Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Orto bar / Ljubljana
Concert date: 24.04.2015
The second season of Kadilnica of Death is slowly winding down. Last Thursday Brezno wrapped it in the waters of folk metal, and in a little over a week its foundations will be shaken by the death metal of Kranj’s Penitenziagite. But before that, as part of Orto fest last Friday, the Dihurja duo brought Belgrade’s floating clubs to Orto. And Judas Priest and Iron Maiden. Well, at least that’s roughly how you could describe this musical oddity to someone who doesn’t know the Serbian turbo folk metallers Pero Defformero, a oddity that probably kills in every republic of the former shared homeland. Even more so on our turf, as the jam-packed hall proved. But we’ll get to that.
The crowd was slowly trickling into the renovated lower hall after nine when the unicorn riders from Kamnik took the stage. From space. On fire. This time the guys let a whole herd of rabid unicorns off the reins and had no trouble warming up the crowd for the Grand Production stars of the evening. The space unicorns get more confident every time I manage to catch them, and above all they sound better and play tighter, even if their kind of music doesn’t smell exactly like a unicorn fart to me (I’m only guessing that this cloud of glitter smells like violets). Enough about unicorns. Space Unicorn on Fire were still wrestling with somewhat poor sound at the very start, but it quickly got fixed over the course of the set, and by the end Medzvezdna mačkica sounded just the way it should. Tavto wobbled a little vocally, especially in the highest registers, but his voice quickly warmed up and soon matched his instrumentally top-notch bandmates. The guys played only original material this time, including, besides the iron-clad hits, the already mentioned Mačkica, August Blues and the closing Let’s Go To Space, a few newer tracks that, with somewhat more complex approaches, nudge the band at times from cliché power metal even toward the progressive.
Even though the Novi Sad metal players visited Slovenia just a good two months ago, the Ljubljana crowd greeted them like big stars, completely filled the lower hall of Orto bar and reportedly even outnumbered the attendance at a gig by the far more renowned Dan D. Band founder Saša Friš, drummer Srđan Golubica (Alogia), bassist Andras Ispan (Divlje Jagode) and the band’s indispensable mascot, vocalist Biške, marched onstage to hurricane-force enthusiasm from the hot crowd, as if Ceca had shown up at the Marakana. But what they fired up was something completely different, and at the same time very homey. Pero Defformero in fact dish out very high-quality heavy metal, with a set of extremely convincing guitar moves from Saša that even the biggest names in heavy metal wouldn’t turn down. The difference is that alongside it, seemingly incompatible, like an old Yugo that won’t start, Biške wails with the vibrato of the best Serbian schlager hits. Dressed in the obligatory glittering white suit and a lanac, a chain that even Flavor Flav would envy. The guys won people over again with devilish tightness, great sound, Biške’s underpants-splitting humor and a solid cross-section of hits from the albums Undegrand and Jer to liči na taj način? And the crowd roared along to the parody anthems like Silvana, Kauboj, Gotičarka, Sedmica na loti, Gastarbajtar and Metal sviraću (which sounds like Motörhead if Šaban Šaulić had stepped into Lemmy’s spot). After almost an hour and a half, the band said goodbye to the grateful crowd with Došli smo do kraja puta.
If Pero Defformero played only turbo folk they’d fill Stožice, if only heavy metal they’d be a Channel Zero, and their one-of-a-kind blend, given the total mismatch of genres, has a surprisingly big fan base. Pero Defformero is probably the last thing you’d deliberately spin at home, but live, once a year, they more than do the job. As for how much something like that is really worth, everyone can answer for themselves.
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