Evgenii Margulis (Евгений Шулимович Маргулис) is a prolific Russian rock musician, singer, songwriter, composer, and one of Russia’s most famous blues composers. He is known as a founding member of one of Russia’s most important classic rock bands, Time Machine (Машина времени), as well as a founder and on-again-off-again participant in Voskresenie (Воскресение), also a […]
Crematorium (Крематорий) is a popular rock band in Russia. Headed by vocalist and songwriter Armen Grigoryan (Армен Григорян), who founded the band in Moscow in 1983, its sound ranges from blues to psychedelic to classic rock and Grigoryan’s lyrics often deal with the fantastic, such as the possibility of life after death. In the beginning, […]
Agata Kristi (Агата Кристи) was one of Russia’s most popular rock bands during the 1990s. Their sound tends toward gothic rock and post-punk, and at times even new wave. Agata Kristi’s impressive repertoire includes ten studio albums, five compilations, and eighteen music videos, as well as a long history of tours around Russia and abroad. […]
Mordor is a Russian industrial metal band. The members of Mordor perform under psudeonyms: Orkus (Оркус) on vocals, Wolffang (Вольфган) on guitar, Hombre Pajaro (Омбре Пахаро) on bass, and Sarto (Сарто) on drums. The name is a reference to a location in the Lord of the Rings series of books. According to their website, Mordor’s […]
Iva Nova (Ива Нова; the name translates to “new willow”) is a Russian experimental folk-punk group. They combine elements of punk, blues, tango, and other styles with Russian folk music, creating a sound that has been hailed by rock journalists as radically innovative and interesting. Their band website proclaims that they’re an “alternative ethno-extreme that […]
Bobsleigh (Бабслей—though note that this is not the usual Russian word for “bobsleigh” and is perhaps also a play on the Russian word баба, “woman”) were one of Russia’s first successful folk-punk bands. The band formed in St. Petersburg in 1998 initially as a bit of a joke. The members all loved folk music, but, […]
Alisa (Алиса) is a legendary Russian metal and hard rock band. Starting in St. Petersburg in 1983, Alisa has since released nineteen studio albums to date and spawned an entire subculture of fans known as the Alisa Army (Армия АлисА), notorious for their wild behavior at concerts. Alisa formed out of the ashes of Soviet […]
NAIV (НАИВ) is an internationally known and politically outspoken Russian punk band formed by army friends Maksim Kochetkov and Aleksandr Ivanov. In Russian, their name is an acronym for “New Harlequins and Voltigeurs” (НАИВ: Новые арлекины и вольтижёры). After putting out a DIY demo tape, NAIV’s first studio album, Switch-Blade-Knaife, titled in English and featuring […]
Kukryniksy (Кукрыниксы) is a Russian post-punk band, fronted by Aleksei Gorshunov (Алексей Горшенёв), younger brother of Korol i Shut frontman Mikhail Gorshunov (Михаил Горшенёв). The band takes their name from a famous collective of caricaturists from the early Soviet period. Though their recent work shows a strong influence of gothic rock and post-punk, Kukryniksy’s first […]
KnyaZz (КняZz) is Russian punk band whose sound lands somewhere at the intersection of punk rock, ska, hard rock, and folk. The group was founded in 2011 in St. Petersburg by Andrei Knyazev (Андрей Князев), of Korol i Shut (Корол и шут) fame. Knyazev decided to start the band when he became dissatisfied with the […]
F.P.G (Fair Play Gang) is a Russian street punk band from Nizhny Novgorod. Originally formed in 1993, the band was nominated for 2006 “Band of the Year” by punkgazeta.ru, and has developed a large following. F.P.G. have been featured on numerous punk compilations around the world, including RETCH records’ World Wide Noise Attack, and the […]
RADIO CHACHA (RADIO ЧАЧА) is a current punk band, led by punk-poet and NAIV vocalist Aleksandr “Chacha” Ivanov (Александр “Чача” Иванов). He started the group in 2009 when NAIV went on a hiatus for a couple of years. In an interview, Ivanov cited what he felt was NAIV’s lack of creative evolution, and his desire […]
