(Today we share with you Didrik Mešiček‘s report on the second day of the star-studded Tolminator festival in his home country of Slovenia, which ran this year in late July. It’s again accompanied by excellent photos, including a large Flickr gallery at the end, made by Katja Torkar/Bloodbat Photography. For the report on Day One, go here.)
Hi, hello, we’re back, it’s day two of Tolminator and I’m here again to waffle about some bands I’ve seen. Thursday didn’t start at the stage, however, because we decided to go for a swim instead, as Soča was absolutely begging people to go in with its beautiful greenness and its cold… coldness.
The little storms and showers have by now finally completely fucked off and it was well above 30 degrees Celsius for the rest of the festival (the water stays at about 15 degrees) which means you really need to have a dip here and there if you like living. The river’s level fluctuates a bit and this year it was rather low which also meant the current was very slow and people would constantly lazily float by on all sorts of floaties ranging from pink unicorns, tanks, massive ducks, and so forth.
Sadly, the beach stage is just a bit too far to be able to see what’s going on, but after having missed Thy Legion and Dethrone the Corrupted we could listen to Behind Bars from the water a bit. As I was focusing a bit more on swimming around and generally pretending to be a fat seal I can’t tell you much about them though, except that it sounded quite fun.
Next up, however, was a band I actually wanted to see and that was the Chilean Dezaztre Natural. Crossover thrash is a ridiculous subgenre with almost no musical value, yet it’s usually incredibly fun to watch live and I’ll take shows like that any day over a static band that does very little on stage. Given that the band is Chilean that also means I got to tick off one more country from my map of countries from which I’ve seen a band.
South Americans are known for being pretty intense fans and it wasn’t long until two Chileans appeared in the crowd, both with their own Chile flags. The band has a main vocalist as well as a bassist with whom he shares vocal duties and they complement each other rather well. Overall, the band is quite fun and their sound was fairly solid but I did expect a bit more craziness from them still.
The Serbian Infest followed, a band that’s been going for about 20 years and plays a sort of a mix between death metal and thrash. This is certainly a band that doesn’t lack passion and the vocalist had a few short speeches about how the world told him not to do this whole metal career thing yet he continues to persist in music and playing shows. Musically though, the band didn’t deliver anything special and I was getting a bit bored throughout their set. Sometimes raw passion just isn’t enough and a bit more is needed to be truly great.
The second beach stage headliner was none other than the German party boys, Stillbirth. As much as I dislike deathcore, I have to admit if you really have to play this subgenre, you should probably do what Stillbirth does. A band that calls itself “brutal surf metal” and performs in only colourful swimming shorts is, of course, the most possible fitting band for the beach stage and the crowd was very receptive of their heavy and headbanging rhythms.
As it turned out it was actually the craziest show on the beach stage (well, and in the festival overall) as the fans invaded the stage and the vocalist, Lucas Swiaczny, was crowdsurfing while still continuing to make his dirty, disgusting growls. Genuinely quite impressive. Amongst other craziness, someone brought a fairly big inflatable penis on stage. Which I personally thought was a great addition, we definitely need more bands with penises! But for now the biggest penis reward definitely goes to Stillbirth.
As their show was finished the band had another announcement, and that was that they’d be back on Saturday, on the main stage, replacing Milking the Goat Machine, who have had to withdraw due to injury.
The second day had a much more reasonable break of 25 minutes before the main stage got going and with it Dödsrit. More black metal or black metal adjacent bands is always a good thing and in this case it was a very good thing. The Swedes sounded phenomenal and it made me find a new appreciation for their 2024 release, Nocturnal Will, which hadn’t really grabbed me that much before when listening at home. The band does have rather long instrumental passages that might bother me with some other bands, but with their crisp playing it was easy to simply get lost and enjoy their songs and I really wish we had a bit more of similar black metal bands at this year’s edition.
If Dödsrit was a big positive surprise, LIK went slightly the other way. I had big expectations from the Swedish death metal band that contains members of Katatonia and Bloodbath yet the band left me somewhat cold. They do have that distinct sound where one can tell there’s some sort of a Bloodbath affiliation but it got lost slightly live, as did the vocals, which I’d have liked a bit more frontal and clearer. Therefore the Swedish death metal vs. black metal battle goes to black metal this time but I can’t deny LIK is still a very solid band that, I think, could become a more well-known name in future years.
As I felt an ungodly level of warmth throughout my body and quite a bit of tiredness (huh, I wonder if this’ll be important later?) I quickly jumped to the river to cool off a bit and sit on the rock by the water. This revitalised me a bit, but it was soon time to go back to the main stage again as Harakiri for the Sky was starting already.
I’m not a massive fan of the band but I do like a few of their songs a fair bit and as I have seen them before I knew they should be pretty good. They were, however, brilliant. I’m actually not entirely sure why or how, as the band is generally rather static on stage, and I wouldn’t say the vocalist has any particular natural charisma while a lot of their lyricism is undeniably cringe. Yet this band works incredibly well. The Austrians manage to turn their edgy teenage angst into actual romance with songs like “Fire, Walk with Me,” “Sing for the Damage We’ve Done,” and the fantastic “Song to Say Goodbye”, with which they naturally close their show and for which the vocalist J. J. came down into the photo pit to sing closer to the crowd. A thoroughly fantastic performance that will stay with me for quite a while, and a big highlight of the entire festival.
Meanwhile, things were happening again on the DIY stage and I managed to catch a glimpse of Tvrold which left me with more questions than answers. The band is three people dressed in medieval knight armour abusing their instruments and playing something called powerviolence. What is powerviolence? Why are they clad in iron? Why such a need for violence? I don’t know. But I like it. Along with them, Glista and Smedja in Smetke also performed on that stage on Thursday and I’m told they were great fun while the skaters just kept doing their skating thing in the background.
Back on the main stage everyone’s favourite problematic frontman was about to come on – it’s Warslut with Deströyer 666! If you’re unfamiliar, this is an Australian band that plays something akin to blackened thrash and is slightly controversial due to their aforementioned vocalist maaaaybe having some opinions on immigration and similar political topics. And perhaps he’s sometimes expressed those views publicly during a show. You know, as one does, right?
D666 sadly did not have the best sound and was possibly the band that suffered from that the most throughout the entire week, and if you mix that together with their already purposefully unclean sound this meant their show wasn’t the greatest – but it was quite wild. The band’s stage outfits are a rather hilarious mix of leather and kvlt black metal vambraces that somehow don’t come off as believable and it sometimes makes me feel like I’m watching Mötley Crüe – if Mötley Crüe was trying to take itself very seriously. Generally, their show was fine, however, and wherever you are on the political spectrum you have to admit it’s pretty fun yelling along to, “What the hell happened to my country?!?”
Thursday’s main-stage lineup was pretty stacked and I couldn’t find a band to skip to get some food and a bit of a break so it was lucky that something called Rise of the Northstar was next. Wikipedia tells me that the band “combines heavy metal, hip-hop, and hardcore punk with Japanese pop culture influences”, which means that’s not at all something I wanna see and therefore I’ll happily remain ignorant on this front. The slightly longer break was very welcome, as afterwards, to close out the second day, the festival’s arguably biggest booking yet was coming – the Polish Behemoth.
It happens quite often that bands that have been around for a while and have conquered their subgenres get a bit lazy. Not Behemoth though. The Poles are an absolute force of Satan and their show is a masterpiece. Having seen them two weeks before already, from the very front, I let myself get swallowed by the crowd this time and ended up near the dangerous zone of the moshpit.
The band begins by lowering the curtain through which they perform their shadow play and Nergal’s massive head appears as he yells, “We worship Satan!” The curtain drops and Behemoth descends into “Once Upon a Pale Horse” – the crowd descends into madness and violence. It moves like a river and I found myself being pushed forward in this bizarre meandering current. “Ora Pro Nobis Lucifer” is the first highlight of the show as an impressive amount of people scream the words along with me. Sadly, it’s not nearly as fun being trapped in the crowd as it is being able to be free on the fence where no one is trying to kill you, or at least not as intently.
On stage, Behemoth is a machine, a fluid and relentless Satanic monstrosity that offers nearly no breaks for it’s 70-minute-long set. Nergal stopped for a bit to acknowledge a Brazilian superfan in the first row who apparently follows the band as they make their way through the festivals, making her cry with joy. Orion and Seth line up with Nergal on stage at times in what looks like some unholy congregation and if I was at all inclined towards religion I could be convinced these are some kind of demons.
Behemoth’s musical prowess shines throughout the show as the band doesn’t put a foot wrong in their playing, yet the aspect of dramatisation is never neglected either as Nergal had altogether three costume changes and never forgot to stay in his character of the ultimate Antichrist. Whatever red fluid was drunk by the band is spit upon the crowd in another symbol of religiosity, presumably insinuating those hit by the droplets have been claimed by Satan. And o my father, o Satan, o sun, what a blessing that would be! Glory be unto him who has brought this upon us all.
With this, the church has closed its doors and the mass shall continue upon the morrow.
