STEPA

Location: Novo Mesto, Slovenia

Year active: 2020

Members: Šiba (drums), Krempl (guitar), Želo (vocals)

Related bands: ????

FFO: Rolo Tomassi, Naked City, Me and Him Call It Us, Mara'akate, Rep Seki, Usurp Synapse, Honeywell

Every once in a while, a band appears briefly and burns out fast, leaving behind a single document of their existence so dense and chaotic it feels like a transmission from another realm. That band is Stepa.

Formed in 2020 in Novo Mesto, Slovenia, Stepa was a short-lived trio that only released one self-titled album, thirteen minutes of sheer dissonant fury. It was released on cassette via Quebec’s LeBlast Records, a fitting match given the label’s taste for sonic extremity.

Their style? Call it emoviolence. Call it grindcore. Call it whatever you want, but the result is a twelve-track onslaught where no song breaches the two-minute mark. The shortest, "Vrtača," clocks in at a mere 26 seconds, while the longest, "Hodnik," barely reaches two minutes but somehow feels massive.

This is music that doesn't beg for attention, it kicks the door down. Krempl’s guitar playing is like shards of broken math equations. Dissonant, fractured, and constantly mutating. Šiba's drumming is absurdly fast, channeling the relentless speed and stop-start chaos of bands like Honeywell or Usurp Synapse. And Želo’s vocals? Unhinged. It’s raw-throated desperation with zero restraint, like a flesh wound set to blast beats.

The highlight here is unquestionably "Hodnik", the closing instrumental. In a bold move, Stepa drops the vocals entirely and leans into dissonant chaos filtered through a start-stop rhythmic breakdown. It’s almost like the eye of the hurricane, if the hurricane had no eye. The mathy structures collapse into themselves and re-emerge, only to combust again. It’s unsettling, dynamic, and perfectly in line with what the genre’s more experimental edge they had to offer.

Stepa never stuck around to release a follow-up. No extensive touring. No cryptic new project hints. Just one record, some cassettes, and a whole lot of noise. But in those fifteen minutes, they delivered something Slovenia rarely sees: a band unafraid to go full chaos mode and leave it all in the wreckage.

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S vremena na vreme pojavi se bend koji kratko zasvetli i brzo nestane, ostavivši iza sebe samo jedno izdanje: gusto, haotično i toliko posebno da zvuči kao da je stiglo iz nekog drugog sveta. Takva je bila Stepa.

Bend je nastao 2020. godine u Novom Mestu, Slovenija, i radio je kratko, tek dovoljno da snimi svoj jedini, istoimeni album. Trinaest minuta sirove energije i nesvakidašnjeg zvuka objavljeno je na kaseti preko kanadskog izdavača LeBlast Records iz Quebeca, poznatog po ljubavi prema DIY emo/screamo muzici.

Kako opisati njihov stil? Pa neko bi rekao emoviolence, neko grindcore, a istina je da je to dvanaest kratkih, žestokih pjesama, nijedna ne prelazi dve minute. Najkraća, "Vrtača", traje tek 26 sekundi, a najduža, "Hodnik", jedva dve minute, ali ipak ostavlja jak utisak.

Ovo je muzika koja ne traži pažnju, jer je ona jednostavno osvoji. Gitara Kremla oštro reže i stalno mijenja smjer, bubnjevi Šibe srljaju nezaustavljivim tempom, a vokal Žela donosi sirov i neispeglan naboj, kao da prenosi osećaj trenutka bez ikakvog filtera.

Poseban trenutak na albumu je "Hodnik", završna instrumentalna pjesma. Bez vokala, bend se prepušta igri ritma i disonantnih dionica koje se ruše i ponovo grade. Dinamično, nepredvidivo, i potpuno u skladu s njihovim eksperimentalnim pristupom.

Stepa nije imala nastavak priče, nije bilo novih izdanja, velikih turneja ili tajanstvenih najava. Samo jedan album, nekoliko kaseta i puno buke. Ipak, u tih petnaestak minuta ostavili su trag nečim što se kod nas rijetko čuje: bendom koji se usudio pustiti da ga haos vodi do kraja.