(Today we share with you Didrik Mešiček‘s report on the fourth and final 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 another large Flickr gallery at the end, made by Katja Torkar/Bloodbat Photography. For Didrik‘s reports on the festival’s first three days, go here, here, and here.)
The final day began with a bit more fever which also meant a bit more cocaine (still a joke, calm down) and that meant I couldn’t wait for the entire thing to be done. Combined with the lineup being mostly thrash this, wasn’t my favourite day, yet Saturday started with a band that seemed like it could be interesting – the Italian Astral Paralysis.
Metal Archives lists the band as progressive death metal and while their actual playing wasn’t bad there weren’t too many hints of anything progressive. Given that this was the only band on the lineup that went anywhere near proggy vibes, that was disappointing and definitely something I’ve been missing. The band’s biggest problem is, however, the vocalist who was stiff on stage and looked quite terrified. His vocal skill is good, he just needs to relax and play a lot of shows and that should be a lot easier and result in this band going places.
We skipped Contract Killer, Chronic Hate, and Battlesword, mainly due to just being sick and very tired, and in the meantime actually got some very expensive kebab at the actual festival (if you’re wondering a bit more about prices, the beers were 6€).
As we managed to drag our walking corpses back to the beach, Total Annihilation was playing and thus kicking off the endless onslaught of thrash metal. As their name suggests, the Swiss really do totally annihilate and bring great energy to their show, and the crowd responded in kind with a proper (inflatable) tank battle in the circle pit.
The band presented a few songs from their latest album, …On Chains of Doom as well as the greenest guitar of the festival which ended up amidst the crowd towards the end to finish off the energetic bomb that was the band’s show. Definitely a band that’s fun to see and thrash metal done right.
Despite headlining the beach stage on the final day, Mezzrow didn’t quite get the reaction of their predecessors and opted for a calmer and more mature approach. The band has been around since 1987 but only reunited in 2021 for the first time since 2005. The Swedes play a decent old school thrash metal that sounded better live than it does when listening at home, at least to me.
I’d have imagined that switching up Mezzrow and Total Annihilation might have been a better way to really finish off the beach stage with a bang, but the Swedes still did a decent enough job as to where I didn’t mind watching their entire set, and they even got me shyly singing along to a song or two which were easily memorable.
Afterwards it was time for something special on the mainstage – the festival’s ownl band, TLMNTR, was to have its debut 20-minute show. The joke band is fronted by one of the festival organisers who has, to my knowledge, never performed before on stage, and his vocal performance was reflective of that. The four-piece performs with Tolminator masks on their heads and they started by handing out beers to people on the fence before descending into songs from their newly-released EP.
Given that the rest of the band are experienced local musicians it actually wasn’t bad and I expected a far bigger trainwreck. The vocals were, as I mentioned, not great, as it was mostly technically improper yelling which I can only imagine hurt quite a bit, but still the band managed to finish their short set professionally while a small circle pit of floaties emerged and some other people looked on stage with bewilderment. I’m kinda hoping TLMNTR becomes a running joke and performs a show like this every year of the festival.
After skipping Take Offense, it was once again time for Stillbirth. Despite performing two days ago the Germans attracted an impressive crowd, which is surely in part a reward for their great show on the beach stage. It must be hard to entertain the same crowd twice in such quick succession but it didn’t seem like anyone was tired of Stillbirth’s deathcore gimmickry. Surfboards decorated the stage, but with a broken heart I have to report there was no penis this time. In the circle pit, there was an inflatable boat that people carried around, sometimes that included people on it, and I wonder how that compares to being on a boat in the river.
Stillbirth once again made sure many necks were stiff the next day, while a group of people decided to sit down instead and play a game of cards. Right next to the circle pit. Clearly fans of adrenaline sports. Compared to the beach show it was obviously a bit less chaotic but I’d say the bigger stage allowed the Germans to be even more impressive with their show, and they’re definitely a band you want at your festival, no matter what stage you want to put them on.
I was told Toxic Holocaust is something the new generation of thrashers listen to, yet this band doesn’t sound modern to me at all. Nor was their sound on stage very impressive and the band itself was rather static as far as thrash goes. As the band started as a one-man project, the vocalist/guitarist Joel Grind is still on double duty and that means he can’t move around too much, which, I think, hinders the band quite a lot. Sadly, a band I just could not get into and I found myself sitting down at the very back instead, casually listening to their set and at no point really having any desire to go forward.
As the tiredness was getting really overwhelming and my fever was not subsiding (this turned into pneumonia the following week and that’s not a very fun experience), we decided we’d have to leave early and only waited for Asphyx. The band was the one that most people I spoke to were looking forward to on the final day and I can say they did not disappoint.
The Dutch outfit has reached more or less cult status in their long career and it’s not hard to see why. Vocalist Martin van Drunen had great communication with the crowd throughout the show, with lots of remarks in the style of typically British humour, but those were offset by the band’s hard-hitting, headbanging death metal. At some point he dedicated a song to one of the most well-known Slovenian athletes and the world’s best cyclist, Tadej Pogačar, which was greeted by cheers from the local crowd.
As much as I enjoyed headbanging lightly, a part also really just wanted to lie down, so it’s a testament to the band’s great show that I managed to endure until the end. Definitely a band I’d love to see again, hopefully when I’m not feeling as much like death.
With Asphyx having finished and my legs barely still supporting me, we had to leave and skip the final two bands – Tankard and Exodus. However, because I’m a conscientious so-called journalist and really didn’t want to just ignore one of the biggest headliners of the festival, I’ve enlisted some help from a local colleague Tina Urek, who writes for the Slovenian webzine Paranoid (https://www.paranoid.si/). Here are the final two bands from her viewpoint:
Tankard. The old German thrashers, one of the Teutonic four, lovers of beers, partiers, comedians. The band that always plays a great show and the band that mentions alcohol/beer more often than even Korpiklaani, for example. But sadly my soul and body chose to sit down by the former hotel this time, albeit with a direct view onto the stage. Yet I had to fill my stomach, moisten the throat, and rest the body one last time.
As Tankard played it was certainly hot, under the stage as well as on it. The always-smiling vocalist, Andreas “Gerre” Geremia, flirted with the public and gave some special attention to one of the fans in the first row, and I’m not sure whether that’s a common occurrence at their shows or not. I’ve seen the Germans for the third time probably, but sadly they’ve never enthused me enough for me to not listen to them sitting down. Although I fully believe they’ve enthused the many fans going crazy under the stage, screaming before and during every announced song, among which we could hear titles like “The Morning After,” “Zombie Attack,” “Beerbarians,” “Alien,” “Freibier,” and others.
And so we’ve lived through it and made it to the end. The final moment has arrived, the last show of the last day of the second edition of Tolminator. To finish it off there was the one and only Exodus. The area had truly gotten packed by then, and amidst the fans there were quite a few who’d only come on Saturday or maybe the day before as well. Exodus started with a bang, playing “Bonded by Blood.” People went crazy. Mosh pit, circle pit, general insanity, crowdsurfing. None of this stopped right until the final “The Toxic Waltz” and “Strike of the Beast.”
In between, the band had great communication while the presence of Gary Holt (who has supposedly missed the last few shows) kept people ecstatic from beginning to end. Finally, Steve Souza invited a young man onto the stage and handed him the guitar as the band played its final few riffs. After that, he was also sat behind the drums to play the final few notes of Tolminator 2024. Oh, and for the official Exodus intro the band played the Slovenian folk song “Kolikor kapljic, tol’ko let.” The audience? Some confused, some screaming wildly.
Well, there we go, that’s the second edition of the festival concluded. There were certainly some improvements in regards to the year before, namely the beach stage being a great addition and the sound on the main stage overall being much better. The prices of drinks, especially, are fairly extortionate although I don’t believe the festival organisers can actually dictate those so they can’t be blamed for them. The weather was lovely this year and that meant there were many opportunities to go swimming or just messing about on the beach and in the river.
In regards to the lineup, though, there was definitely a big focus on thrash and death metal and I’m not the only one who found that excessive and would have loved just five or so less-extreme metal bands sprinkled out throughout the week. A bit of folk metal really would not go amiss, especially since those are often still based in a death metal or a black metal sound. But overall, it was a fantastic week and the 2025 edition will hopefully be even better – I’m already excited as I’ll finally get to see Rivers of Nihil, while some of the other exciting early announcements include Ghost Bath, Kataklysm and Ministry. Until then, stay – as the festival’s slogan says – metal as fuck.
