Saint Petersburg’s Veteran rockers tour Central Asia with their brand of Russified Metalcore.
I am perched in the darkness in my coat on the metal stairs which lead to an upper level. I sip now and again from a Budweiser which had taken me an age to get. Ahead of me, obscured in part by a throng, four men bathed in white light ooze a racket. I am trying to rewind to eight years ago when I first caught sight of this ensemble….
Established icons.
STIGMATA constitute a heavy rock outfit most often pigeonholed as `Metalcore` (stripped down heavy metal with a punk approach) or sometimes `Emocore` (confessional lyrics conveyed in a highly charged manner). As a part of the Russian subcultural landscape, this foursome has beavered away on the scene since they first picked up their guitars and mikes in Saint Petersburg in 2003.
Along with the likes of Jane Air and Distemper they were set in motion by Kap-Kan records, the self-styled `alternative to the mainstream` rock label who but a year after their formation released STIGMATA’S Conveyor of Dreams album. Since then, they can boast five more studio albums and a many single, their latest being `Polusa` (Poles) from this year.
Poles. [Zuk.com]
During that time there have been many comings and goings of personnel, but the ones that I beheld were the were the same as the lot at the Red Club in Moscow eight years ago which included two founder members. The new boy is the clash-and-bang merchant Gregor Karpov who has been with the band for but a year.
They are beginning a tireless schedule of a gig each evening. Having come from Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan) on the 6th October they will play in Tashkent in Uzbekistan after Almaty and then will turn their attention to a series of towns in their home country right until mid-December!
Here they are guests of Zhest Club, a somewhat hole-in-corner alternative rock venue. It has no cloakroom and it is all but impossible to buy a drink after 8pm owing to its packed nature.
Modest entrance.
On coming in from the warm October to hand in my ticket, I was surprised to discover that a band were already in full swing. The warm up was a chunky bespectacled chap and a willowy long-haired companion who churned out a very generic type of nu-metal. The crowd – a few hundred mostly ethnic Russians in baggy hoodies – responded with polite whoops and claps but here we had a reminder that in order to stand out something more is needed than musical competence and enthusiasm.
As nine struck the hour the band we had come to see obliged by getting onto the stage. They did so without the usual niceties of dry ice and light displays. Only the television screens on either side of the stage with their flickering images of the band’s name gave any sense of pomp and circumstance. In fact, going on appearances, STIGMATA could have been another support act. Compared to the Red Club this environment humbled them a little, yet perhaps provided them with a bit of authentic grit. They even seemed a tad unprepared, having to take time out to tune their instruments.
Their name promises Gothic theatricality, after all, but they are nothing much to look at. The lead vocalist Artyom Lotskikh could be the identikit Russian bloke: paunchy, bearded and pale-skinned. The two guitarists, Denis Kichenko and Taras Umansky, in caps and matching grey knee length shorts succeed in spicing up the visual aspect by favouring us with Saint Vitus dances as they play along.
Lotskikh is that rarest of animals: a lead singer who dislikes being the centre of attention to the point where he makes his way to the back of the stage after each song to recover himself. It is Umansky who takes on the task of laying on the much-needed interactive content with merry banter between songs and lobbing water bottles at the eager moshers at the front.
Another idiosyncrasy is their practice of playing at low volume recordings of their better-known songs just a second before going on to play the live one. As they grind their way through `Krilya` and `Lyod` and `Ostan Nadeshov` a svelte female photographer distracts us by crouching in the wings trying to get shots of with a long lens camera.
Quiet pioneers?
As much as STIGMATA get bracketed alongside their Metalcore counterparts in the States such as Killswitch Engage and Trivium, Lotskikh’s songwriting seems distinct in its Russianess, with a strain of folk about it. It could almost be as if they were forging, without hue-and-cry, their own subgenre of `Slavic power ballads` or something of the sort.
The set, at an hour and a half, was shorter than most. This gave me time to mull things over. Taken as a whole this had been a lackluster set by a nevertheless likeable group. Also, you can say this of their sound: it stays with you. The ringing guitars and soaring voice remained my companion during the long walk home.
Main image: UK: In Contact With.