Veeka Nazarova: What do we know about Post-Soviet music? Not much, only a handful of musicians from Russia/Ukraine/Belarus that we accidentally stumble upon on Spotify or YouTube, that’s probably it. I tried looking up ‘best Russian bands’ or ‘best Ukrainian bands’ on Google, and it’s just not coming up with anything interesting. I felt like the only way to find out was to switch to my Russian Fb (called VK-Vkontakte) and try finding something on there.

However, it was definitely not an easy task! My investigation continued by going on Instagram and flicking through some of my musician friends’ profiles, searching for some interesting acts from the Motherland that they follow. I felt like I was being a special agent from KGB trying to gather all the precious information about these mysterious musicians and bands that I found. 

Being of a Russian descent, I always wanted to re-connect with my country and discover the Post-Soviet music scene. So in this article I would like to introduce that mysterious European world to Australia or whoever is reading this in English. Being musician myself got me very excited talking to other musicians from the Motherland, so in this series I’ve gathered five musical projects of my taste from Russia and Ukraine and asked them a few questions about their music, as simple as that!

It was an absolute pleasure interviewing all these talented people and hopefully they will find their fans here, amongst Trouble Juice followers!


Introducing Sonic Death

Saint-Petersburg rockers who consider themselves “the classic band of the New Wave of modern Russian music’’. It comes across as a very bold statement, however, Sonic Death absolutely own this title. They are a crazy mix of garage rock with the elements of black metal and hardcore punk - which is a true representation of ‘the Evil Empire of Russia’ that Sonic Death are picturing in their music. I’ve spoken to the front person of SD named Arsenij Morozov, also known under the stage name Arsenij Krestitel’ (Arsenij the Baptist). He told Trouble Juice all about his double album release this year, as well as the current music scene in Russia.

VN: Tell us, why do you have such an unusual name and who came up with the idea to call yourselves ‘Sonic Death’? I’ve noticed you guys have a certain dark vibe, could you talk us through this?

SD: Well, initially we had an idea to call our band ‘Puff Pastry Death’ and then we thought it didn't sound nice, so we came up with ‘Sonic Death’ instead. The band has always had the dark gothy atmosphere, hence the ‘death’ in the name.

When and how did Sonic Death come to life and who are the members of your band?


It all started back in Autumn 2011, when I finished playing in my previous project ‘Padla Bear Outfit’ and decided to try something else. I called my old friend Nikita and asked him to join the band on drums. At first, I wanted to perform in face masks and pretend that we are Americans who want to play garage rock in Russian for some reason. So later on we had Danya playing drums and Nikita shifting to bass and then shortly Nikita exited the band. Now Sonic Death are Diana on bass, me Arsenij on vox and guitar, Danya on drums and Vlad doing second guitar. 

Could you tell us if you guys are part of a certain crowd and play with people who have a similar music genre, or the other way around, playing with all sort of bands and artists of different vibes?

We have been playing for almost ten years so we don’t really associate with any particular crowd. We usually play very different gigs, it always changes, every time we play it’s a different crowd. The first couple of years when we were just starting out, people were doubting us and kind of being suspicious of us, trying to understand how serious we are about our music. Now apparently they quietly say we are the ‘classics’ of the Russian music scene. Whatever. We play garage rock with the element of 80s hardcore , doom, post-punk, shoegaze and even black metal. All the sub genres of the underground guitar music as you know.

Do you have any comment on the current music scene in Russia and what would you change, if you could?

To be honest, we don’t really care about the music scene in Russia. Sonic Death is one of the oldest bands of the new wave of the Russian indie-rock. Some bands go past us, blowing up really fast and then burning down just as fast. We are just slowly swimming with the stream, not moving too fast. 

Do Sonic Death want to expand and move up into the international music scene? Have you ever thought about touring overseas?

Yeah, we’ve been thinking about doing a European tour for ages, although I’m not too sure how we are going to do it. Most likely, it’s going to be gigs for some Russian-speaking young people, whose family emigrated overseas ages ago and they are just super nostalgic about the motherland, even though they’ve never lived there. They would be coming to our gigs with romanticised ideas about ‘how beautiful Russia is’ and ‘it’s actually not so bad over there’ and we would be just nodding our heads and saying ‘oh yeah, we got some music hype going on at the moment I guess’. Well, at least all of our three European gigs were like this in the past and we know what to expect. 

Now, I would like to ask, do you think since the evolution of the internet over the years that more people are discovering your music overseas, or you are just marinating in your own musical ‘bubble’ of Russian music?

We are absolutely marinating in our bubble here. Once upon a time I thought the West was going to find us and help us, however I certainly don’t think so now. Everyone has their own shit going on. The only lesson I’ve learnt for the past few years: money rules everything, doesn’t matter if it’s Russia or America - everything depends on how much money we’ll pay for things. When I first started making music I truly believed that this business has a lot of creativity and you can get noticed just for your talent alone, however, I’m now convinced that it’s not true.

Congratulations on your double album release this year - Russian Gothic and После Нас Тишина (After Us Is Only Silence). Both of the albums sound very unique, at the same time , both definitely have this dark psychedelic vibe to it! It was very unexpected to find out you released two albums, one after another. Can you comment on how it all suddenly happened? Was it all new songs, or it was some ideas from the past as well? Also, could you please share with us some influences on both of this releases? Sorry, I got too excited and asked a million questions haha.

All good, thank you! Well, as Ty Segall once said (I THINK): “I don’t make music which is overly produced, that’s why I can afford a few albums per year”. In autumn of 2019 (Sep-November in Russia) we got a new member in the band, guitarist Vlad. So we started working on new material straight away and had planned to release an album in February 2020 and tour in March 2020. However, under the circumstances we all know about, we had to postpone everything and decided to start working on a second album instead. We had been actually working on it at the same time as the first Russian Gothic. So I mixed Russian Gothic all myself which I don’t think the rest of the band was happy about. When it was time to mix After Us Is Only Silence, we got all the mixing and mastering done professionally. I guess the difference between the albums to me is that Gotika (referring to the Russian Gothic album) is our classic sound filled with horror-punk and goth post-punk, and After Us Is Only Silence is more my dream to make a black metal album. In some ways, it turned out the most extreme and brutal album for us ever - very technical and intense. We even had the legendary Sergey Letov play on one of the songs, he is this infamous underground avante-garde jazz persona in Russia. It was definitely a very big honour to have him play on a song.

Which bands/artists you are listening to at the moment? Do you think you discovered new music through Spotify at all, since it become legal in Russia this year?

When I was working on After Us Is Only Silence I was definitely listening to a lot of black metal - from the Finnish one to Polish, French and German. Hmm I like how Spotify recommends you some new artists, however I’m not really a fan of their playlists, I hate how they are very inconsistent. I don’t really get the whole Spotify hype to be honest with you. No doubt, it’s great in some ways, but sometimes I prefer to use other streaming music platforms to find/listen to music. 

Last question for you Arsenij - do you think Sonic Death has a few plans in the nearest future, let’s say, five years time, or you’re just gonna go with the flow and see what happens?

Well, as we are a band from the Empire of the Evil, we are dreaming about taking over the world and establishing the new Communist- Orthodox-Satan-KGB regime on the whole planet to show everyone else how sucks it is to live in this country. But seriously, look what happens everyday, shit changes from day to day and it’s very hard to predict what’s going to happen with you in a week, what five years are you talking about!