Artist: Pankrti
Label: Dallas Records
Release: 2007
Duration: 37.44
In case you haven’t noticed yet, lately the Ljubljana air, soaked mostly in smog-flavored sedatives, has also been carrying the intensely sour taste of the roaring of the legendary, quite possibly one and only Pankrti. The counter-revolution, which cunningly sparked a punk revolt revival in Slovenia with the band’s recent all-Slovenian assault on Hala Tivoli, now gets its epilogue in a live package of thirteen rough-edged, razor-sharp punk anthems, gathered under the telling title Svoboda ’82.
Svoboda ’82 is a gripping reflection of a particular time and place, an era when the everyday life of the average Slovenian was increasingly weighed down by the monotonous gray of a slowly crumbling self-managed socialism. It’s a unique, socially critical piece of the monolithic society of post-Tito Yugoslavia, and in its own way it feels surprisingly liberating even today, in the age of so-called democratic ease. In that stifling social atmosphere, on November 5, 1982, the big “gala” concert took place at Dom Svobode in Šentvid, with Pankrti, by then hardly fresh but all the more legendary for it, in a slightly altered lineup, finally smashing the “boredom” of the Yugoslav music scene in grand style.
In keeping with the traditional punk legacy, Svoboda ’82 doesn’t offer any special musical feats, which in the end doesn’t matter anyway. All that counts is the ruthless criticism and the roughness blowing out of the more-or-less familiar three-chord punk psalms like Živ Spomenik Neumnosti, Totalna Revolucija or, say, the “agro-food”-inspired Za Železno Zaveso, which after twenty-five years of maturing only gain in intensity. And it’s true! Jest Sm Na Liniji, Enotni In Trdi or the indestructible Gospodar are tracks with which Pankrti remain the undisputed masters of their own musical expression. Lovšin and company, even after a quarter-century-long punk abstinence, earn a gold medal for the unplanned conception of a process that revitalized creative pluralism in Slovenia, one that even the iron fist of the former regime couldn’t beat down despite constant attempts to suppress it. Such looseness and self-sufficient, unfalsified giving of oneself was something the key figures of the cultural world of that time were in no way allowed to permit, not to mention the rural mindset of the contemporary sub-Alpine music crowd.
There are no big surprises here, except maybe the more than excellent production and, as a result, the more than satisfying sonic makeover of this live reissue, for which we can thank the capable hands of Miro Bevc, who with Svoboda ’82 deliver nearly forty minutes of character-boosted spitting in the face of the hypocrisy of the social elite. That’s just how it is. For all of you who have recently been seized by punk nostalgia, or who have long been pigeonholing yourselves among the sworn lovers of single-phase electric blows to the head, Svoboda ’82 is a document you absolutely must not miss!
Lineup
Pero Lovšin – vocals
Dule Žiberna – guitar, backing vocals
Bogo Pratnar – guitar
Matjaž Gantar – bass guitar, backing vocals
Slavc Colnarič – drums
Track list
1.Pesem O Svobodi
2.Za Železno Zaveso
3.Sabotaža
4.Živ Spomenik Neumnosti
5.Junaki Druzga Razreda
6.Sivi In Črni
7.Gospodar
8.Jest Sm Na Liniji
9.Tko To Mora Bit Zdej
10.Delovni Ljudje
11.Totalna Revolucija
12.Enotni In Trdi
13.Kdo So Ti Ljudje
Trajanje albuma: 37.44
