Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Venue: Channel Zero, Ljubljana
Concert date: 09.11.2011
Attendance: 0
Before announcing the fall gig season, the merry polecats “promised” fewer death metal shows. Well, luckily they bit their own tongues off, nailed them to the gig poster and brought a horny death metal menage-a-trois to Ljubljana: America’s Solace of Requiem, the Netherlands’ Prostitute Disfigurement and Sweden’s Vomitory. Death metal even made its way back to Channel Zero, which has hosted quite a few legendary gigs over the years, and it was damn nice to witness blast beats, animal growls, blasphemous solos and spinning manes in this club again.
First on stage were the Americans, Solace of Requiem, who were a total unknown to me personally before the show (I deliberately don’t use MySpace or YouTube before gigs anymore, since that’s the only way I can still get surprised and pretend I live in an age that doesn’t know mp3s, Porn..ups, YouTube and everything that comes with them), and that made the surprise all the bigger and more pleasant. Usually the openers are anything but balm for the ears, right, but this time Solace of Requiem gave the anvil, the hammer and that third thing I can never remember a nice, proper shake. The American quartet didn’t have many people in front of the stage yet, but they played their set with confidence and plenty of energy, and the vocalist really worked hard to raise the crowd from the dead. Slowly he managed it, too: people stopped staring at the floor and groaning “Braaaains” and listened to a band that was giving it everything on stage. Musically the band recalled Deicide, Monstrosity and early Death, and the lead guitarist in particular laid down some excellent lines that even Chuck Schuldiner wouldn’t have turned his nose up at. The rhythm section pounded like Verdun not quite a hundred years ago, and the vocalist squeezed out just the right amount of inhuman screams. The only thing that slightly spoiled the performance was the bad sound: the drums in particular were a complete mess despite the astonishingly technical approach, and the awful trigger effect did nothing to help the thunder. Despite a few cliché moves of the “let’s nail Jesus to the cross for the twenty-third time” kind (Divine Punishment), Solace of Requiem were a top-notch warm-up and, for the first time in a long while, a support act actually worth lending an ear to (lend me your ears, hehe).
“No Rest For the Wicked” is what the Dutch Prostitute Disfugurement said, and they didn’t make tender love to us by candlelight, among rose petals and the music of Michael Bolton. No, true to their name, the band fucked us full-on and without mercy for an hour with stormy death metal, and instead of gentle piano music we got vocalist Niels Adams’ animal growls, the devastating pounding of a brutal rhythm section and penetrating guitar lines, with which Danny Tunker nimbly switched positions. As the only guitarist, he successfully covered the role of two guitars, using plenty of techniques from astonishing sweeping to wanky arpeggios, and only during the solos did the average bass playing fail to fill the empty space. Over the years the Dutch prostitutes have toned down their gore and porn lyrics a little, but they still penetrated our eardrums with mellifluous hits like She’s Not Coming Home Tonight and G(ay)-B(ar) Massacre. Prostiture Disfigurement left us with our pants around our ankles, humiliated and abused, the way only perverted death metal can pull off. If only the guys had disfigured that annoying Lulu too.
We didn’t puke after a double dose of brutal death metal, but we did step through the entrance to Hell, which is what Vomitory means. It’s also the name of the Swedish death metal outfit that, alongside the other big names of the Swedish death metal scene, has been shredding the world with devastating death metal since 1989. Vomitory launched into an hour-long massacre by presenting their latest record, Opus Mortis VIII, and it was pure bliss for the ears to hear real death metal, Swedish-style, backed by buzzsaw guitars run through the cult HM-2 Heavy Metal and DS-1 Distortion pedals, which make the riffs cut like a circular saw. Those of us who’d already caught Vomitory live knew that lead vocalist and bassist Erik Rundqvist has the charisma of a dead tree, so the main communication with the crowd is handled by the smiling, good-natured and likeable guitarist Peter, who tied the set together nicely, while Erik scratched his ass during the breaks. Still, that doesn’t bother you enough to stop you from enjoying the brutal riffing, the incredibly solid rhythm section that came down like cops on hippies in the seventies, and the deep, demonic growl. The intensity of the show kept growing right up to its premature end, after which Vomitory probably drove off to Žale to find the nearest little corpse for some late-night music. Terrorize, Brutalize, Sodomize!
It was a real pleasure to experience a proper death metal show in Ljubljana again after a good while, played by real dudes with beer bellies and beards, who don’t know pretty, catchy, gentle choruses and would grind the tattooed, waxed, anorexic vegan pretty boys in tank tops into a bloody pile with just a few of their riffs.
Photos: Nina Grad
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