On the March,30 Progress FM will suspend its broadcast due to mourning for the victims of the terrorist act that occurred on the March,29 in Moscow and killed at least 38 people.
Photo by Times, Rian, Interfax, AP
As partners of ESP Guitars company in Russia, musicians from progressive metal band Tantal Alexander Strelnikov and Dmitry Ignatiev present demo video of ESP Standard Series – Horizon FR-II and ESP M-II. ESP Standard Series guitars are professional instruments, which quality and universality allow to use them for performance in different genres.
Dmitry Ignatiev: “I am playing my ESP Horizon FR-II for over 5 years and this instrument have never let me down – neither in studio, nor at a concert. For “The Beggining of the End” recording I used just this guitar. In regard to high reliability and quality ESP and LTD I could surely say, that satisfied the choise that have once made”.
Alexander Strelnikov: “After long search of appropriate instrument I decided in favour of ESP M-II, and can say boldly that it is perfect instrument. As I am fan of Shred and technical guitar music, mix of maple, alder and bolt fastening is ideal for me. During last 4 years my ESP M-II works hard live and in studio. And shows its high level”.
The Gourishankar – progressive rock band from Syktyvkar. Since 2002, the band released one demo CD and two full-length albums. The last of them, 2nd Hands, appeared in 2007 and brought international recognition to the band. The album became the best selling on Unicorn Digital label, and was nominated for Prog-Awards 2007. In February 2010, The Gourishankar tracks get into rotation on Progress.Fm radio. We talked with Nomy Agranson on what progressive music should be.
Nomy Agranson
Nomy
Our keyboard player used to be engaged in meditation and studied Eastern teachings, I also like Eastern philosophy and theosophy. The name was taken from the book by Osho. In the meaning of it will do for us, but the meaning from Sanskrit is: a mountain as big as Everest – the highest in the world. A bit pretentious.
Max
So you want to be the most … High? Big? Popular? Something else?
Nomy
We used to, but not anymore. Youthful maximalism.
Max
What do you want now?
Nomy
To record a new album. To go to live tour.
Max
Could you tell more about the concept of the new album?
Nomy
Now the album consists of several separate tracks, which we gather in a general concept. It certainly will be different from previous ones – we grow up and our music too. Recording has not been started yet, we compose the material. Yes, and we record albums for years, usually.
Max
I have already spoken on musical bands mature with a leader of Beheaded Zombie Dmitry Lyashkov. Then I noticed that as they grow up metal bands become easier and their music is simpler and flatter. Then he replied – no, they have become more technical, more complicated, more interesting. What is musical mature for you?
Nomy
First of all, adding new meanings to the music. The musical concept is inseparably connected to our formation as individuals. We have risen to something new, content became more meaningful. I can’t put it into words. There must be something behind every sound. Nothing should be accidental. We never tried to be complicated, we are not musical athletes, and meanings, emotions, images have always been in the first place.
Max
How to pass verbal ideas through music? How to understand that this and not another expressive tool fits best?
Nomy
I have never had a problem with it. I am completely free in using different artistic (musical) languages, and never think about what suit at the moment. I feel it. Sometimes, of course, have to sweat, but this is arts. If you can’t do something – put it off. You will succeed later.
Max
You move intuitively, unlike other prog musicians, playing mathematically complex music. This well lies in the concept of achieving Gourishankar. How do you write music? Here’s one example: Sucht from Novosibirsk compose material together during the night. So-called sleep deprivation. Do The Gourishankar also have a secret?
Nomy
Exactly! Intuitively, in most cases. Mathematics? Never! Or when it is needed by the concept. By the way, we have a meditative piece in the end of Marvelous Choice from the album 2nd Hands, it fully calculated using the actual formulas. Our keyboardist is Ph.D. in technical sciences. He does it, but he even more opposes to maths in music than me. When we change a pace and use complex structure, we don’t want to load. We lead listeners. Everything is the part of general concept and there is no accidental things! As for composing – we never compose together, there is a bad experience. We write separately and bring to completion. Then think together.
Max
You have already said that The Gourishankar record albums for years. When should we wait for the next one? And when you are planning to appear in Moscow?
Nomy
A year ago we said that a year later. Now I can say the same thing. We have problem with vocals for live performances. Former vocalist lives in Izhevsk. And we are not very happy about singing on “some English”. So we have postponed live performances. We had often been invited to Moscow by Vladimir Impaler, but not any more. We arrive ourselves when time will come.
Max
Okay, we are waiting. Thank you for the interview.
Nomy
Always happy!
An important event for Russian progressive scene happened at the end of 2009 – Moscow band Tantal starts selling their albums in India and the United Kingdom. Negotiations for the sale of albums in the EU and the U.S. are carried on. Progress.FM asked the band leader Dmitry Ignatiev about promotion and distribution of prog-metal music.
Max Messerschmitt
Tantal began to sell their music abroad. Tell us more about this, please.
Dmitri Ignatiev
Album and merchandise is now been selling in India, a formal agreement is signed. After the New Year English label Raven Heart Music organizes distribution and promotion in Britain and in the U.S. and the album will be available through internet stores CD Baby, Amazon, Super D. This is something that is currently confirmed. We negotiate with the European agencies and with the United States separately. But I really think it is not big news for Russian listeners.
MM
Many musicians dream about it. How did you do this? Does secret is in music, or in promotion, or is the will and efforts of a man who was looking for distributors? Or maybe just luck?
DI
This is just the will and effort – modern technology has opened up great opportunities for musicians. They just have to want to use, and further results depend only on the person and the effort. We are not going to stop there. It’s not enough just to find agents who want to sell the disc. We must make great efforts to the promotion of the album and the band. And, again, all in the hands of musicians: Internet now is the most effective weapon.
MM
Who did promotion?
DI
Whole band. We worked with forums, with MySpace, sent newsletters. This is hellish and ungrateful work. Most offices do not bother themselves to respond. They can be understood, although.
MM
And who coordinated the effort?
DI
I had to do it as a leader.
MM
Have you been acting intuitively or studied the question? Have you tried any promotional tool, which came to hand? Or looked like moving the others? Is there some sort of “Promotional guideline for young musician”?
DI
I do not know how to call it … Just looking for labels and promotional agencies, which produce heavy music. Of course, I had to collect a huge database and then handle it methodically – sending e-mails, parcels with promotional packages of the group. There are no difficulties in it, the main thing here is perseverance. I think all bands do this way, if they want to express themselves abroad. It was the first experience for me.
MM
Have you worked with a label before?
DI
Yes, of course. It is Russian metal label Mazzar Records. They released lots of our local colleagues, as well as foreign bands.
MM
What is your relationship with the label now? Did they help in the promotion? What does their management think about the fact that you have established distribution abroad yourself?
DI
We are quite pleased. Mutual understanding between us was set up from the very beginning and it remains so. Thanks Mazzar Records album produced and sold throughout Russia, it is also available in several Russian ineternet stores. Label gave us a big push in promoting the band. Mazzar Records was engaged in arranging interviews for various publications in heavy music Web-Zines (Dark City, Rock Oracle, Darkside, etc.), sent album for reviewing, made various advertising modules. We discussed abroad promotion separately from the outset, and nobody objected. On the contrary, welcomed the initiative and helped.
MM
Why foreign labels take up this project? Again, was the music key factor or trends – prog becomes popular? Or an exotic? What determined this, to your mind?
DI
I think, first of all is music. Little indiscreet of course, but in confirmation of this came a large number of positive feedback and reviews from abroad and many foreigners interested by e-mail and on MySpace about the opportunity to purchase the disc. But the main was real desire to show our self not only in Russia. Moreover, such music is not in demand here.
MM
What is the reason for the lack of interest to prog in Russia?
DI
The complexity of perception is the main reason. Now “-core” dominates (the first part of the style substitute yourself). I will not deny that there are different bands that I am happy to listen. We, in Russia, not even have own prog-hangouts and thematic concerts, although I know many format bands. And there’s no an organizer that wanted to take up such a festival.
MM
In the contextf: What do you think about Progress.FM?
DI
I think it’s great that the radio station relevant to the subject of Prog-music has appeared. A lot of young prog bands will meet here!
MM
Prog – music for musicians. Do you agree with this statement?
DI
Not always! It depends on the band. There is a super sophisticated technical prog, but there are “benign” bands also, that can be listened to by an unprepared listener.
MM
Let’s return to the distribution. Do foreign partners predict commercial success?
DI
No one gives predictions in our time. But, if they do – only pessimistic. Now people do not want to pay for music: visit a torrent and download anything you want!
MM
The situation in the west should be better …
DI
We hope that people are more civilized there.
MM
Do you plan to earn for a living playing music?
DI
No, this was never in our plans. Especially with such a style very few people can afford to live off the music.
MM
We started well, but we came to end… not as would like to:) Do you have something to make us glad in the new year?
DI
It’s all because our grim concept 
In the new year we hope to finish writing material for their second album. Some of the songs for it already can be heard at our concerts. Also at ESP guitars (members of our band are it’s endorsers) we plan to release several thematic video master classes with our second guitarist Alexander Strelnikov. I also hope someone from Moscow organizers still be able to do the Prog-Festival. It should finally happen! Follow our news www.tantalweb.ru, www.myspace.com/tantalband, http://vkontakte.ru/club598531.
MM
Concerts? Foreign tour is in the plans?
DI
We have proposals in Russia from time to time which we are always happy! The next year is already scheduled performances in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Tyumen. And the foreign tours – let’s wait for our English label, we discussed it.
MM
We are waiting for Russian prog-intervention to the west. Thank you for the interview.
DI
Thanks to all the Progress.FM staff! Good luck!
On December 21 in the Progress.FM rotation appears the song from the new album of “Beheaded Zombie” band. The disc entitled “Happiness for All” can also be purchased online in Progress.FM web-store. Before release, we interviewed a bandleader Dmitry Lyashkov.
Max Messerschmitt
Tell me, please, which difficulties you met in the process of recording?
Dmitry Lyashkov
If in detailes, then I tell in order. There were some troubles with the recording of this album. It all started with the fact that our drummer absolutely had given up playing music; moreover, we had to say farewell to the guitarist, who played with us since the founding of the group in 2002. Only three of us had remained and three of us had recorded the album: I recorded the guitar, my brother, Vladimir Lyashkov, recorded drums and bass, and sang Ivan Pudyakov, our vocalist.
MM
Pardon, I interrupt. What are your ex-members names?
DL
Drummer Artem Mokeev, guitarist Konstantin Koltyga. In the process of recording we were joined by current guitarist Pavel Savchenkov, who recorded several leading parts on the album.
MM
Why had such a misfortune with drummer and guitarist happened?
DL
This is, probably, a regularity; not a misfortune. The drummer just got carried away with other things. As for the guitarist… Well, let’s say, we have grown as musicians during the past few years , and he has grown a bit less. The difference was principle. In addition, they do not quite understand why we stopped playing brutal death metal and began to play something completely different.
MM
This is interesting. But why?
DL
Yes, just tired of playing the “meat” music. And there were ideas which laid outside the style we played. The first step away from grind we made at the album “Line of Life” released in 2006. Radical changes there did not happen, but in our minds the point of “no return” has been broken. Working on the next album, we relaxed and did not restrict ourselves by style boundaries.
MM
Can this be called a musical maturation? Has your approach become more mature?
DL
Of course, the goals have changed and the approach to their implementation has changes too. The prior task was simple – that was headbanging. Now we have started to write different music. We want the detailed arrangements, acoustic guitars, clean vocals and, most importantly, we’ve got an idea how to realize it. Although, honestly, we recirded this album in full confidence that this will be our “last song”, as the band was at one step from collapse. And besides, we were tired, to recruit new members.
MM
What has changed?
DL
Changed … Who knows, maybe just a rest, ride in the tour, got some charge of vivacity. Let’s see how it will suffice. I love working on studio albums, and not on just my own. I enjoy playing as a guitarist in other projects.
MM
As for the brutal death metal and progressive. Many note that bands begin with the heavier sound, but after two or three albums the growling may disappear or the structure of the songs can become more simple. For example, Amorphis started as a death metal band, and then smoothly moved into the category of progressive metal genre. It seems that something like this happened with you, didn’t it? Don’t you see parallels? Maybe heavy music is just immature, isn’t it?
DL
Our music has become more complicated, not simpler. And in terms of structure, composition and structure as well. So I do not see parallels.
MM
But even more melodic. Not such a peremptory, let’s say.
DL
This is normal. For example, Gorguts. Melodic? Yes. Peremptory? Yes. There is no cliche; the main thing is that the performer has his own face. No matter, even if that’s the ass. But this must be his ass – not a neighbor’s. We have hundreds of identical asses, and many like it – be the tenth Cannibal Corpse, fifteenth Children Of Bodom, one hundred sixtieth Aria. And I think that if you have nothing to say, then there’s better to be quiet. Therefore, there’s no immaturity of heavy music. You can be melodic and kill with brutality at the same time.
MM
How would you describe the new album? What is its idea, its message?
DL
I have always been bad in “stamps”. Now try …
MM
It’s not about stamps, but of ideas you are moved by.
DL
The new album is an interesting work; as original as we could make it. I am almost sure that the fans of brutal music won’t like it, but I think that there are some who enjoy it. Musical idea is simple – do not repeat the others, just to do only ours. And if you take the background of the lyrics, or as you called it, the message …
Album “Happiness for all” is about that the more people turn into puppets, selfish people are beginning to be afraid of responsibility, the literacy rates fall; in general, there is a global stupefying, to my mind. Especially the younger generations. I can not understand how a man can be afraid of any responsibility, and women do not want to give birth. I do not understand why people with diseases go to church instead of going to the doctor, and, directing their glance to the icon, keen: “Lord, send us a cure from the rheum” and the voice over replies: “Take medicine, assholes.” I can not understand a society that so much believes it does not solve anything, that even it no longer resists. For me it is absurd, and these issues are raised on the album. Perhaps it sounds snobbish, but this is not the pathos. I really see this problem.
MM
“Happiness for all” is like the “The Wish Machine” by Strugatsky brothers. What did you listen to, what did you watch and read while writing the material? Who did inspire you?
DL
I do not deny that I owe Strugatsky brothers for the album name. At that time I couldn’t watch movies and listen to music, because I had to work a lot. But I read constantly. At that point, it seems, I read the stories of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Ilf and Petrov. As the musician I was greatly influenced by Cynic and the Genesis’ album “The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway”.
MM
Do you think a musician should be “socially responsible”? To criticize a society and to shake it?
DL
Musician owed nothing to anybody. It’s not about musicians, writers, actors. In principle, I think that any normal person should be socially responsible, one way or another. To criticize a society is not the right kind of the question. To criticize themselves. For getting evolved. And the public just needs to be reminded that the problem exists. And it soudn’t be shaked, by the way. We all are like a pendulum, and it has only two positions – left and right. Somehow, we can’t freeze in the middle. Perhaps, there is such a mentality… It may seem that this concerns the politics, but no – I am an apolitical person. I just care about where I live.
MM
Will the art save the world?
DL
No. People will save the world. Or will burn it. The art is needed for mental relaxation. From labor, from everyday thoughts. To sit down, then insert your favorite movie and to think. Or to turn on your favorite band and to succumb to nostalgia, to get sad for a short while. Relaxation doesn’t mean “doing nothing”. That is just for changing the state of mind.
MM
The last question: please define the progressive metal?
DL
I do not know … perhaps it is the metal music, which does not fit into frames of other subgenres.
MM
What do you think about Progress.FM?
DL
I think such a project has had to appear much earlier. Go on!
Guitarist/vocalist Mikael Åkerfeldt of Swedish progressive metallers OPETH has issued the following update:
“That’s it, folks!! The ‘Watershed’ world tour is now officially OVER!
“We finished off with two shows in Greece. One in Thessaloniki and one in Athens. Both were great and a worthy finale for a tour that’s lasted over 19 months and I’d guess far beyond 200 shows. All over the world.
“We’ve played in territories we’ve never been before. Like Russia and the Middle East. Made a lot of friends, met a lot of psychos, seen some crazy stuff, done some crazy stuff, too!
“Endless hours in airports, to the point that we’ve made friends with bartenders all over the world. ‘Hey, you guys again??’ Endless hours in shuttles, hotels, backstage rooms, backstage (funky) toilets, bars, coffee shops (not me), taxi cabs, buses, bunks, in the gutter!
“I feel….weird! I think I feel good, but I feel shit, too!
“My daughters were waking me up this morning crawling over me, kissing me and hugging me. ‘Daddy’s home!’
“Melinda [one of Mikael's daughters] asked if I’d stay ‘all the time until Christmas?’ She thinks having me home for 20 days or so is like an eternity. Sad, really.
“Well, I’m setting things straight with a ridiculous amount of presents.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do now. Maybe rest for a week or so and just hang out.
“PRS guitars are going to bring me and Fred [OPETH guitarist Fredrik Åkesson] over for the NAMM [National Association Of Music Merchants] fair [in Anaheim, California in January] where I’ll introduce my very own signature guitar. Amazing! I have kept my mouth shut on this ’cause I wasn’t sure how things were progressing, but now it seems like the prototype is finished and it’s ‘killer,’ I hear! Haven’t tried it out yet, but it’s gonna be fucking nice!
“OPETH have the 20th anniversary shows coming up, plus I think we might do two festivals. BLOODBATH [the Swedish death metal 'supergroup' featuring Mikael on lead vocals] are doing five festivals next summer. Not really busy at all, to be honest, in terms of shows. I’ll be writing music, though…lots of it!”
Read the full article at Opeth Issues Update
Porcupine Tree has issued the following statement Steven Wilson mixing the upcoming Orphaned Land album:
“Steven Wilson recently played keyboards and mixed the fourth album by Israeli progressive metal band Orphaned Land. For those who have never heard the band, they are perhaps best described as what Opeth might sound like if they had come from the Middle East instead of Scandanavia. The music has a similar scope and degree of layered sophistication. But the sound of Orphaned Land is very much inspired by their roots, sung in English, Hebrew and Arabic, and featuring many traditional middle eastern instruments. The album The Never Ending Way of ORwarriOR is an ambitious and impressive 75 minute conceptual piece combining heavy music and breathtaking beauty. It is released by Century Media in several editions on 9th February 2010 in the US and 25th January 25th in Europe.”
Themetalheadz.com has posted a video interview online with Opeth keyboardist Per Wiberg. The video clip, which can be viewed below, was recorded during the European Progressive Nation tour alongside Dream Theater.