Stonebride at Channel Zero (2008)

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 3 October 2026

Venue: Channel Zero / Ljubljana / Slovenia
Show date: 30.04.2008
Attendance: 25
Ticket price: 5,00€

When the former rockline uberkommandoh calls you up and orders you to come to a gig with him, you don’t have a whole lot of options. You could lock yourself in your apartment and hope it was just a nightmare. But about an hour later, as if in a dream, I was already standing in front of Channel Zero in Metelkova. How did I even get there? Well, fantasies aside, this time Croatian stoner band Stonebride had come to play Channel Zero. My rockline buddy and I only heard about the show at the last minute and got in a bit before eleven, even though it was supposed to start at ten. But as is customary at Metelkova, the show hadn’t even remotely started. Before the gig we were entertained by none other than the promoter and rockline writer Matevž. That’s how we killed almost an hour, and then, shortly before midnight, the show finally kicked off for real. Croatian four-piece Stonebride took the stage.

Their name may not be all that innovative, but at least those of us in the thin crowd could hope for something better musically. And the guys made it clear from the start that they weren’t messing around. They opened with heavy, drawn-out riffs that often followed each other in semitone sequences. It all leaned pretty heavily toward doom metal, but the atmosphere in Channel Zero was nowhere near morbid. The guys knew how to warm up a crowd. Later they switched over to some grunge, and every now and then wove bluesy influences into their sound, slowing things down even more. In their heavier moments they reminded me of Alice in Chains, which they can take as a compliment.

Their songs are seriously unconventional. Quite often they have no chorus at all and are built in layers, much like progressive rock. Really commendable and very inventive. Still, a little more melody wouldn’t have hurt. Rhythmically, too, the band played in a very varied way. They jumped between fast and slow rhythms and nicely mixed up the time signatures as well.

Stonebride played with great confidence, and I couldn’t hear any major mistakes. The sound seemed very good to me, though a bit too loud, but that’s a pretty common problem in smaller clubs. No instrument dominated, and the vocals came through nicely, so I’d say good work was done behind the mixing desk too.

Like I said, Stonebride delivered a good gig and the audience (what there was of it) was happy. But in the end the guys did spoil the impression a little. After forty-five minutes on stage, they dealt us a nasty slap in the face by calling it quits. I’ve been to gigs that lasted around an hour, but never to one shorter than an hour. If this had been a support act, fine, but when only one band is playing, the show usually runs at least an hour and a half. Even the persistent clapping and the crowd’s shouting didn’t bring the band back, so all we could do was stand there scratching our heads.

Stonebride obviously don’t have a ton of original material yet, so they couldn’t play a really long set. Still, I thought the event was pretty entertaining, especially since my buddy and I had come at the last minute and I wasn’t exactly dying to sit through a two- or three-hour show. Three quarters of an hour was maybe a hair too short, but you can’t blame the guys for not knowing when to quit. Better to end early while the crowd is still hungry for more than to drag it out endlessly, like Rainmakers, an Iron Maiden tribute band, did, for example.

Words: Rok Podgrajšek
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik