at the demand of the small yet loud crowd they played one more tune, The One.
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