Ed Hunter Fest is the ending of music season for me. Today it was the fourth season of this traditional festival, again hosted by Luboš 'Vršek' Vršanský, who is also a bass guitarist of a band called Elementa. During this event I always summarize the past year and mostly I have the opportunity to meet here bands I’ve seen several times during the year. The line-up looked very promising.

The only band I haven’t had the honour to meet before was the first performing band CRYPTONIA. After listening several songs on Banzone.cz I haven’t expected anything special, but I was pleasantly surprised, most of all by both guitarists. The more surprised I was the one of them plays with the band for a mere month. Weaker link of the chain was the singer. His singing was missing anything characteristic to make people remember him and that would fit the band’s progressive genre. More expressive vocals would surely bring new life to 8-minute-long multi-genre songs.

The next band APERION from Štramberk didn’t suffer from similar problems. Mark Baďura’s vocal in style of Aleš Brichta fit perfectly the band’s heavy metal with some thrash ingredients. Though their music itself didn’t contain as many progressive elements as the band before, it was more pleasant to listen to. The band took no chances and for the right atmosphere, they brought with them their best fans, but also local head bangers took part in the scenery below the stage. I’ve seen Aperion for the third time this year and it’s tough to say which performance was the best. They were always great and didn’t go astray from their standard.

ORCHIDEA from Karviná is working on a new album, so I expected that some of the new material will be played today. And it was. This year I was constantly missing this band, so I was curious about their new line up. A new blood was brought to the band by guitarist Kuba from a death-metal band Demiurg. The drummer was also replaced by an automated one. But the drums sounded real, so I suppose they were recorder live. Earlier songs could be categorized as heavy/speed metal, the new ones were a bit more richer in variety of passages. When the band played an old hit "Robin Hood," it was obvious that there’s something to a real heavy metal simplicity.

Local fans were confused by the announcement made by Martin Brňovják saying: "We are Porta Inferi from Brno." Martin of course isn’t vocalist of Porta Inferi, but of progressive thrash/death metal band EDAIN. No big deal, both bands just for this evening changed their line-up because of a delay by Porta Inferi. I’ve seen Edain several times (well I’ve seen all bands like a hundred times and I have to point it out namely in every report for you to know what bands you never heard of I’ve seen many, many times) and they were always great. My special thanks belong to the host Vršek, who invited this great band on my recommendation. It was a little Christmas present for me. I also thank the guys from the band for performing such a great and special gig on the very same day their new album "The Sulphur Breather" was released. The expected baptism of the CD didn’t take place, the band just reminded their fans of the fact. There’s no need to talk about what was going on on-stage. Those, who know Edain, know, what’s going on. I can’t but recommend you to see their show if you’re fan of Dream Theater and Opeth.

Finally it was time for previously announced PORTA INFERI. Same as in case of Edain I appreciate they’re not rejecting offers to play at any chance, even though they have offers to play in much bigger venues. Due to the their heavy touring, I’ve seen them live for the fifth time this year (here it comes again). Porta inferi are a typical power metal band. Their sound was so ‘power’ that the sound engineer just prayed for his equipment to last. Due to this massive power the overall sound quality suffered, which was unfortunate, because a good sound quality can intensify the viewers experience from the whole show. So a little disappointment for me, but just the sound quality.

The host Vršek spoke to the audience and introduced a power / heavy metal band ELEMENTA. A sad message for fans was that this was most probably their last gig with Vršek as bass guitarist. But that didn’t affect the gig, which was the same as fans are used to it. Pity for the absence of second guitarist Pavel Kolář, but talented Honza Noga managed it all, so the quality didn’t suffer. All musicians performed perfectly, well I just think so, I didn’t perceive all the details as I was captured by the euphoria bellow the stage. I hope that bass-guitarists departure won’t have negative effect on the bands performance, because I’d like to see this show again. FYI: Vršek is not leaving the music itself, he will renew the Hunter project and is planning some live performance.

I have to admit I’m not a fan of revivals of still active bands. In case of METALLICA REVIVAL from Ostrava I was always a little bit forgiving for they can play hits of this thrash metal legend perfectly. Here in Ed Hunter Fest the band showed in completely different line up. The only one who stayed was front-man Roman. The drummer’s seat  was occupied by Michal Bohunovský. The host watched his son Dominik playing bass guitar. I’m not familiar with a duo od guitarist, but they played well. Sometimes they had some rhythmical issues, which I think was because of the lack of time to get along. The gig was great so I’m looking forward to see a gig when the band will have more time to practise all the songs.

I think this season of Ed Hunter Fest was great. The line-up was definitely the best of all seasons, the bands performed altogether well, the attendance was also good as well as the fan’s reception of the bands.