Tag Archives: underground

Columns, Various

(column) Iron mind with an iron will or how I got off social media!

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2021 is coming to an end and I must say that it passed really quick now that I look back. This year has again been void without my favorite festivals due to circumstances known to all. But, I must say that it has been better for me than the last year which was shitty. This one also started like shit, with me being on sick leave from my day job first three months of the year until the middle of April due to serious health issues.

But, that is all behind me. Castle Kraykulla still stands stronger than ever. Its walls have been shaken, hit with force, but they stood the storm and steel is tough to break. Last August marked six years of this webzine and the time has come to make some changes although I am happy to do this.

Kraykulla Webzine and I, sole one man army behind it, Vlad Kraykulla, have always been part of the underground, enjoying to discover new bands, projects, music and zines. Since its unholy inception, this webzine had a Facebook page, which served to connect the readers with the content of the zine. That means, articles, features, columns, gig reports, that is what matters! Webzine matters and I rather would love dedicated few to read this pages, than thousand likes on Fb and nobody opens the feature. Also, social media are not part of the underground scene and philosophy behind it, so I chose to discard it and return this webzine to the underground, real one, where it always belonged. Do not be afraid, webzine continues here with delivering finest of the underground with full force and then some! Only, Kraykulla Webzine is no longer part of Facebook and any social media. I also deleted my personal Facebook profile.

I do not wish someone to know where I am going, what I am doing, what music I listen and thousands of adds, meaningless political debates and idiotism to invade my privacy. In the underground, there is always way to contact via e-mail, even via snail mail is fine by me, although we survived fantastic times back in the day with tape trading days! Idea of Meta, Facebook or you name it, creating some double avatar reality, life within life, illusion of life is frightening and alien and totally monstrous to this old iron heart.

Also, one thing that I must address in this rant is political correctness. Social media is like full of politically correct and righteous assholes who ban you on every irony or joke or if you do not agree with someones ideas of leftism, socialism, anti this anti that…I am sick of that. Metal or punk rock is no longer threat. It is a shopping center doll with eyes and mouth sown shut. That is not the philosophy I want to be a part of. Or my webzine. Fuck that. I hate communists, I hate the idea of everyone getting equal parts of something and not working for it. I hate what leftism has become. Idea of if you are not with us, you are against us. All that keyboard revolutionaries. If something bothered me that much and if I was calling for revolution, I would not write comments on fuckin social media, I would go out, take a rifle and go to guerrilla warfare with like minded individuals by my side.

But, I am not calling for any kind of violence here, nor I am some Breivik type of lunatic that would go out and kill people, dont get me wrong. I think that real revolution must start from yourself, your inner heart and strong individuals are the best thing this life and world can offer. Strong individuals must be the core of the inner revolution.

So, Happy New Year! Thank you for reading this webzine and we continue stronger than ever!

Vlad Kraykulla

Gig reports, Various

(gig report) 3FF Festival – Day One

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Finally there is an open air festival in our hometown. Great 3FF and Prostor Cezam crew organized 3FF festival after a one year pause. Of course, there is a two day event like previous editions and it is again situated under the walls of ancient Čakovec castle making magic surroundings to enjoy the music and just relish in a fact that the festival is back although with some restrictions due to covid shit still being active. Festival started just after seven pm and first band to hit the stage were VOSTOK. I personally never heard about this band until this gig and I think that this was their first live performance. Frontman/guitarist looks familiar and if I recall good, he used to play in a band called Feuacid. Vostok play a mixture of post rock, melodic rock with some old school Yugo rock influences thrown here and there and lyrics in Croatian. They gave us a great set, although not many people were present during their still early set. But, they played like they play in front of hundreds of people and I found this band interesting, especially because they have great lyrics and stage persona.

 

Night fell and more people started to gather as second band hit the stage, being SFUMATO from Zagreb. This is a trio which is a part of Jeboton collective and they play instrumental rock with lots of noise and psychodelia influences at least that is how I heard it. I must admit that this music is really not my cup of tea, but the musicianship was massive and superb. My friend Lesar told me that the bass player of Sfumato also plays in Pips, Chips & Videoclips.

Then came the band that I personally eagerly waited and the main event of the evening as far as I am concerned and that is KANDŽIJA. I saw Kandžija and his band couple of years ago at Špancirfest and was blown away. Kandžija is a rapper from Slavonija and together with his band makes awesome shows full of fun, great songs and lyrics and this one was not an exception. The set started somehow shy because all of us were kinda far from stage, but somewhere around half of the set we all got in the front rows and everybody was dancing and singing along to all of Kandžija´s hits like Crkva, Đuro, Nema Labavo, Seljak or Magična Butra. Kandžija and his band really enjoyed playing and it warmed my heart to see them all smiling and delivering so much energy. It was very emotional and nice when Kandžija gave a shout out and tribute to our friend Emil who passed away last Autumn. Best of the evening in my opinion.

Last band to play the first evening of the festival and kinda headliner were BRAIN HOLIDAYS from Zagreb. There are a lot of people in this band hehe, I counted eight people on stage if I am not mistaken. I remember this band from like twenty or so years ago from tv show Briljanteen, I think their song was at the top of the chart in that show. Brain Holidays play melodic reggae with trumpets, triple or more vocals and lyrics in Croatian and English. At some moments they reminded me a bit of Mad Caddies, but less punk rock and more reggae. The crowd enjoyed it much and there was dancing, smiling and band played an encore after the end of their regular set. This was a great choice for a headliner of the first day. Day two brings more punk hardcore side of things and stay tuned for that.

Columns, Various

Power of the underground scene does not lie in social network!

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This week on Thursday marks the sixth anniversary of this webzine. First, I want to thank all of you who read and are supporting this webzine since its inception till this day. We fought many battles and struggles together, attended festivals, gigs, met many new bands, labels, fantastic individuals who make this wonderful underground network or scene if you wish. Through many victories and heartbreaks we kept this small town in the north of Croatia on the map of the wide world underground scene. Thank you from the bottom of my heart and hopefully we will enjoy many more years and conquests together!

Second, this anniversary marks the beginning of a new era for this webzine, marking its return where it was spawned and meant to be, deeper in the underground and not in the spotlight of social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and similar. As I stated above, power of the underground scene lies in individuality, creativity, imagination, creating a lot with little or nothing and still being the opposition to the usual and so called normal lifestyle. I am sick of social media, I am sick of people in the scene counting likes and clicks and who liked their posts and above all, I am sick of people watching gigs through mobile phones, posting their selfies to the social media during gig and watching how many likes are there and somehow all got lost in that shit.

This zine has a Facebook page which serves as a media between zine and people but it is useless. I do not care how many is the reach, how many people liked my post, because rarely someone opens the feature and actually reads it, they only click like and I really couldn´t care less about that. Also, there are stupid rules, stupid commentaries, stupid themes and music and ideas of the underground got lost in snowflakes, useless groups, liking, manic clicking and I am sick of that.

So, to conclude, Kraykulla Webzine is returning to underground and I will no more post features from zine to Kraykulla Fb page nor any other social media. Who wants to contact me can easily do that through mail address of this zine in the contact section of Kraykulla Webzine. Of course, bands, labels, partners and friends can share the material on their social media if they want, but I will not share it on this zine´s social media and I am abandoning that idea because I still believe in music, ideas, scene and not this insanity.

This also goes for my other webzine, namely North From Northern. Thank you so much and I will continue with this zine even stronger, you know where you can read the posts and find me. No more social media and social network, power of underground is stronger than that!