Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Venue: Trainstation Squat / Kranj / Slovenia
Concert date: February 23, 2013
Attendance: 60
Ticket price: €4.00
This February weekend was seriously wild. Weather and gig lineup went hand in hand, and the one-word summary is »switch-off«! The monthly program at Transtation Squat is becoming an ever more important force in delivering the sharp vocabulary of Slovenia’s rich metal culture. It keeps the genius metal bands healthy and growing and (a cruel realization) keeps the metal scene itself alive and kicking. Transtation Squat, and with it the program of its unshakable boss and Kranj’s metal messiah Hellfucker, is gaining a significance similar to what Ljubljana’s Kadilnica of Death, run by Dirty Skunks, carries in these new times. It’s a priceless refuge for excellent bands that desperately need gigs to promote their music. And that’s why it’s an ever more charming stop on the RockLine crew’s gig-going circuit.
Snow blowing in from every side. Saturday night! Joining forces on the bill: space thrashers Teleport, Bay Area revivalists Panikk and the one-of-a-kind black metal gloomsters Ater Era. You’ve got to muster some courage to punch through the merciless curtain of the snowstorm, all the way to the dimensional gate that blasts you out onto the vast plains of howling fervor and untamed creative brilliance that only Slovenian metal can deliver!
A great lineup, a decimated turnout. The culprit? Snow. No. Plain old human fear. Damn. The show was pushed back ten minutes so the travelers could make it through ice and snow to their destination in one piece. So, a 9:30 pm start. On stage, the Slovenian challengers who cheekily file themselves under space thrash metal: Teleport. A wild experience, barely believable, but after all the expansion that followed Negligence’s breakthrough around 2002/2003, it no longer surprises anyone that Slovenia is one of the leading countries cranking out the most interesting new metal bands! Teleport draw plenty of parallels with Canadian »weirdos« Voivod. You read that right. The Ljubljana quartet Teleport kicked off the night with an ultra-venomous brew courtesy of the accelerated thrash metal inflammator Galactic Usurper. You couldn’t wish for a better opener. Razor-sharp riffing, a rhythmic march at peak sonic performance, guttural tearing through the vocal space, spewing rage and terror over innocent followers. Apocalyptic visionaries of the hasty teleportation of the chosen from a plague-ridden planet, into viral colonization and corrosion of new constellations. A viral sickness called humanity! Self-destruction so it can create, conquer, destroy. And then fresh self-destruction that whittles the race down to a bare minimum and into a new cycle! Into infinity?
Great playing, rock-solid focus from the quartet. They rattled off tracks from the first demo »Galactic Usurper« and, for the first time in the band’s career, unveiled a fresh song on stage, Living Fractals. Vocalist Jan Medved is a charismatic frontman with a mane that instantly recalls John Tardy (Obituary), but he has his own vocal trademark. In new member Blaž Tanšek, affectionately nicknamed »Cyberzeus«, he’s gained an excellent partner, making Teleport’s music even fuller, even more tangible, and giving the singer/guitarist room to focus more easily on the vocals. This band’s not short on dynamite. Even if they’re not discovering a musical revolution, they play with extraordinary fire and fervor that wins over fans instantly. These guys are real standouts on the Slovenian metal scene, developing by leaps and bounds, considering they’re barely three years old. So we’re waiting impatiently for the studio debut!
The same goes when the talk turns to Ljubljana’s old-school Bay Area thrash metal revivalists Panikk. Barely three years have passed since the guys played, for us anyway, their first show at the »famous« RockLine Epic Contest in February 2010, and they’re already about to release their studio debut »Unbearable Conditions« (Metal Tank Records, release date March 12, 2013). In that time Gašper »Gapa« Flere, with three comrades in the lineup, has made incredible progress, and Panikk, who showed up at a time of heavy saturation with thrash metal revival bands in Slovenia, didn’t just survive and hold their ground amid the thick sowing of revival protagonists. With Negligence’s hard-to-explain dormancy, they’re becoming, alongside Eruption, the top candidates to take over as the central figure of Slovenia’s thrash metal revival scene. Gapa’s progress especially stands out. He’s grown into a confident frontman and upgraded his »annoyingly dusty little screech«, the kind that even thrash mentor Dave Mustaine, now thoroughly vocally burnt out, would kill for if his vocal cords allowed it. Above all, though, it’s great to hear the superb interpretation and evolution of the band’s older standards Dismay and/or The Wave Of Death, as well as the growth of the band’s arranging and songwriting vein, as shown by newer, fiercely pure-blooded old-school thrash metal odysseys like Unbearable Conditions, Playground of Visions or Panic Attack! Every time you meet the band face to face, you can’t escape the realization that Panikk, with firmly measured steps of a thrash metal reveille march, are only going up. The band celebrates the album release on March 16, 2013, in Škofja Loka. Make sure you »paint yourselves in« at »Ostriga« that day!
And the most interesting band of the night! The Istrians Ater Era. Formerly Torka! One of the most adventurously provocative stories that black metal’s evolution can serve up in 2013. Worldwide. A band whose sharpness goes beyond the pathetic notion that black metal has run its course. Quite the opposite. Ater Era follow their own self-grown vision, cross-pollinating elements of the old Scandinavian treasury of black metal resurrection, Mayhem and/or Dismember, with longer atmospheric passages carved into numerous changes of rhythm and lead guitar phrases. The dose of psychedelia is emphasized, and so is the original Slavic paganism in the lead melodies. It’s unbelievable what just three people can conjure up on stage. An extraordinarily massive sound, chilling godless doom, in which Transtation Squat was wrapped in the glow of a painless night of ominous snowflake-shaking. The rhythm section is exceptional. The drums especially are unique in their dynamics and inventive solutions, effectively filling all the available space with a mass of riffs built on fast picking, in harmonies of split sequences of lead passages. Hypnotic, ominous, Slovenian! Yes! The band’s boss S.S., besides confident guitar playing that optimally covered the sonic space for the work of one guitar, above all delivered an eternally colorful range of resolute growling, the basic motif behind the starting points of Ater Era’s unique musical vision.
The band cut four songs from the studio debut »In Autumn’s Solitary Decline« – Red Thorah is certainly the most fitting title among them if you’re looking for confirmation that this is a band following its own vision as absolute self-made black metallers. Three brand-new songs, namely »Drifts Of Dead Ground«, »My Beast, My Age« and »Drowning In The Depths«, which the band slotted into the Kranj set, triumphantly herald the arrival of the second studio release, which we can expect in the coming months of this year! If you missed them in Kranj, you’ve got a shot at a make-up exam, on February 28, 2013, at Ljubljana’s Orto bar, where Ater Era play alongside Slovenia’s Ivje and Norwegian black metallers Endezzma!
Yet another fantastic evening at Transtation Squat, put together by the good-natured, rock-solid Hellfucker, served up three bands that blew us away in the plasma of faith in the musical artistry they firmly believe in. Each one twisted toward its own direction of metal’s unique magic. Of the three, Ater Era undoubtedly and deservedly took the top spot of the night, as they have an exceptional dose of self-grown character in the craft of black metal handiwork!
Setlist
TELEPORT:
1. Intro
2. Galactic Usurper
3. Future Existence
4. Dimensional Passage
5. Digestive Pit
6. Living Fractals
7. Devourer Of Planets
8. Stellar Damnation
9. Destructioid
PANIKK:
1. Revelation Of Truth
2. Dismay
3. Messiah Of Decay
4. Cruel World
5. Panic Attack
6. Away From Reality
7. Unbearable Conditions
8. Playground Of Visions
9. The Wave Of Death
ATER ERA (in no particular order):
from the album “In Autumn’s Solitary Decline” (2011):
Vest
Vortex
Quod Mox Servi Erimus
Red Thorah
from the upcoming new album:
Drifts Of Dead Ground
My Beast, My Age
Drowning In The Depths
Photo Gallery
