ŠUNDR fest 2012

Arhiv Arhiv Last updated 11 June 2026

Venue: Kulturni dom DOBROVA
Concert date: 22.09.2012
Attendance: 50
Ticket price: €5

ŠUNDR fest 2012, or »Šundr u Grac« as the locals in Polhov Gradec call it, is a traditional rock event that first saw the light of day back in 2003, thanks to the Polhov Gradec Tourist Association and the effort of a handful of selfless, die-hard individuals. Like almost every year, with a few artistic breaks along the way, Šundr made its comeback for the sixth time this year. Considering the cut-back, tightly rationed funds put into it in our sub-Alpine, or »Polhograd«, corner of the world, that’s a seriously respectable achievement and well worth some respect. This year’s event was originally planned for September 1 at the tried-and-tested location in Polhov Gradec as an »open air« show, but bad weather scuppered it and it got postponed indefinitely. The organizer didn’t want to gamble twice, so three weeks later the whole thing was thoughtfully moved to a spot just a stone’s throw from our capital: Kulturni dom Dobrova. It’s a small multi-purpose hall with good acoustics, despite the turnout being, at first glance, far too thin this time. Still, the whole event was run very professionally, and with the promised Czech Staropramen on tap, nobody was missing a thing.

The first band kicked off at exactly the announced 18:30, when the Ljubljana debutants Clockwork Psycho hit the stage. The band describes itself as a mix of some sort of psychobilly. Loosely speaking, that means a blend of punk, metal, Oi, HC and, last but not least, a basic classic musical heritage. After a short but solidly played and well-executed set, they had us pretty well convinced, and after half an hour they handed the stage over to the next band, from Kranj, called Applause Lorraine. Their music could be described as a mix of good “old school” rock with that ever-infectious whiff of funk. Compared to the openers, you could tell these guys had been forged in all sorts of other bands before, and had piled up a lot more stage experience along the way. They served the crowd a top-notch, well-oiled rendition of their original songs. A short break followed, and everything was now pointed at the premiere performance of the young and promising Croatian band Manntra. The band comes from the western part of Istria, Umag to be exact, which is rather unusual, since in the past most of the Istrian rock scene was shaped by pretty successful and distinctive bands from the eastern side, i.e. Rijeka and its surroundings. Even more unusual is the media backstory: Manntra is something of an instant production, a deliberately and artificially manufactured product as an answer to our homegrown Siddharta. You could say the old saying “Better late than never” still holds, and if, more than a decade after Siddharta’s formation, Slovenian and Croatian producers join forces, what can come out of it is a dynamic mix called Manntra. The term »Mántra (devanagari मन्त्र)«, in the figurative sense, is a religious mystical syllable or song used as a spiritual guide, words or vibrations that allow you to focus on a single thought._{[source: www.wikipedia.si]}

That opening thought was the main reason for our visit to Šundr 2012 this year, so we were eagerly waiting for them a little before 9 p.m. The hall had partly filled up, and our ears caught most people wondering what the guys from Umag actually had to tell us, or rather, show us. We mustn’t forget that these guys also build a lot on the visual side of their sound, on their own image and on their delivery. We’d already seen that online, where their first demo hit, Kiša (Rain), has been making the rounds for a while. With their debut Kiša, Manntra have already broken into the home scene and set up the best possible starting position for their upcoming album. In their music, the band successfully brings in elements of traditional Istrian folk music, which they cleverly and wittily season with heavy guitar “riffs”. That’s exactly what makes Manntra something special, something unique, and for the casual, undemanding listener even comparable to our homegrown Siddharta, right down to the letters in the name (Manntra – Siddharta). No coincidence there, surely, at least not in the management and production. If we go a step deeper, in both bands you can spot the musical influences of names like Rammstein, Laibach, Heroes Del Silencio and, of course, newer ones like Marlyn Manson, Linkin Park, Papa Roach, Korn, etc. But just like the former, Manntra probably wouldn’t admit it openly, so let’s leave that aside. We don’t know much about the guys, since the whole thing is pretty fresh and even their website with the bio and other info isn’t finished yet. So for now the guys remain wrapped in a veil of mystery and discretion, like some of the biggest stars of the music industry. All we know is that the lineup has, from the start, consisted of vocalist and guitarist Marko Matijević Sekul, bassist Zoltan Lecei, drummer Andrea Kert and a young guitarist whose name is still a mystery. At exactly 9 p.m. we finally got them: Manntra opened with a few minutes of intro in the style of mantra chanting, with a pre-recorded, typically Istrian ethno-vocal motif, and gradually appeared on stage one after another. Smoke and lights added to the band members’ initial ego “pumping” and to firing up the crowd. What on earth comes next?, we could ask ourselves, and from the fairy-tale daydream of the opening mantra we were soon jolted awake by a “techno beat” with the accompanying sound of bagpipes and whistles in the opening track Gorki San. The song itself, with its sonic backdrop, largely recalls the German ethno-metal pioneers In Extremo. It was instantly clear that Manntra’s message and mission is clear: shock the listener and pull them into a parallel world of musical soundscape, and fill the auditory receptors with a hefty 120 dB and more. The guys on stage come across as very fresh, seasoned and self-assured, and even the handful of initial skeptics deep down changed their minds, realizing that it’s still possible to create fresh, punchy and expressive music in this corner of the Balkans. Which is, after all, a fact, as vocalist Marko slyly pointed out a bit later: »Sve je to Balkan, jer svi mi to jedemo isti burek i svi smo mi isti« . He also deftly topped off the statement with a breath of fresh air for the impoverished and starving souls of our local rockers, saying that real rock’n’roll is still being made and played in Slovenia too, and anyone who dares claim otherwise is lying. Right after the opener came a link into the next, newer title track Manntra. The song is easiest to label as a sort of nu-metal mix of Linkin Park and Rammstein elements, which the guys seasoned in their own specific, somehow recognizably theirs way. You could argue that vocalist Marko doesn’t dazzle with any wide vocal range, but he cleverly wraps it all up with declamation and layered pre-recorded vocals, and a parallel could easily be found in our own Laibach. Helping him out on individual songs is bassist Zoltan, who completely covers him in certain registers and so enriches the voice. One of the most important notes in the recent, trendy musical language of expression is also image and stage presentation, which Manntra handle thoughtfully and with distinction, easily convincing the listener that they believe in and relive what they’re doing musically. The guys have a big ego, which we Slovenes can largely only envy our neighbors, who seem to get it laid in the cradle as a national trait, along with a stage charisma that, in Slovenia, only a handful of chosen ones possess. The songs, similar in content and bombarding the listeners’ eardrums, followed one another through the whole repertoire, and the crowd, thanks to the excellent performance and the sound setup and acoustics in the Dobrova hall, was in a kind of elevated state. Like dominoes, the fairly cloned songs fell one after another: Balkanska, Vjeruj ponižno, Na svjetlu, Sin, Omen, Nebitna, all the way to the announcement of the MTV-style song Kiša (Rain), which is really why most people came to the show and what the music crowd actually knows them for. The song is built to serve its purpose, and the cleverly produced MTV video did its part too. Figuratively speaking, the guys nailed it on the little Dobrova stage with a perfect ten, and some of us just wished they’d stretch it out a bit with a little mini-improvisation and so prolong the release of that adrenaline rush. With all the pre-recorded musical matrices and “samples” the guys rely on throughout, they could easily have pulled it off, but we shouldn’t be too critical or parentally demanding here, since the guys are only on the rise and in development, and not even half a year has passed since the start of their saga. For them everything is now happening at breakneck speed, and they themselves don’t quite grasp the flow of it all. That, and other things like it, grow and get tempered with mileage, which we’ll apparently have to wait a bit for. After the punchy rain that soaked us thoroughly, two closing songs followed: Horizont and the outro Monstrumi. Both were delivered in a punchy “downtempo” with which Manntra finally won us over to their chanting, and at the same time left us hungry until the next musical get-together, as our music colleague Brane Rončel would put it. Just as they came and conquered the stage, they left us too: gradually and building, member by member, tone by tone, final and irreversible. A full hour of playing and bombarding our auditory receptors, which felt like a flash of a gig fused into one single song, with head and tail.

Manntra are both alpha and omega, and definitely a calculated and carefully thought-out music project, because rock music of a related genre over the last two decades, since the grunge scene and its offspring exploded, has been nothing more than a mathematical formula of assorted cloned rock variants. Despite that, every now and then the sun shines through the thick fog, and Manntra are definitely that kind of brightness and freshness. Even if we slapped the “instant product” label on them before the show, after seeing them we have to shove that into a corner and give them the credit they deserve. If we drew a line under their performance, we’d easily give it a rating of excellent and a “must see” for the future too. All we can do is hope they manage to break through and establish themselves, and to hang on for at least a while on the rather dry and stiff rock scene of recent times. But for that, the guys have to roll up their sleeves and stick with it. Judging by the reactions in Croatia and now in Slovenia too, they definitely won’t be short of support. If nothing else, we can take comfort in the fact that they’re close to us, both geographically and in musical heritage, and if nothing else, we’ll surely get to see them again, if not otherwise then at one of the gigs at some motorcycle rally, of which there’s no shortage at home and in Croatian Istria, and which Manntra have regularly attended so far. After Manntra’s set, a kind of emptiness and silence yawned over the Dobrova hall, soon broken by the raffle draw for a lucky winner, who went home richer by a brand-new Cort electric guitar. We dare say that even if the winner isn’t a guitarist, after watching Manntra they probably wished, at least for a moment, to become one. Šundr 2012 tipped into its second half, and the stage was soon taken over by the tried-and-tested, well-seasoned Ljubljana sausages SAUSAGES, about whom almost everything has already been said and seen in one medium or another, so we can only say one thing: »ŠUNDR fest 2012 was a success despite the rescheduling of the original date, and we can only hope the organizer manages at least as successful a repeat next year as this one« We’d probably only wish for a slightly bigger crowd, but that’s secondary, and a promotion story in itself, which isn’t on the side of bands like Manntra.