Location: Orto Bar/Ljubljana/Slovenia
Concert date: 12.10.2008
Attendance: 100
Ticket price: 13/16 €
On Monday, October 13th, a black crowd of long-haired metalheads gathered in front of Ljubljana’s Orto Bar once again, honoring the arrival of two godless metal bands, Vesna and Negura Bunget, with their presence. Both bands fall under so-called pagan metal, which draws its power from nature and the heritage of the ancestors, so it’s no surprise to see some special instrument on stage, like a fiddle or a 4-meter horn that looks like a prop from a candy commercial.
First up were the Czechs Vesna, whom most people know from the days when they went by the name Adultery. The name change brought slight shifts in their music too, since they decided to devote themselves more to folklore and its melodies, merely backed up by a metal style of playing. In a good half-hour set, Vesna managed to properly warm up the cold gloom-lovers in front of the stage. Despite some minor hiccups, such as swapping drummers right before the tour, they earned big applause and proved they pick tunes that go down easy. The same can’t quite be said for their technical execution, which wasn’t 100% tight, but still, considering the circumstances in which the drummer hit the road, Vesna played more than excellently. Their performance was marked by a distant Slavic kinship and the mysticism of early Slavic chants. It’s worth mentioning that all the lyrics are written in an old Moravian dialect, which is, at least linguistically, closer to us than English. Add fiddle and unusual percussion to an old language, and the result is loud applause and cheering for the performers. As the opening act, Vesna did a great job getting the crowd involved and building anticipation for the stars of the night, Negura Bunget themselves.
If you could already feel something ancient in Vesna’s music, during Negura Bunget’s set there was incomparably more of it. From the very first notes, the guys proved they are true masters of their instruments and technique. Their consistent, energy-charged performance was strongly marked by a dark atmosphere, the kind that only the gloomy and cult-like history of Romania, where they draw their musical ideas from, can truly inspire. The atmosphere was as intense as with some post-rock bands, known for long, melancholic passages in their music. So you could easily say the Romanians play post metal, although many throw them into the progressive black metal scene, which they more than deserve in the end. Instrumentally, they played almost flawlessly; the only thing that got in their way at times was a stage that was too small, since for their enormous horn they needed help from the crowd, who held it up in the air. It’s incredible that they managed to hold the audience through the whole show even though their music is a little harder to listen to, as it has no melodic bits to caress the ears. Quite the opposite: Negura Bunget’s music is very complicated and demands constant focus and attention to really enjoy it, because it hides tons of nuances that are easy to miss. To wrap up, I can only praise once more the incredible fusion of atmosphere and black metal chill that Negura Bunget are able to conjure live.
If you happened to skip this gig, you can only be sorry, because with metal bands you never know when one will break up 🙂
photos: Rok Podgrajšek
text: Matevž Ftičar
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