Zrenjanin zove 09!

    Our second gig in Zrenjanin! The hometown of 90% of our band. :D The first thing we got excited about, was actually the stage! Because it was outdoors, and because it was bigger than the ones in clubs.     Personally, we are much more attracted to outdoor concerts with bigger stages. But! We love our audience also in clubs, don't get us wrong. It's just that playing on bigger stages gives us more space to jump, dance, rather than just stay in one place, play and sing. Just like having contact with the audience, we love having contact with each other. Playing while looking at the drummer and lip syncing songs together, and all those stuff bands do! 

    We had two rehearsals before that gig, and honestly, they were so bad. The sound system was poor and we even felt buzzing in our ears after both of them, but it is what it is. When we played on stage, we eventually realized that it payed off! 

    And the stage was amazing! Perfect lights, we even had fog machines. (Victoria doesn't really like them since she know it means no one would be able to see her 😂) but however, it felt amazing, because it makes you feel like one of those big bands we all listen to and watch their concerts on youtube, it even raised adrenaline in us so we gave, like, 150% of our emotions while playing, and it really felt awesome. 

    To me, personally, (Victoria), moments like these bring joy. And I'm sure that other feel the same, but I feel more comfortable when speaking just about my feelings and not just assuming how others felt. 😂     Somehow it makes me realize what the "point" of my life is, makes me realize I'm not alone and I have them, because to me, band is something even more than just a family, and makes me realize what I want to do in life and where I want to be. On stage. Playing.

    It was also the first time Milan joined us on our song Ruža iz groba. Obviously, he was the second vocal. And the song definitely became so much better after he joined, so we simply couldn't wait for him to learn other songs and fully join us as a full band member.

       That's exactly the point - we can't imagine our band without any of us. Yes, Andrea is our main singer and, like frontman, but all of us bring something special to our gigs and songs and we really couldn't replace anyone. 

    We closed the gig with our song Attention, which you can find on our channel and listen to demo version. And people told us that Ruža and Attention are the best ones. And we are really glad about that since they are our favorites too and we would like to go in that direction since we are finally finding our style and genre.

    After it, we listened to amazing bands who performed after us, TBK, Mist and Overdrive. Unfortunately we had to go before the last band, Gazorpazorp, performed but we are sure that they killed it as well!

    Shortly after that, the same people who organized that gig in Zrenjanin, called us to perform in Novi Sad on a second festival "Ljubav i Bes" (Love and anger).

Stay tuned!! ❤️ 

A little tour!

    This summer, we really felt like we were on tour! We just started a band and gigs just kept coming! We had amazing times in Belgrade, Zrenjanin, Smederevo, Zrenjanim again, Novi Sad and, for now, Kovačica!

      It wasn't exactly like a tour, since when you have it, you usually have gigs every night. We had gigs every or every other week. But this time, it happened to us that one night we were support for Raskid13 in Zrenjanin, and the day after we had a concert on Punk Festival in Club Fest in Belgrade! 

      As always, Victoria came to Zrenjanin so we were able to have some rehearsals before these gigs! That was the time we have finally fully practiced our new song Attention and were very hyped about it! And believe me when I say hyped (or excited)! Because totally randomly, on a rehearsal, we invented a breakdown in a song and speeded up the tempo! It probably sounds like nothing special, but you know that feeling when something you made/wrote, feels so good and you are so proud of yourself!

    Attention is one song we wrote a few months after we wrote all of our songs, so we could see that it was quite different. We are finding our style and we really like it, and we were so proud to see improvement!!

    We proudly performed it both nights and we are glad that audience liked it, they even made mosh pits!!

    Raskid13 singer, Slavko, invited us to play as a support for his second band which is Goatmare and the Hellspades. Which we are really honored to play, since Victoria really loves that band and she even wrote one of Affliction's song - Ruža iz groba (A graveyard rose)

    Quick interesting fact about how we wrote it: Andrea and Victoria were waiting for a bus early in the morning since they went to all 4 days of Exit Festival, and something on the bus station broke in a specific rhythm. They suddenly changed their instruments and while Victoria was singing a riff, Andrea came up with the idea of how to follow it on drums! And that's how we wrote one of our favorite songs! :D

    However, since its lyrics are romantic but also morbid, we dedicated it to Slavko because it was inspired by his lyrics for Goatmare, and it was one really wholesome moment 🥰

    We had a great time after both gigs, especially the first one where we enjoyed Raskid13 playing later and talking to them after the gig. Awesome people! To be honest, even before the gig, we wanted to ask Slavko if we could perform together with Goatmare. But when he asked us himself, we were unbelievably happy and we still can't wait to perform with them! 

    Punk Fest was also great, we were especially happy to play there since our first gig was in Club Fest and it will always have a special place in our hearts! Since we played with a lot of bands, we met a lot of new people, even did our first interview! And with this post, we want to thank Underground Svirke Srbija who sent us a whole recording of our gig! Thanks to that, we published that version of our song Attention, which you can find on our Youtube channel. 

🔥🥀Affliction na Zidiću! 🥀🔥

    Didn't know how to translate this to English :D but however, our second gig!

    Totally unplanned, we were like: "ok, we're gonna finish this gig in Belgrade, Milan and Andrea are going to come to my (Victoria's) hometown to hang out a bit and that's it.

    However, it wasn't like that! We stayed up till, like, 5am to talk about it and our new songs, dreaming about new gigs, although we didn't know how to organize them. And we didn't have to do it, because people called us!!! 

After we fell asleep, I woke up around 1pm to se 20 missed calls and even more messages. First I panicked, then I saw that our friend from band Nemesis was calling us to tell us that we are having a gig on 6th of August. I immediately woke both of them up and started screaming. Believe me when I say we didn't need our morning coffee to wake up mentally, this totally shook us :D

    It was 29th of July, and we had 8 days to prepare. Without our bassist, because he didn't have money to randomly come to another town for that long.

In the meantime, Milan and I got together and for us two, those were the best days 🥰

    Anyway! We had rehearsals everyday, in my room. With a cheap amp that was 10 times more quiet than the drums, so it was pretty hard to practice. And Milan and Andrea didn't even have microphones, so we just had faith that we would kill it on that gig. :D Also, when I showed them my new lyrics for a song, Andrea immediately wrote some riffs and a solo! 

    Even though our bassist wasn't there, we sent him a recording. And I must tell you that we have the best bassist ever, he had 5 days to learn that song and didn't even get to practice it with us before the gig! Someone give this man a crown! (or enough amount of money for his dream bass🤣)

While we were practicing for it, we got a call for another two gigs!! Which were 13th and 14th of August. We were so happy and unbelievably motivated and practice literally everyday for more than three ours!

    On that day, even tho the gig was at 8pm,we woke up at 6 so we could go to Belgrade with our friend Nadja. She wanted to make us Affliction tattoos, so we all had them matching!

    We rocked all of the songs, except that last one we had written just before the gig! :D although everybody said it was great, we are really self-critical when it comes to our playing and we didn't like it. Andrea forgot the lyrics, and my drums were falling apart and I couldn't just fix the cymbal stand in the middle of a song! xD 

    Tho it doesn't really matter, everybody has mistakes, even bigger bands, but we did make sure to improve and make that, as every other song of ours, as perfect as we could. And we really killed it on the next gig!

    I'm sorry I'm so slow, I'll try to keep up with our gigs so I can write about them quickly after because of the fresh impressions. :D so stay tuned for more often posts because we have more gigs scheduled and I, as a perfectionist, want to write about all of them! :D

First ever gig!

    As you all know from previous post, we formed this band online, in December 2020. Our first gig was 7 months after, in July. It came out totally unplanned, we got a message from an online R'n'R magazine in Serbia, who was calling us to play in Belgrade. We immediately said yes, and just then realized we haven't practiced with the whole band, like, EVER! The only thing we had were our recordings which we were sending to each other just to try and write a song.

  

 However, in those few months we managed to write enough songs for a performance, found our bassist, Laci, and Milan agreed to come as a guest on our last song. Our plan was to meet up 10 days before the gig and practice all of 8 songs every single day until the 28th of July (our first gig). It seemed like a challenge, but it was awesome to see how we instantly clicked altogether, and we knew that we definitely should continue playing, since we all work great together, and we are great friends!

    Those 10 days passed really quickly, playing everyday for more than two hours. One day before the gig, they called us to tell us that other two bands cancelled their performance and that we can either play alone or play the day right after 28th July. We couldn't postpone the gig, so we agreed to play alone even tho we were (and still are) a new band, and at that time we have never played together, people only knew us because of our social media pages. However, we didn't really care if no one came to our gig, we just wanted to play together on stage! But, when we came to Belgrade and realized that we actually have to play and entertain people with our music, it seemed a bit scary. At least for our drummer who was just sitting in a corner waiting for the tone rehearsal and shaking a little bit. :D In the end, a lot of people came, our friends who called more friends, and some people we didn't even know! It was amazing to see people enjoy our music and we couldn't wait to perform again. Unfortunately, we didn't have next gig planned, but stay tuned if you want to find out how we got to play many more gigs this summer, totally unplanned! 

We are Affliction!

 Welcome to our little world of music and love! We are Affliction, young band from small country in Eastern Europe, Serbia, and we would like to share our music and work with the world!

   Who are, actually, Affliction?

Andrea Radojčić

photo - Risto Delić

    Andrea lives in Zrenjanin, Serbia, and she is 15 years old. She became interested in rock music when she was 11, since her father has been working with a lot of bands and musicians, and he became happy himself when he saw that his daughter was interested in his favorite music. He started going to gigs and concerts with her, kept meeting her with other musicians and, when she turned 12, he took her to "Dani piva" festival in their hometown. Instantly, she fell in love with the band that played that year, Overdrive. Before that, she had been listening to Ex Yu rock, Guns'n'roses, Pink Floyd, etc... and Overdrive's genre, hardcore, was completely new to her. Before their gig, she shyly approached Overdrive's singer and asked for a picture and that's how she got to meet him and fall in love with that kind of music. They are one of the main reasons why she started playing guitar, especially practicing nu metal, and that's how she became a big fan of bands like Korn, Slipknot, Fear factory, Pantera, Godsmack, etc..

Milan Ružić

photo - Risto Delić

    Milan was also born in Zrenjanin, Serbia, and is 20 years old. He started playing guitar when he was 14, but then stopped for 4 years and now is completely back on track and has a band. Three years ago, he also started singing and studying different vocal techniques, like screaming. He was into music since he was born, he was listening to rock, jazz and blues, but discovered metal when he was 11. His first favorite band was Bullet for my Valentine, but after that he switched to bands like Korn, Children of Bodom, Disturbed, Eyesburn, Hornsman Coyote and all kinds of sax jazz music mixes, also bands like Senshi and Overdrive... He met his best friend Andrea during a metal gig, and after that, 2-3 years later he also met Victoria. Since Milan and Andrea wrote "Bring the fear" together, when Andrea created Affliction with Victoria, she wanted to invite Milan as second vocalist and now they all agreed that Milan should be fully in the band, playing rhythm guitar and singing.

Laszlo Kocsis

photo - Risto Delić

    Also living in Zrenjanin, Serbia, he has been playing bass for 4 years and had gigs all around Banat, in highschool, he took part in Youth choir and got to travel and perform in North Macedonia and Italy. This year, enrolled in the Academy of arts in Novi Sad, and he's also able to produce music in his home studio. He has been listening to metal since he was a kid, starting with Iron Maiden, Nightwish, Black Sabbath. Megadeth, etc. To start playing bass, he was inspired by Maiden's bassist Steve Harris, and now his biggest goal is to one day be able to play The Lesson by Victor Wooten.

Viktorija Milošević

photo - Risto Delić

    Victoria is from Smederevo, Serbia, and she is 17 years old. She has been listening to rock and metal since she was 11, starting with bands like Nightwish, Evanescence, Black Veil Brides, etc. After that, she discovered Serbian metal scene and then she met Selena Simić and her band Nemesis, which was Victoria's biggest inspiration. Selena told her about Rock camp and of course since she was a drummer, Victoria also wanted to learn to play drums. She started playing drums on Rock camp for girls in 2017. After that, she had quickly bought her first drum set and continued to practice at home, with help from her mentor Selena. Meanwhile, Rock camp had been organising gigs and concerts, which she never missed, and that's how she got to sing in Kombank dvorana and play on Exit festival in 2019. The same year, film director Mina Petrović made a film about Victoria's life, drumming and about how Rock camp influenced her life. The film is called "Victoria, 15", was premiered on Beldocs festival 2020. and won special award on Dok'n'ritam festival. In the summer of 2019., she attended the International camp in Iceland, where she got to form a band with her friends from Ireland and Poland. In the year 2020., she participated in Kaliopi's Fan Art competition, where she got the Grand Prix award and she's now waiting to perform with her on stage twice. Now, next to Affliction, she's playing drums in allgirl punkrock band Replicunts.

    Since we are all so happy to be able to play and have gigs together, we wanted to make something like "Affliction diary" where we can put all our gigs photos and write about all our gigs from our perspective, and we hope you will enjoy our journey as much as we do!!