Author: Rok Klemše
Photos: Nina Grad
Location: Orto bar, Ljubljana
Concert date: 15.05.2014
Attendance: 100
If you had nowhere to be last Thursday, maybe it really is time to think about retiring from gigs. In Kranj, as part of Youth Week, Sarcasm were thrashing away, at Gala hala Dickless Tracy were dishing out the brutality, and at Orto bar the legendary Texan heavy/power/speed metallers Helstar returned to Slovenian stages after four years, this time with a new studio album, This Wicked Nest.
First to kick off a genre-diverse evening were Medvode thrashers Classified, once again beefed up with Alex Škofljanec (Negligence) behind the kit. The Medvode crew didn’t hold anything back, burying the crowd in aggressive Bay Area thrash, massive riffs and a jerky, tectonically shaking rhythm section. You can tell Classified have been racking up the gig miles: they come across more and more confident and sure of themselves on stage, and they’re excellently schooled both instrumentally and vocally. Sadly, though, their original material stays in the realm of the »heard it all before« and not exactly earth-shattering thrash, a genre that’s currently dying by installments with only rare flashes of brilliance.
Then the Ljubljana doomsters Mist wrapped Orto bar in slower, more seductive and more ominous tones, like a haze rolling in. They’re already busy spreading the word across Europe (in the near future they even have a prestigious slot at the cult Hammer of Doom festival in Germany!). Just like their Medvode colleagues, Mist show the effects of a steadily climbing tally of stage miles, because the girls melt into the stage a little more every time. Nina keeps getting more convincing vocally and, backed by her bandmates, easily lures you into a ritual trance, reinforced by slow-rolling yet convincing riffs and Neža’s thoroughly grooving bass. The original material has already settled in nicely with the crowd, especially Phobia and The Living Dead from the demo, and every time they win everyone over with an extremely faithful and suitably stoned rendition of the Pentragram classic Relentless. If there’s anything to nitpick, it’s a touch of shyness, which will surely vanish with gigs on European stages, and we can hardly wait for the full-length debut the girls are planning for the end of this year.
Ever since their comeback, Helstar have been somehow obsessed with horns and skulls (the main motif of their album covers since the »come-back« album The King of Hell), and in exactly that spirit the Texans greeted the Slovenian crowd once more. Slovenized James RIvera climbed on stage to the crushing sounds of Fall of Dominion wearing a horned skull mask, the very one glaring from the cover of the new album This Wicked Nest. On this tour the legendary Helstar aren’t just marking the release of a new album, they’re also celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of their cult debut Burning Star. Accordingly, a good chunk of their set was painted in burning-star colors (Toward the Unknown, Leather And Lust, Dracula’s Castle, Witch’s Eye, Burning Star), and once again every single second of the show was devoted to top-notch execution. Drummer Mikey pounded the kit like a true Tormentor, while the Barragan/Trevino guitar duo once again delivered brilliant playing that was a feast for both ears and eyes. Cranked-out riffs and brilliantly composed solo duels flew in from every direction. The only thing missing was maybe a few more tracks from the classic era of Remnants of War-A Distant Thunder-Nosferatu, where this strength of Helstar reached its absolute peak and the band wrote itself into history forever. Newer-era Helstar are simply buried a bit deeper than before in a truly hard-hitting, aggressive and brutal (almost) thrash metal attack, which also explains James’s noticeably rawer vocals. Even so, he proved with a phenomenal vocal performance why he’s one of the most respected vocal names in metal. And let’s not forget the Russian bassist Mateje, who is filling in on stage for the ailing Abarca. This Russian, as James and Larry joked, was of course none other than Matej Sušnik (Metalsteel), who also recorded This Wicked Nest with the band. After a good hour and a half, Helstar bowed out with the legendary classic Run With the Pack, and although this show didn’t come anywhere near the unforgettable madness of Helstar’s first visit to Bazen in Kranj, you know that with Helstar you can always expect top-notch execution, sick-good vocals and dazzling poetry of guitar genius. It was no different this time, because even after thirty years Helstar still glow like a burning star!
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