(Our Slovenian compatriot Didrik Mešiček has prepared the following preview of the second edition of the Tolminator festival in his home country, which is coming up fast and looks well worth attending.)
After a successful first edition, Tolminator is back for its second year! For those of you unaware, since Metaldays has had its various debacles, Tolminator has now taken over the stunning festival location by the Soča river. The festival is limited to 5000 visitors and will take place between the 24th and the 28th of July so this is a good time to get your tickets for one of the most idyllic festivals in Europe.
Last year’s edition had a lovely and chill atmosphere and definitely felt very well organised – from what I could tell everything went rather smoothly. While the visitors weren’t that numerous last year (due to the festival being new and only announced in the autumn of 2022), it’s expected this year the festival could be close to selling out, which means there’ll be an even better atmosphere under the stage and more fellow metalheads to have fun with.
Of course, the most important thing is the lineup up and Tolminator will have four main headliners: Behemoth, Exodus, Electric Wizard, and Testament. The festival leans quite heavily into extreme metal, generally favouring thrash, black, and death metal although there’s the occasional stoner/doom band, as you can see, as well as some -core bands if you’re into that sort of thing.
Besides those four more or less legendary bands, there are quite a few other big bands such as one of the pioneers of the Gothenburg melodeath scene, Dark Tranquillity, the aggressive American death metal institution, Suffocation, and one of the bands I’m personally looking forward to the most – the Irish Primordial with one of the greatest poets in metal, A. A. Nemtheanga, as their frontman.
That’s not all for the main stage, however; if two massive thrash bands aren’t enough for you there will also be the even more drunken Tankard, while the Austrian post-black metal band Harakiri for the Sky will make you sad (but you’ll be happy they did). On the black metal front, the festival offers the Australian blackened thrash outfit Deströyer 666 and one of the better live acts in modern black metal – the Portuguese Gaerea, who are sure to conjure up a special ritual.
For a bit more doom amidst the craziness, there’s the Polish Dopelord and the Ukrainian Stoned Jesus, while more death metal brutality will be delivered by the likes of Misery Index, Asphyx, Milking the Goat Machine, and the Swedish LIK (featuring members of Katatonia and Bloodbath) and more.
The big bands in the evening are fantastic but throughout the day the festival’s underground stage, which is moving to the beach this year, will be active. That means you can actively stand in the beautiful cold river on a shockingly hot day and watch bands play with a beer in your hand or float around on those obscenely big unicorns.
There will be a lot of interesting bands to see on the beach stage as well. Despite deathcore usually being an awful genre (don’t @ me) the German Stillbirth are the perfect band for it as they’re dressed in swimming shorts on stage for some reason and are admittedly a really fun and brutal band. Because I’m also a geography nerd I like to keep count of how many countries I’ve seen a band from, and this year Lebanon will be added to that list as an all-female thrash band, Slave to Sirens, will be playing as well. Amongst others some of the highlights will also include the Austrian heavy metal band Dusk, another one of those crazy crossover thrash parties in Dezaztre Natural, and lastly one of the best bands to come out of our local Slovenian scene in recent years, the mystical black metal entity of Kamra who are very much worth seeing.
With only about five weeks left before the start of this year’s Tolminator it’s time to start planning for the festival and meet the the festival’s mascot of the same name. He’s green, insane, and very drunk most of the time but generally really nice. He’s also metal as fuck and made a ridiculous song about it, and that’s basically what you can expect from this festival as well. Lots of great bands, lots of laughs, a fair amount of weirdness, and stunning Slovenian nature.
For more information about the festival and to see all of the performing bands you can visit the festival site: https://tolminator.com/
And if you’ve read enough and are ready to just dive straight in here’s a link to the tickets: https://tolminator.mojekarte.si/en/all.html