Unforigven 4 – Metallica tribute
Friday, 25 April 2025, 9:30 PM – 11:45 PM
Medvode / MC Jedro / Slovenia
Unforgiven 4 is a Metallica tribute band that got started in the summer of 2018. A quartet made up of four outstanding musicians with an enormous number of miles under their belts and a long history of knowing and being friends with each other, they had been on the target list for a visit our outlet had been planning for quite some time. Something always got in the way and the visits kept getting pushed back. Until Slovenia’s Metallica finally made it to the town between the waters. The stars aligned in just the right position. Medvode! And that lovely, neatly kept MC Jedro club, which could serve as a shining example for many other Slovenian club dives. Everything there genuinely runs at a high level of event organization. Top to bottom. Right down to that cherry on top — excellent locally brewed beer.
Unforgiven 4 have gone about imitating the great band with real commitment. Everything. From gear to sound. When it comes to execution, they most often go straight for the live concert versions of the Bay Area thrash metal giants. That’s actually perfectly logical. The setlist is built from the band’s most popular and best-known classics, with a gravitational pull toward the “Black Album” — the Metallica album that definitively seated the legendary band on the throne of the world’s metal superpowers. The album most people know best.
An hour and three-quarters of bombardment, courtesy of the very good — scratch that, excellent — sonic qualities provided by the legendary Youwda — the man who stepped in to save the band’s bass slot at their concert this past January in the heart of Zagreb (Tvornica kulture) and who still goes to sleep with Metallica music and wakes up to it every morning. That’s what it’s all about!
The quartet is something genuinely special. Jure Jurca — the audience’s first point of contact, i.e. James Hetfield — paired with the bombardier at the back — Primož Jelševar, which sent some of us hurtling back to the days of their band Chaostar, and that was way, way back — I won’t say exactly twenty years ago. Then there’s Matevž Pavčnik — in the Kirk Hammett slot at Unforgiven 4, and someone who for years has formed the core of the band Vagabunda alongside Jure. And bassist Borut Šemerl — filling the role of the three Metallica members who cycled through that position over the course of the band’s career — a well-known multi-instrumentalist and producer. Currently active in Vseen, and back in the day also in the once media-notorious Game Over. In short, these guys mean business.
The setlist covered it all. All the way up to the “Hardwired” album (with a run through Spit Out The Bone). The opening section was one wallop after another, then some breathing room courtesy of the fourth installment of the classic Unforgiven — the track the quartet named their Metallica tribute after — followed by the stunning Fade To Black. Then came that run into the finale packed with the finest gems in the Metallica catalog, kicked off by For Whom The Bell Tolls, followed by the genius Sanitarium and the long-awaited One (full version, no cuts), and then the detonating Master Of Puppets (I won’t forget the Bežigrad thunder amid those unified cries of “Master! Master!” when all of Ljubljana shook with it back in 1999). Goosebumps? Again. Even in Medvode!
Of course two more were still to come! In the encore. No need to even name them. Nothing Else Matters and then Enter Sandman, and the boys rounded it all off by thundering through the Thin Lizzy classic Whiskey In The Jar.
The band grinds hard. Unforgiven 4 radiate from the stage an impression of exceptional drive and dedication, and they conjure the one thing that counts most — pure joy in playing the material of the titans of world metal. A few slips crept into the performance, but even Metallica still manages to fumble beautifully on any given night. That can’t be a real excuse, of course, but the full-tilt sprint from track to track — which demands serious physical conditioning, serious lung capacity, and not merely running on adrenaline — definitely takes its toll. Primož is technically a better drummer than Lars, but he did well to hold himself back and not let it show in his playing. In a way, that’s considerably harder than nailing everything with clockwork precision. Plain and simple. It would no longer be Metallica.
Bottom line: excellent. Solid, captivating, and thunderous across the board. Given that the band has only been together since 2018 and the plandemic circus robbed them of at least two years, the crew keeps leveling up. Tightening the logistics, the sound they conjured at MC Jedro was a very, very good rendition of the live originals. Add the quality of the performance on top of that and mission accomplished!
The only thing that put a damper on it all was — you guessed it — the low turnout.
Author: Edita Klemen & Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Setlist:
1. Intro
2. Die Die
3. Fuel
4. Seek & Destroy
5. Creeping Death
6. The Unforgiven IV
7. Fade To Black
8. Spit Out The Bone
9. Wherever I May Roam
10. The Memory Remains
11. Sad But True
12. For Whom The Bell Tolls
13. Welcome Home (Sanitarium)
14. Battery
15. One
16. Master Of Puppets
—encore—
17. Nothing Else Matters
18. Enter Sandman
19. Whiskey In The Jar
