Praying Mantis play the Hard Place club in Zagreb on November 24, 2026, starting at 8 pm. The band that in 1980 opened for Iron Maiden is today coming to a Zagreb club, which is a story about how two British groups from the same scene end up in very different places.

Praying Mantis was formed in London in 1973 by brothers Chris and Tino Troy. They first worked under the name Junction, took the name Praying Mantis in 1974 and built an audience through pubs and youth clubs in the late seventies. They rode into the wave history named the new wave of British heavy metal, but from the very start they played more melodically and closer to an AOR sound than contemporaries Iron Maiden and Saxon.

Their approach was twin guitar in the Thin Lizzy manner, crossed with vocal harmonies close to Def Leppard, giving a result similar to the later Rainbow. DJ Neal Kay backed them, and they found a place on the influential compilation „Metal for Muthas” in 1980. That same year they opened for Iron Maiden and for Ronnie Montrose's Gamma. The debut album „Time Tells No Lies” from 1981 got very good reviews.

What has kept them in the game for five decades is Japan. The audience there never abandoned them, and when the Troy brothers temporarily revived the band in 1990 for a nostalgia tour, the reaction was strong enough to bring it back full time. Tickets are 30 euros, roughly 1,848 denars, plus a booking fee, through entrio.hr.