Band's List Metal Troja Amaneti i Clown-it

Kosovo’s metal band Troja released their new album last Monday. Earlier, they launched a video of the album’s most likely hit, Amaneti i Clownit - the Clown’s Testament.

They are hard enough and creative enough at the same time. The four Pristina men who rocked the town back in the early 1990s are back on track. Following a few changes that the band underwent last year, Troja has returned with another music video, bringing the same old vibe, albeit in a different tune and with a different approach and a definitely different feeling.


The lyrics for Clown’s Testament were written by the band’s former drummer, now front-man vocalist, Bujar Berisha, while the whole band took care of the music. It took them quite some time to establish a perfect tune that could work with lyrics written in Kosovo’s version of the gheg dialect of Albanian.


Many ethno elements are included in the song, starting with the singing style, though far fewer than in their previous recording, “Jena na” (We are), the song they released last year.


The video is filmed in a desert-like scene, which is the only scene throughout the four-and-a-half minutes of the song. The sunset is in the background while the band performs in its own way, with energy and style.


The first element one can immediately spot is the microphone of the vocalist. Instead of the usual cable that singers roll around their arms, this one has a thick chain, giving a clear impression of the state the singer is in. Lack of freedom is evidently the position from which he is reaching out to the audience, as his hands remain chained throughout.


The song kicks off with a very short smooth sentence in a fairytale style, declaring that “a few years have passed”. But it immediately adopts a harsher tone, as the vocalist asks “who are these People that haven’t been educated to learn that they ought not to steal from their own home?”


The climax comes just after the first part of the song, when the lyrics continue with: “There are some words I’m not able to say,” which coincidentally or not, rhymes perfectly with a very common Albanian oath that could easily replace this line, without disrupting or distorting anything.


The creative sound of Florent Bajrami’s guitar, gently accompanied by Agron Ejupi’s semi-high notes on bass, and the energy that Violand Shabani brings by hitting the drums hard, match one another perfectly.


The song continues in the same context, talking about “these People”, who cannot be anyone other than the People in power. The song accuses them of “brainwashing us” and for “taking away the sun”, concluding that “their lies have been costing us too much,” and that they have “taken our world away from us”.


The feeling of anger is present throughout the story-telling process of the Clown’s Testament while the singing tone is characterized by anger, too.


Revolutionary elements are not absent from this song, especially in the conclusions that the singer makes regarding these People, that “I cannot stop them myself.” Even the last sentence is quite revolutionary, saying that there are so many years, apparently of all the feelings expressed throughout the song, that he “can never forgive.”


Although the lyrics were written some three years ago, the story behind them corresponds with the present day reality in Kosovo, which is why it is already being played widely and commented on. Interestingly, most music bloggers rate it as great and they’re already quoting certain specific lines from the brilliant lyrics.