Vulture Industries (support: Rai)
Ljubljana / Menza pri koritu / Slovenia
Saturday, March 14, 2026, 8:30 PM – 11:00 PM
Vulture Industries. Straight up — one of the more ‘unhinged’ bands in the metal sphere right now. Globally speaking. Norwegians, naturally. Scandinavia has always been a breeding ground for musical eccentricity. When you’re left with no other option but to reach for the avant-garde label, Norway is particularly known for a string of such oddballs — especially in the field of fusing progressive with jazz and so on. Only the Norwegians manage, in this regard, to come close to the country that truly leads the charge as a musical-weirdness breeding ground: France. But that’s a story for another time.
Vulture Industries are regular visitors to Slovenia. They’ve played here multiple times — including at the former Metal Camp and Metaldays festivals. But a new club show took a solid 12 years of waiting. Their last gig was in 2014 at MC Pekarni in Maribor (RockLine concert review). Their legendary gig at CUK Kino Šiška in Ljubljana on February 3, 2012, marking the 10th anniversary of KD Veseli Dihurčki, remains equally unforgettable. Well, Črt and Matej once again delivered great joy to the handful of ‘fanatics’ who love this band — inviting the valiant Norwegians to the AKC Metelkova club scene. Menza? Even though I hadn’t been there in over 10 years, and even though the club recently received the ‘flattering label’ of a security-risk zone from the watchful stewardship of the Ljubljana City Municipality’s guardians, fortunately nothing whatsoever had changed there in all that time.
Enough sarcastic reflections — let’s get to the action. Rai warmed up the crowd as openers. A Slovenian band. Slovenian? Watching them live, that’s the last thing you’d think. A perfect choice to kick off the concert evening. Straight up, this is a band you could label progressive metal — but they’re nowhere near limited to that. They weave plenty of genre threads into their sound: from cabaret to pop, and jazz too. Their compositions, despite the constant movement and multiple atmospheric shifts, maintain a sense of following a through-line, held together by hook-driven, singable refrains. The band performed as a quintet — one guitarist short. In a tight set they presented five tracks, making it clear that Rai are perfectionists — but what really stood out in the setlist was Frederick’s Dream (a track with which the band successfully stirred things up at last year’s EMA), a singular collision of cabaret and metal, in which the band deliberately opened by integrating a section of the Grace Jones hit Libertango. Clever, in its own way.
This is a band with massive breakthrough potential on the global music stage. Last year they released their debut — a double album issued in two parts. They put out the first half, titled “Reason,” in summer 2025, and the second, “Heart,” in autumn 2025. Front and center is vocalist Vanja Rok Vrtovec, who brings not only enormous charisma and superb — often darkly tongue-in-cheek — delivery of lyrics, but also theatrical flair (tailcoat, top hat…), making the band’s performances feel at times like you’ve landed in a cabaret theater show. The band closed with their (currently) most recognizable hit Cinema. Rai is a band unlike anything Slovenia has seen before. A superb addition to the scene that can reach further — significantly further than Slovenia’s borders. The foundations for growth are very promising, including in terms of how they handle English-language verse metrics. I can’t think of a Slovenian band that has mastered that element with such distinction. And I won’t even get started on the technical polish of the individual members. Despite performing one member down, this show was extraordinarily convincing.
Vulture Industries are a band that, over all these years, has managed to win over a small handful of Slovenian music lovers who have truly taken them to heart. And I mean a small handful. There were about 30 of us. But the funny thing is, at each of their visits you keep running into the exact same faces. That’s just how it is. A happy family of the chosen — a merry, untamed brotherhood of Slovenian metal scene legends.
The band, which after changing its name from Dead Roses Garden in 2003 has been operating with virtually the same lineup ever since, delivered an expectedly outstanding performance. At the center is none other than the madly eloquent doctor and thunderer — vocalist and (near-theatrical) actor Bjørnar Nilsen. This time around he hadn’t strapped any lightbulb to his head. A hat, a sharp suit. Unlike the rest of his companions, the only one wearing shoes. Whenever there was no ‘prowling about,’ the audience’s eyes were mostly locked on him. Bjørnar Nilsen knows how to hypnotize a crowd with his gaze — especially when he does his signature eye-bulge. A man loaded with exceptional charisma. He could export it. The band is brilliantly tight. No slip-ups. Everything is delivered with painstaking precision. Bjørnar naturally takes up the most stage space, which comes down to his theatrical input — still working at times as comically theatrical, but also unhinged and a little bizarre. The rest of the guys in the band match him in this regard at least by being barefoot on stage.
The concert was an exclusive affair. The valiant Norwegians set out on an extremely short tour — just two shows total. First at Metelkova, then the next day in Budapest. They also brought a full merch spread, which was a wonderful experience for an old uncle who hates ordering things online — finally able to walk home with one of their vinyl records.
The band opens the concert with the “The Tower” track The Dead Won’t Mind. An excellent opening catalyst for the unique party-theater that fuses metal with bizarreness. What follows is an expected leap to the latest studio album “Ghosts From The Pasts” (2023) with two consecutive tracks — first the razor-sharp New Lords Of Light, which carved through the concert floor via a gothic verse into a melodically grabby main metal riff, then the distinctly sinister Saturn Devouring His Young, with that ugly, evil old figure devouring his children. The atmosphere this band creates is truly one of a kind. It’s hypnotic. It takes hold with everything you want from genuinely great metal: occult, extreme darkness, the feeling of inevitable doom with no way back. Bjørnar is extraordinarily infectious. An exceptional actor, an interpreter. You eat right out of his hand. And amidst all the dark carnage the band unleashes — ultimately, on top of everything — darkly entertaining!
The concert tore along at pace. The setlist spanned every era of the band’s career. What’s great about Vulture Industries is that they constantly surprise you — when it comes to how they construct their compositions, you never know what they’re going to serve up for the audience, so spending more words on analysis would only kill time. Simply: if you don’t know the band but count yourself among the more spoiled musical gourmets, it’s high time you started discovering them. They are (in principle) progressive, yet just experimental enough in their artistry to flirt with the avant-garde. Doom and black metal are no strangers to them, and they love to wander into the territory of jazz-black-metal-cabaret (Blood Don’t Eliogabalus). Your call.
I’m not even sure exactly when, but suddenly we were at the finale. Bjørnar said the next song was about how he feels after watching the TV news. It was the closing Lost Among Liars. Even Nick Cave would give it a listen. At the end, only Bjørnar leaves the stage. The band calls him back. They launch into the initially sardonic Deeper (taken from the last album), where metal toys with the melody of some Mexican western, with Bjørnar managing to get the handful of us to join in on the singing. And the track Vulture Industries always love to save for the very end — Blood Don’t Eliogabalus. The ominous ‘riff drive’ on a stumbling rhythm gets even a few audience neck vertebrae moving. Devastating and theatrical. Into the finale and the definitive end that came. Fast and unannounced.
Vulture Industries build their own world during a live performance. It’s so special it only takes in the most special of people. There weren’t many of us special ones that evening at Menza. A handful of special people who enjoyed boundlessly the musical singularity of a one-of-a-kind band.
Text: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Rai – setlist:
1. Daydream
2. Above Me
3. Royality
4. Frederick’s Dream
5. Cinema
Vulture Industries – setlist:
1. The Dead Won’t Mind (intro)
2. New Lords Of Light
3. Saturn Devouring His Young
4. Tales Of Woe
5. The Bolted Door
6. This Cursed Flesh
7. Grim Apparitions
8. As The World Burns
9. Screaming Reflections
10. Strangers
11. The Pulse Of Bliss
12. Lost Among Liars
—encore—
13. Deeper
14. Blood Don’t Eliogabalus
