Venue: Orto bar, Ljubljana
Concert date: 08.06.2008
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: 18€
So, to close out the club concert season and give us a proper dose of ear-ringing before the summer festivals kick off, our dear Dihurčki cooked up one more treat. A technical treat: a show by the giants Origin, the technical jokers Impaled and the pretty boys Hour Of Penance. As befits an international bouquet of acts (1x Italians, 2x Americans), a nice crowd turned up from our fair capital and various exotic lands (Styria, Upper Carniola, …). There were even a few foreigners (Croatia, Bosnia), and of course the most beautiful of all metalheads were there too – “gli pozzeri italiani”. The sight of these creatures always puts a smile on my face. They’re always dressed in the latest metal fashion, they smell stronger than a makeup counter in a brothel, and they’re basically more than properly dressed up for the gala premiere of some Sex and the City or whatever. But let’s leave that alone now, we came for a concert after all.
And that kicked off right on time. The youngsters Hour Of Penance from Rome attacked our ears pretty much the way the Dutch were smashing their footballers in Austria at that very moment. There’s nothing nicer for an old-school Primus fan than watching a death metal band where the bassist’s fingers fly up and down a six-string bass until it’s smoking. The sound wasn’t ideal (sadly not enough bass), but totally OK for Orto. The guys do have one flaw, of course (like most Italian bands) – the vocals. I really don’t get how our neighbors can’t conceive a single singer who’ll pull his growls out of his balls and not his hemorrhoids?!! The guy does try, he knows all the right poses of a quality frontman, but the vocals just aren’t animalistic enough. Still, the guys took us through a nice overview of their discography, got people headbanging and jumping around (at least in the front rows) and got a pretty loud response between songs, mostly from their Italian compatriots in the crowd. They also supplied the comic relief of the night, when the singer asked “Howa do youa say hello in Zlovenia?” and someone in the crowd answered “Jebem ti boga!” (roughly “Fuck your god!”), which he then happily kept repeating between songs. The biggest party, though, was sparked by their cover of the Suffocation classic Catatonia. 50 minutes flew by, we saw a decent show that didn’t offer anything exceptional, and we were already off for a beer and some fresh air … fuck the anti-smoking law.
Well, after barely half an hour, things turned around – for the better!
Immoral Medical Practitioners And Licentious Evil-Doers, from Oakland, California, look funny (which is probably the point) in their uniforms parodying X-ray hazard labels (American ones, of course). The label reads (at least that’s how the guitarist explained it (at the third beer)) R-XXX, while the correct label is R-X (go figure metal humor). Then there’s the small singer/bassist (by my guess around 170 cm), who pulls faces and makes grimaces on stage as if he were being chased by a horde of doctors itching to give him a rectal exam. But once they grab their instruments, nobody feels like laughing at them anymore. Impaled blaze through a very catchy brutal/melodic death/grind with the occasional thrashy bit, and got the crowd headbanging, jumping, yelling, screaming, growling, … I won’t go into the setlist, since I don’t know their songs by title, but they definitely threw the best party of the night, won over at least one new fan (me) and probably a few more, and had great contact with the crowd, who were in a real party mood tonight. They blew everyone away with a killer combination of multi-voiced singing, proper screams and growls coming from the depths of real men’s (probably hairy too) balls. The guitarists (Sean McGrath and Jason Kocol) bombarded us through the whole set with a murderous combo of riffing and fast solos. Drumming that even a drum machine wouldn’t be ashamed of was served up at faster-than-light speed by the technician Raul Varela. The crowd’s undivided affection, though, went to the freak of a bassist/screamer (Ross Sewage), with his bass fitted with an axe blade, his grimaces, yelling, screaming and jumping. Picture an enraged spider freaking out on stage (as much as there’s room) and you’ll understand why the whole room was jumping, yelling and going nuts. The good part of an hour was over in a blink, and after the gig the guys proved to be totally normal people who had a beer with their fans, stayed up till four, fed the lung cancer, and were just generally fun. Oh, and they also apologized for George Bush and his visit. Looks like they’re well informed… in any case they were sincerely surprised by the crowd’s positive response (it was their first time in Slovenia) and promised they’d wander into our neck of the woods again. We’ll hold you to your word, guys!
Another good half hour went by, stomachs filled up with beer, the cancer fed with nicotine, tar and other goodies, Orto filled up again, the clock struck 11 pm, the lights went out, the spotlights came on, the people roared, and it was time for…. surprise, surprise: Origin. Yep, looks like the music coming out of Kansas and the other red-neck states swears by chainsaws, knives, guts in the air, brains on the wall (ahh, where is our dear Leatherface?). Brutalization is the only word that describes what we saw and heard. The drummer is a maniac. The bassist and guitarist master their instruments to the point of unconsciousness, and the singer lets out sounds that would make even little angels flee to hell. As if they’d be safe there from the enraged beasts from Kansas, ha!! Origin took us down a path of brutal doom, speed, murderous precision, darkness and unease. And we liked it. The crowd went nuts, yelled, Orto (and the surrounding buildings) shook, and the gates of hell were (again) thrown open. We had stage-diving, we had a mosh pit, we saw a few hard landings on the floor, noses bled, but hey, it’s Origin! The band neglected none of its four albums, though the emphasis was understandably on this year’s Antithesis and the band’s breakthrough album from 2002 – Informis Infinitas Inhumanitas. There’s really no point writing about Origin’s set in detail. We waited for them for many long years, they finally came, lived up to their reputation, cracked our heads open and permanently destroyed at least 5% of our hearing. If you weren’t there, you can be sorry. Really sorry. In short: SPEEEEEEED KILLSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!
When we limped toward home after the show, with aching necks, sweaty, bloody, ragged, in short, satisfied, all we could think was: Dihurčki, thanks, thanks, thanks. Keep it up, for many years to come! See you in August in Komen, and in the fall in the new season of killer gigs.
Text and photos: Rok Erjavec
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