Steel-Bearers Mow Down Ljubljana’s Spawn Once Again

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Photos: Nina Grad

Venue: Gala Hala
Concert date: October 9, 2012
Attendance: sold-out show
Ticket price: €20

The pagan bloom of Slovenian youth recently danced its dance of delight once again. After numerous Viking raids and pan-Slavic godless rituals at Metelkova, it was time for another invasion, this time by war-minded Finns. Ensiferum are the standard-bearers of Finnish folkoid heroic metal, whatever that’s supposed to mean, and on their self-aggrandizing European tour called Bearers Of The Sword (Ensiferum means exactly that in Latin), they unfurled their battle banners again after a few years’ break. They showed off the basic traits that make connoisseurs of folk metal and pagan rank them among the most influential bearers of this admittedly somewhat worn-out genre.

After the millennial metal craze that infected the otherwise more progressive-minded metal crowd with the sounds of bagpipes, fiddles, flutes and pretty monotonous drinking chants and sagas about the great deeds of great-great-great-great-grandfathers, there’s precious little left that hasn’t already been versified and screamed out amid bouncy party-time wankery. Then again, it’s also true that the masses just never tire of certain things. Proof was the sight of the battle garb on lads and lasses from really all corners. Besides home-grown brutalists and die-hard fans of Viking-tinged metal, there were also tribe representatives from Italy and Croatia, and they all had one thing in common – black lines drawn with mommy’s eyeliner. Instead of emo paintwork, this time almost everyone looked like a camp of American-football fans, except the sports jerseys were swapped for sweaters and T-shirts adorned with Amon Amarth, Ensiferum and Eliuveitie images. So what to expect from the evening? That was the question an unsuspecting passerby could rack their brain over.

The fact that not everything sounds the same when it blows in on the cold north wind from Nordic parts was confirmed in front of a decently packed Gala by the first support act, Profane Omen. Instead of sagas of a mighty past, this Finnish groove metal wrecking crew feeds on more modern themes. In a thirteen-year history, after two buzzed-about underground demos and three sharp, hard-sounding thrasher projectiles of Pantera-fied metal, they crowned themselves back in 2006 as the best Finnish novelty, at least as far as metal goes. After the opening track Base from the stellar album Inherit The Void there was little room for reservations. The landing party is made up of a guitar duo of hard-hitting six-string killers, Williami Kurki and Anti Kokkonen (the latter looks a lot like a more dangerous version of NOFX guitarist Eric Melvin), bassist Antti Seroff, outstanding virtuoso behind the skins and cymbals Samuli Mikkonen, and astonishingly multilayered singer, screamer and entertainer Jules Näveri. They’re sharp as the tip of a hellish dagger, and both the late Dimebag and the accompanying cavalry of the divine Pantera would have been proud of what we heard. The quintet serves up shades of more heavy-metal voluptuousness on a high-octane mix of kerosene and propane in the next treat, from the album Destroy. When the refined rhythms and positively baroque kitschy riffs of Wastehead roar out of the speakers, the first battle lines of Ljubljana’s temple of urban culture start moving a bit more decisively too. The members of the stage squad flirt with the crowd in visibly great spirits, and after the outstanding cannonade of Predator, even my usually quite reserved soul finally melts in a hellishly sweet embrace of flames. It’s like getting a dose of Lamb Of God’s playfulness and effortless destructive lust for domination, while the balladic moment of the thrashed-up Pit Of My Thoughts brings the passions back down to easier control. The slightly cooler shower of slowed-down meter in between is, thank God, sped up again with the brutal punch of God In The Bottle, and Profane Omen cut with a ten-ton hammer, with surgical precision, into the somewhat sleepy mood of a crowd hypnotized by the ballad. An outstanding synthesis of death metal, groove, nu-metal pacing, aggression and superb delivery results in love at first listen. Bound To Strive is a textbook case of how melody doesn’t always kill the demonic power of the metal beast, schizophrenic yet beautiful all the same. Profane Omen glide with feeling from decades of heavy into the more familiar moments of the nineties, when the stage was dominated by swagger, adrenaline and the steely libido of the great Phil and the Texan fellas of his stature. The grand finale was the peak of the record Beaten Into Submission – the song Painbox, so dirty-sexy it practically stinks! Profane Omen handled the stage with confidence and gave off as much power as if they were playing to a completely sold-out hall, even though most of the crowd had apparently decided to save their strength for the stars of the night. How typical and predictable! The credit for an outstandingly good and truly heartfelt show undoubtedly goes to the guys in the band, and above all to the exceptionally communicative orator of exceptional vocal range, singer Jules, who in addition to Profane Omen earns his bread with Enemy Of The Sun, and in the past also did hard labor in Misery Inc.!

After a few minutes’ break to take care of all organic and inorganic needs, and after the sharp hard liquor we’d tasted as the evening’s aperitif, it was time for something milder. Amoral are a band that, since 1997, when they broke new ground with thrash and death metal, decided to switch to a wimpy but solidly worn-in version of power heavy metal. Despite somewhat more technically skilled riffs and progressively spiced-up guitars, it doesn’t sound like a pale copy of Dream Theatre or King’s X or Helloween, as happens all too often. The Helsinki quintet feeds on the genius of founding member and outstanding technician Ben Varon, who is confidently matched by his colleagues Masi Hukari on six strings and Pekka Johansson on five. Juhana Karlsson sweats convincingly behind the drums, and the central podium remains the domain of the outstanding and again very talented entertainer and singer Ari Koivunen. After the track Mute from the album Reptile Ride, the guys relax completely and, without being too burdened by audience expectations, open their valves even wider with Hours Of Simplicity. With its thirty-year-old meter and patterns, it kills off my pleasure libido at least a bit, even though all the fans of Ugly Kid Joe and of the bands women’s bosoms trembled for twenty years ago, not to be cruel, would melt at what they heard. Well, to each ear its own painter, but the guitar prelude of Exit shows that the guys have plenty of DT ambitions, and Slovenian youth also shifted into dreamy swaying to it. Exit isn’t a track for a circle pit of destruction, so the power of hard-hitting moves was only felt in the first three rows, and there were precious few severe cases of incurable erections. Release goes down the same road, and after the technically ambitious but not too convincing (Won’t Go) Home I almost wish the guys would change their minds and move on to something more concrete. After the posey, adjustable little stunt Wrapped In Barbwire, it becomes clear that instead of a grizzly’s bite, my little brain was gnawed at by a Haribo gummy bear who stretches in the morning to Europe and other wankery. After somewhat longer torment, we finally reach the moment of the more epically conceived Beneath, which sounds like the overture to a love story of Frodo and his buddy Samwise. So before the final stretch of an otherwise solidly played show, one the guys evidently meant for just a few limp-dicked Italian fans of candy-coated metal, I’d rather fill my lungs with the fresh October chill outside Gala.

And outside, a surprise! The show was completely sold out, and there were no tickets left even for the few poor souls who’d consoled themselves that there was still more than enough time to buy. The organizers’ total success stirred up a bit of anxiety, though, since fans of the evening’s main course were packed shoulder to shoulder at the door to Gala’s airless interior. I had been hoping the grand finale would live up to expectations, but with healthy reservations and safeguards against total disappointment. The hall was bursting at the seams, and almost right at the door to the hall I stopped in front of a living wall of a boundless crowd that had fallen into a trance already during the opening instrumental of Symbols. Just like on the latest record, Unsung Heroes, after the heroic entrance of the Finns decked out in war paint, it spills over into a fairly predictable stampede of polka metal and heroic fairy tales. The lineup of Ensiferum, which after numerous changes consists of guitarist and screamer Petri Lindroos, sweet-throated bassist Semi Hinkka, keyboardist Emmi Silvennoinen hidden in the background, drummer Janne Parviainen and the only original member, Markus Toivonen, was evidently serving up just the right three chords, because the entire Ljubljana congregation fell into a trance to In My Sword I Trust. With the chorus picked up by a hundred throats, Ensiferum strapped the crowd’s scalps to their belts in one fell swoop. The crowd wasn’t even bothered by the Atari-style intro to the rather bizarrely funny Guardians Of Fate. A comical version of sped-up Amon Amarth put me somewhere between laughter and despair, since in a complete vacuum it was hard to follow my own thoughts, let alone what was happening on the totally surrounded stage. The sharp riffs waxed the earlobes bare, and the battle atmosphere of the barbarian hordes, with its harsh – yet sweet-sounding combination of truly heroic vocal feats from a bizarre choir, lifted the spirits of the masses while simultaneously killing my will to live. The track From Afar from the album of the same name confirms the suspicion that everything at Ensiferum sounds the same – kitschy, pretentious, bloated and so hellishly monotonous that I have to applaud everyone who managed, on top of all the lyrics, to remember when the previous song ended and the new one began, because I could barely tell my ass from my head. Still, every experience is good for something. The bond between the stars of the night and the audience was truly strong and unbreakable, which made it clear that the winners of this battle of talents had mowed down, with their steel, the whole heretical spawn of unyielding doubters. All the same, I still say you have to admire anyone who says the same things across five albums and doesn’t stray from the basic template between the first song and the last. Maybe I’m wrong, but the difference between the debut Ensiferum from 2001, the record Iron released three years later, the third »brilliant« Victory Songs, or the album From Afar and the grand finale from this year’s record Unsung Heroes is minimal, if not zero. It’s like listening to Mötörhead, except I have fun with them, while with Viking nonsense I now just yawn my head off! Still – who am I to judge the taste of the masses? And that taste was well sated with all the standards from all the records. Guttural cries of pleasure went up for songs like Blood Is A Price For Glory and Iron, and after the first regular part of the show ended, the packed-in brutes and barbarized princesses lost it all over again for encores like Twilight Tavern, Lai Lai Hei and, damn, who’d have thought, Battle Song. Rossini’s William Tell Overture was the last lifeline keeping me from losing it, so before the stomping of the warmed-up horde of Balkan Vikings and fresh-baked milk-toothed warriors, I’d rather wander off into the night, knowing the evening was, at least for me, one-third successful.

At first listen I fell in love with the first band of the night, with the second I got diabetes, and with the third I almost went completely deaf! I really have to admit that the first two thirds, the appetizer and the soup, were edible and easily digestible, but after dessert I had to drink something because I got the runs. Well, there were more symptoms than that, but it’s true that with all the chanting of the masses, it pays to keep your own spine and a pinch of your own taste. I don’t hide the latter, but it’s also true that the evening, which for many was a total victory and a pleasure, felt more like the usurpation of a minority people to me. Ljubljana’s bulwark of Slavic consciousness has fallen. All that remained were the burnt remnants of plundered stables and the smoky huts of the narrow-minded dictate of monotonous instant consciousness. From the background came the weeping of violated and thoroughly exhausted children whose brains the conquerors had washed through repetition, and only a few managed, despite the constant shelling, to stay on their own pile of dung and utter after the battle: »All that glitters is not gold, and not everyone who carries steel is a hero from my altar of worship!«