On day three the weather finally took full pity on us, the festival atmosphere lifted noticeably as a result, and the bands of the third day delivered some of the best performances of this year’s Tolminator.
The musical breakfast was served by Obalni Meduzalem, who have been active for two decades — yet up until last year’s On Parole release La Terza Gamba, I’ll admit I’d never heard of them. My loss, because Meduzalem delivered an interesting experimental/progressive blend of rock and metal that deserves (and rewards) further listening.
Next up were more acts from the Primorska region, though a completely different genre from Meduzalem and personally more familiar to me. All three Ater Ere albums have been and remain on fairly regular rotation in my home player, they’ve been tested live plenty of times and never disappointed. The trio hit the mark at Tolminator too, convincing with their distinctive black metal — defined above all by long tracks packed with twists and turns that add an experimental and progressive edge to Ater Ere’s music. An interesting counterpoint to the darkness on stage was bassist Eva’s look — pink hair, pink shoes, and pink strings on the bass to boot. Great stuff, and it’s well past time for a follow-up to Clades, released some five years ago.
The Primorska region’s invasion of Tolminator’s second stage wrapped up in stoner rhythms courtesy of Omega Sun, who fit the surroundings perfectly under the early afternoon sun — slow grooves, guitar solos, and a melodic, dreamy vocal that won over the assembled crowd.
A completely different kind of madness was provided by local grind heroes Glista, who you can always count on to deliver a proper grind storm of a show. This time was no different — no shortage of disco beats or polka rhythms, and no shortage of entertaining between-song addresses from vocalist Mitja, who this time added a visual spectacle to his grunting and screaming when an assistant inserted medical needles into his stomach and neck right in the middle of the set. Ouch — but the death/grind surgeons at Carcass would have been proud.
Even though the second stage lineup had been genuinely diverse up to that point, locals Rodoljubac with their punk ‘n’ roll didn’t exactly win my ears over.
Which cannot be said of Swedish black/thrash metallers Kvaen, who with their debut performance on Slovenian soil undoubtedly picked up a few new fans. Kvaen is the solo project of Jacob Björnfot, who handles all instruments and vocals in the studio himself, while live he’s joined by fellow members of the Swedish black/death metal scene — currently even former Amon Amarth drummer Fredrik Andersson is behind the kit. But Kvaen sound nothing like them; genre-wise they’re closer to bands like Dissection and Necrophobic. That means plenty of aggressive, neck-breaking speed with a generous dose of melody on top, coming primarily from Jacob’s fingers, which also delivered some impressive solos (most notably in The Great Below, where Jeff Loomis plays the guest solo on the album). Jacob also convinced with a venomous vocal attack, though the atmosphere was mildly undercut by the fact that Kvaen were playing not in darkness but under a blazing July sun. But black metal this good works just fine whether it’s pitch black or baking hot.
In similarly great fashion to how the small stage closed, the main stage opened — and it was seized and commanded like a force of nature by American death metallers Frozen Soul. Nobody was quite prepared for a hit of old school death metal like that, and the area in front of the stage was fairly sparse at first, but frontman Chad Green had little trouble pulling in more people with commanding and refreshingly non-generic crowd banter (still not as many as a death metal performance of that quality deserved). Frozen Soul ground Tolminator to dust over the course of an hour, mercilessly, like a glacial moraine where everything turns to powder and rubble under the weight of millions of tons of ice. Because alongside their world-class death metal — captured above all on the current record Glacial Domination — Frozen Soul have a unique thematic approach built entirely around ice, snow, frost, and winter (and no, it’s nothing like copying Immortal). The Americans showed everything that good death metal needs: an old-school approach with a modern, killer sound, monolithic aggression, slam moments that threaten to rip your head clean off, worked-out riffs and solos, a brutal but clear and commanding vocal… And Frozen Soul delivered this show despite it being the first date of their European tour and despite the airline losing all their gear at the airport (generously lent to them by Ater Era — a fact Chad made a point of acknowledging). Just as Bolt Thrower steamroll everything with tank tracks, Frozen Soul grind like a glacier, and every band that followed had the very tough task of filling the Texans’ enormous shoes.
But nobody was intimidated by the challenge — which is just as well, because what followed contained some more of the festival’s best performances. The death metal kept coming, only this time the stage was taken by South Americans — or more precisely, South American women — Crypta, formed after vocalist and bassist Fernanda Lira left her previous band Nervosa. Convincing as she was in Nervosa, Crypta is a step above, and they too, in the style of Frozen Soul, took Tolminator like the storm and lightning that had lashed the site two days earlier. The Brazilian quartet, led by the charismatic and energetic Fernanda, won over the crowd with death metal that will satisfy fans of Death’s Spiritual Healing era — Fernanda’s voice in particular is a strong reminder of Chuck Schuldiner, while individual guitar moves from the Tania Bergamaschi/Jessica Falchi duo carry the same melodicism and technical ambition as the genre’s founding fathers. The girls showed how death metal is done, with gender playing absolutely no role — four bearded heavyweights would have been just as convincing with a performance like that. They also demonstrated clear growth over their debut by playing tracks from Shades of Sorrow (The Other Side of Anger, Trial of Traitors, Lord of Ruins), an album that came out just over a week after Tolminator.
The death metal intensity of Frozen Soul and Crypta was brought down a notch by Sweden’s In Mourning, who with their progressive death metal showed beyond any doubt that they are masters of both composition and their instruments. But their Opeth-inspired death metal, full of dreamy, slow passages and clean vocals, was a somewhat heavy meal for an early afternoon slot.
It was the Catalan thrashers Crisix who cranked the musical intensity back up — they’d already wowed on the same stage a few years back, and this time they repeated that wild thrash party, leaving yet another unforgettable impression. We hadn’t seen that many smiling faces, that much laughter, and that much general good energy at the venue since Instanity Alert, and Crisix cooked up a similarly unhinged spectacle — the mosh pit showed no sign of stopping, and at one point even several band members jumped in. The fun chaos peaked when the visibly ecstatic members swapped instruments, with guitarist Marc Busque grabbing the mic, and in that configuration they ripped through a quick medley of Hit the Lights (Metallica)/Walk (Pantera)/Antisocial (Anthrax) that won over even the last skeptics in a nicely packed venue. The circle pit went on and on — at one point even a girl in a wheelchair found herself in the mix, her friend cheerfully pushing her around the circle for a good while. Exactly this kind of thrash party poured positive energy across the whole venue and left nothing but smiling faces and good vibes in its wake after just over an hour.
Norwegian black metal veterans Ancient gave their fans a nice surprise by playing their debut album Svartalvheim in its entirety, but I was never much of a fan or a follower of their catalog, and this time they unfortunately didn’t change my mind either. Maybe next time.
Probably the biggest name on paper and the overall top billing of this year’s festival has to be Phil Campbell, who continues the legacy of the immortal Motörhead with Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons, playing alongside three of his own sons and vocalist Joel Peters. Phil Campbell arrived at Tolminator with his bastards for a special Motörhead set, and if anyone has the right to do that, it’s certainly Phil — he spent, would you believe, more than 30 years in Motörhead! Their set was long-anticipated, but already at the opening notes of the classic Iron Fist a quiet sadness settled in that the figure of the Iron Chancellor, the one and only Lemmy, is no longer on stage (writing these lines I realized again that it’s been nearly eight years since his death — how time flies…). Without him it simply isn’t the same, which only became more apparent with Joel’s vocals, which sound far too polished and clean for Motörhead classics. My unprofessional advice on that front: ditch the vanilla vape and thick smoothies — it’s Marlboro Reds and Jack and Coke down the throat! Joel was also fairly irritating with his generic crowd banter, and neither the fact that Mr. Campbell himself was standing on stage nor the excellent setlist — which didn’t lack for songs like Stay Clean, Born to Raise Hell, R.A.M.O.N.E.S., (We Are) the Road Crew, and other eternal anthems burned into the brain — helped lift the feeling. I have to say that our own Metropolis are a much closer approximation of the original based on what I’ve seen and heard. Then again, I may be too critical — I had the fortune and pleasure of seeing Lemmy live myself, which the younger generation can’t say, and for them this may be the only way to experience something close to the legacy of a musical giant in the flesh.
The penultimate day was closed out by Finnish melodic death metal champions Insomnium, but due to fatigue and the fact that I’d last followed them properly around the time of One For Sorrow, I unfortunately didn’t give them a fair chance this time. They were certainly sounding very good from elsewhere in the venue, though.
Text: Rok Klemše
Photos: Sebastijan Videc
