Label: One Records
Release date: 12/30/2024
Genre: Heavy Metal / Hard Rock
Rating: 9.5/10
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Žanil Tataj Žak is a music legend of our region. He was there when it all went down. Like a good Czech lager, a (le)Žak, too. Way back in the days of the very first Ramones. He’s outlived the ages and seen it all! And he’s still standing. The collaborations and the legacy of recorded work he’s left behind are incredible. This is a hard rock and heavy metal vocalist that everyone would want in their band, if not straight in their trophy cabinet. Globally speaking. Among them, say, the (late) John Lawton, and a few others! His voice speaks for itself, or more precisely, sings for itself. It keeps an outstanding stamp, an infectious quality, a swagger, unleashing every passion and all the explosiveness, but also an exquisitely refined sensitivity and fragility, when that’s not just welcome but necessary. The mileage, the experience, the know-how and the never-drying-up talent, together with the vision this musical artist faithfully follows, all remain firmly in place. Unshakable, all-encompassing. Unstoppable. And last but not least? Inexhaustible.
When it comes to the classic hard rock album of our region that hooks up so boldly with classic heavy metal elements, Žak remains one of the central names you stumble upon very quickly once you start digging into the musical legacy of the eighties. Jersey, Turbo, …. And of course that fateful landing with Divlje Jagode long ago, are enough for every hard rock and classic heavy metal fan to know him, at least on the soil of our shared former country. Add to that his devotion and loyalty to the Postojna glam metal legends Mary Rose, who are still active today, and you’ve pretty much got the whole essence of this vocal brilliance from Rijeka.
Žak took quite a while to decide to step onto a solo musical path. Given his exceptional vocal reputation, as well as his focus on musical vision and artistry, it’s downright surprising that he only made this move recently. We got the excellent EP “Da Capo” (2019), then the debut “Al Fine…” (2022, RockLine review) and here we have the third part of the trilogy. That’s the album “Coda”, which came out in the pre-New Year season of late December 2024. Just like “Al Fine…”, only two years later!
“Coda” continues the story of the previous two releases, an absolutely logical link, both stylistically and production-wise. Once again Žak has gathered an exceptionally wide range of musicians on the album, each contributing their share. And if you want to step up to Žak on his own album, you have to be really good. The best. And that’s exactly what “Coda” embodies. The best of the best. With Žak’s new, thunderous, flawless vocal performance that takes your breath away at every turn of this album. It’s his wild card, and it gets under your skin right away. Every single time. With feather-light ease. He remains one of the most infectious heavy metal and hard rock voices in our region!
The modern production approach to classically arranged songs, which stems from Žak’s musical philosophy and that of his generational peers on the album, delivers a truly special record to the scene in 2024 and 2025. In a way it mirrors the classic days of the eighties and nineties, yet it kicks incredibly potently, dynamically, lucidly and vividly in today’s times too. Not just when you compare it to similar achievements in our region, which you can count on the fingers of one hand anyway, but on a worldwide scale, even though it’s clear that because of the language the album is set in, “Coda” automatically ties stylistically to the achievements of the classic era of heavy metal and hard rock by bands and artists from the region of the former shared country.
The format of the songs is deftly detailed. Everything in the arrangements is right where it should be. It grabs, kicks, thrills, delights. The album’s progression is dynamic and varied, yet strictly structured to develop a high level of musicality. It holds the listener close with the bombast of the very way the compositions unfold, where, as expected, the chorus melody reaches the emotional crescendo! Even the “mid-eight” passages are crafted not just with great skill and imagination, but in a way that keeps the songs from losing even a shred of punch in their emotional charge. Quite the opposite. With vivid twists of mood, they keep the high-octane tension inside the compositions and, if anything, pour extra oil on the fire!
The material on the album makes it incredibly hard to pick the highlights! That’ll be your call! The opening track Ništa labavo, catchy, wound-up and fiery (our good old Benč would say: “No room for wimpy odes!”), is the first such candidate right off the bat. A “Maiden-style” album opener! In it we immediately get everything we look for in Žak’s vocal explosiveness, combined with catchy guitar phrasing and a hypnotically infectious chorus. The closing part of the album is also especially strong and interesting. It’s represented by the track Vračam se. Anyone who has the album “A Glimpse Of Home” (1997) by Turbo at home knows what this is about. A refreshed arrangement, a track with added narration and Croatian lyrics in an extended outro, where Žak proves that even almost 30 years after the album’s release, vocal rust hasn’t touched him one bit.
With its shifts and upheavals of mood, the album keeps the listener hooked the whole way through, thanks to its variety of ideas and exceptional musicality. Next comes Kako ljubav boli, which has a bit of pop sentiment caught in it, followed by the excellent mystical and melancholic ballad U dobru i zlu, which once again highlights Žak’s vocal brilliance, colorfulness and refinement, slyly contrasted with female vocal backing. Žak recorded every track with a different musical crew, which pushed the variety of arrangement and composition even further, with a pronounced gap between tracks that are separate entities, each with its own artistic dossier. We stay at a similar tempo with Korak do sna, which keeps building through its chord progression and is one of the most magnificent compositions on Žak’s latest outing (as far as compositional polish goes). The payoff of bombast in such variety is exceptional, and what’s even more fascinating is how it keeps the musicality at a constantly high level through its constant development. Then, in the middle of the album, there’s the crazy “metal slugfest with ultra-shrapnel” Ne slušaj srce. It’s got furious double “bass drum bulldozing” added in, which deepens the devastating effect of the track. The payoff of the vocal melody Žak delivers with his approach is simply outstanding across the album. It doesn’t let up. In La Vida we witness this phenomenon, a cheerfully minded track that once again jolts the mood of the album in a new direction.
In the ballad Tko je čuvar sna, acoustics come to the fore in the arrangements, and the track gradually builds up in atmosphere again toward an exceptional chorus. Zaustavi vrijeme is a song with a long history. Žak sang it back in the nineties with the bands Gallows Pole and Madcap Laf, when he was living in Germany. On the new album Žak teamed up with the song’s author Dario Troblok to record this excellent track anew. With a refreshed arrangement. The track comes from Troblok’s solo album “The Revelation of John”, which he released in 1996 under the artistic alias John A.B.C. It’s a track that was originally called Strawberry Fields. This time sung in Croatian and with definitely one of the most sinfully infectious chorus melodies on “Coda”. Superb.
The album also has two bonus tracks. One is Vračam se (in a radio-edit, shortened version), and the other is the track titled 2024, which is not a parody of a wall calendar but the only track on the album sung in English. The track was composed by Nejc Vidmar, an old buddy of Žak’s, not just from the previous album but also from their joint work in the Slovenian heavy metal band Black Diamond. Nejc, who is fundamentally a guitar master, set up and put into place all the instruments on this track except the drums. The track is apocalyptic, judging by how it’s built. The phrase winds mildly in a “Black Sabbath-ish” way. The middle (instrumental) section turns the track to the point where it feels almost progressive. The keyboards push to the front and this middle instrumental part develops in a way that even evokes the moves of the likes of Savatage. Nejc’s special but very cleverly placed guitar solo also helps send the track spinning into a whole other dimension. From the main guitar phrase to the vocal lines and the overall deeply dark atmosphere. The song is a detour for the album, but it also answers the question of how a track in English develops completely differently from one in another language.
The new album tops its predecessor “Al Fine….”, which is excellent in every way and almost flawless. And that wasn’t expected. So it’s quite a surprise, which only confirms how high a quality standard Žak set already with “Al Fine…” After just two years he followed up on his predecessor with incredibly inspired charm and production (only the drum production at times deserves a mild scolding, as it lacks some spacious depth), and above all compositional aesthetics and exceptional tightrope walking, commanded by the conductor’s baton of Žak’s focused vision. It’s worth noting that alongside him is an exceptional “squad” of highly accomplished musical masters, who put the necessary dot on the “i”, so that we can speak of the artistic flawlessness and brilliance of “Coda”. It speaks with an even wider flexibility and variety of ideas between individual tracks, each one in turn an exposé of the extremely skillful union of ultra-infectious musicality and grabby metal punch. It has to be pointed out that this album also internalizes the sentiment of the Balkans, which in musical artistry can only be conjured up by a combination of musicians from this region. On this front too, the artistry of this album reaches a kind of absolute uniqueness. At the close of 2024, “Coda” brought one of the peaks of heavy metal and classic hard rock in our region! Let’s hope Žak manages to pull together a crew for a short tour, where we’ll be able to hear all these songs live as well. All I can add is one last conclusion. Job done with great distinction! In every respect. May this story never end.
And one more thing. Žak has (intentionally or not) crossed borders on this album and brought together, pretty much, the former Yugoslavia. At first glance that’s an unnecessary remark, but for those with an open mind, such a feat symbolizes nothing but an immeasurable amount of good. He’s one of the few musicians who has pulled this off since 1991!
Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
*… heartfelt thanks to Nejc Vidmar for the invaluable additional information about the album, so that this review could gain extra objectivity.
Track list:
1. Ništa labavo
2. Kako ljubav boli
3. U dobru i u zlu
4. Korak do sna
5. Ne slušaj srce
6. La vida
7. Tko je čuvar sna
8. Zaustaviti vrijeme
9. Vrijedilo je
10. Vraćam se
11. 2024 *
12. Vraćam se (radio edit) *
*… bonus tracks
Žanil Tataj Žak – vocals, backing vocals, bass guitar (tracks 1, 7 and 10), keyboards (track 4), electric guitar (track 7), acoustic guitar (track 7)
Guest musicians:
Imran Duraj – guitar (tracks 1, 5, 7 and 10), solos on tracks 1 and 10, acoustic guitar on track 10, keyboards on track 10
Nejc Vidmar – all guitars (track 11), guitar solo (track 11), keyboards (track 11), bass guitar (track 11), additional vocals (track 11)
Miloš Aranđelović – vocals (track 2), backing vocals (track 2), whistle (track 2)
Zoran Šerbedžija – guitar solo on track 2
Stefan Potić – guitar on track 2
Ivan Pop – all guitars and guitar solo (tracks 3 and 9), keyboards (tracks 3 and 9), bass guitar (tracks 3 and 9)
Davor Torbok – all guitars (tracks 4, 6 and 8) and guitar solo (tracks 4 and 6), bass guitar (tracks 4, 6 and 8), keyboards (tracks 4 and 8), bass guitar (track 8)
Bruno Mičetić – guitar solo on track 5
Bojan Čalija Fista – guitar solo on track 8
Dominik Dražić – guitar solo on track 10
Mateja Stošić – keyboards on track 2
Dejan Đurković ‘Englez’ – keyboards on track 5
Matko Basara – piano on track 10
Saša Veselić – bass guitar on track 2
Krešimir Kaštelan – bass guitar on track 5
Nikola “Cozy” Baošić – drums on tracks 1, 7 and 11
Klemen Markelj – drums on tracks 2, 5 and 10
Vasif Tadžić – drums on tracks 3 and 9
Hanno Kerstan – drums on tracks 4, 6 and 8
Jasminka Aleksić – backing vocals on track 3
Lea Rac – backing vocals on track 3
Vedran Mičetić – narration (recital) on track 10
