Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Ljubljana / Orto bar / Slovenia
Concert date: April 14, 2012
Attendance: 70
Ticket price: €5.00
Orto fest was in full swing when this cult Ljubljana club served up a real treat for all the music gourmets, especially those of us who are into instrumental guitar music by cats like Satriani, Vain and Gilbert. On Saturday night, Orto bar played host to the Jesenice-based Grega Habič Band, led by one of the best guitarists in the country, while the hot-blooded hard rock/heavy metal outfit Tomcat took care of the warm-up.
Even before the announced time, the Ljubljana/Kranj crew Tomcat took the stage and swooped down on Orto bar like an F-14, dropping a bombastic load of hard ‘n heavy on it. Since forming in the fall of 2010, the guys have been gigging tirelessly on local stages, and it really shows. All those shows have helped Tomcat grow into the stage, and at Orto too they warmed up the crowd successfully and without any major trouble. The good sound worked in their favor above all, letting frontman Denis’s powerful vocals shine through, with a wide range, raspy rawness and a »fuzzy« dirtiness that recalled the late Bon Scott (something the confidently played AC/DC classic Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap only confirmed), and no less so Šuj’s rattling bass and Rok’s precise soloing. Generous backing vocals added even more punch to the bombastic choruses, and it’s great to see the band running like a well-oiled machine despite quite a few lineup changes over their two years together. A bit more variety between the songs and a richer arrangement here and there wouldn’t hurt, but the band definitely has the potential to break away from its current »status« as a slightly naive, party-minded hard ‘n heavy band.
A little before eleven, the main act of the night took the stage: Jesenice’s instrumental tour de force trio, Grega Habič Band. Grega is without a doubt the most active, prolific instrumental musician on our turf right now, with four albums of quality instrumental rock behind him, which he superbly enriches with touches of metal, jazz, blues and fusion. His latest album, Open Heart Surgery, saw the light of day last year, and with it Grega proved he could pour his whole heart onto a record with instrumental music alone – honest, powerful, diverse, and above all driven by a huge desire to create that sets no limits in terms of musical genres. There’s not the slightest doubt that Grega and his band are every bit as technically skilled as their world-famous peers, but on top of wild, complexly built passages, the band manages to cram more feeling into the songs than many bands with a well-drilled vocalist. Over a good hour, Grega Habič Trio effortlessly shook spectacular solos out of their sleeves, courtesy of the unfailingly virtuosic Grega’s fingers – there was no shortage of shredding, nor of insanely fast sweeps and arpeggios, but it’s nice to hear that Habič doesn’t put his technical chops front and center. From his axe he coaxed numerous sensitive guitar lines, jazzy atonal and dissonant moves, gorgeous harmonies, dirty blues licks and spiked metal solos. But the trio only carries Grega’s name, since the band has two more indispensable pillars without whom the show wouldn’t have hit as hard as it did. On bass, Klemen Gasar (ex-Game Over) surprised and thrilled; he’s basically a guitarist, but he proved that handling the thicker strings is no stranger to him, stunning with some excellently grooving lines and phenomenal tapping, while the thundering drum roar in the background came from the versatile, diverse and colorful Blaž Soklič. And the trio played all of it with honest smiles on their faces and an almost childlike playfulness. We were definitely witness to a phenomenal show by a trio that deserves more attention than it gets – but with GHB you can see from a mile away what they live for. And that’s the sheer need to create and present their own musical vision, which has no equal, at least on home soil.
Setlist
GHB:
1. Razor’s Edge
2. Voodoo Sex Thing
3. Alyx
4. Beyond Redemption
5. Devil’s Whisper
6. Zero Gravity
7. IO
8. A Little Love Song
9. Crying Out Loud
10. Catharsis
11. Self Destruct Sequence/Hot 4
12. Alchemist
13. Revolution
14. Devil Planted the Seed
Photo gallery
