When IC3peak released his latest album, “Kiss of Death”, the album had all the characteristics that had transformed the band into a boogeyman in Russia and led the authorities to try to close his shows: texts obsessed with death, provocations anti-stn and screams of blood.
But on the new album of the Russian duo, “Coming Home”, published on Friday, the atmosphere has changed drastically. The hard sounds of electro metal and Heavy are largely disappeared. Instead the band of the band, Nastya Kreslina, gently coos and whispers the melodic Rock Indie.
Kreslina said there was a simple explanation for the round: “Everything in our life has changed”.
Three years ago, Kreslina left Moscow a few days after Russia launched its invasion on the vast scale of Ukraine. Since then, Kreslina and his bandmate Nikolay Kostylev, they have faced the emotional and creative relapse of the conflict.
Kreslina said he screamed so that Russian listeners noticed it. Now, he said, a silent voice seemed the only way to be “known among all the screams”.
Since he left Russia, Kreslina has wandered between Paris, Los Angeles, Istanbul and Turin, in Italy, among other cities; Kostylev now lives in Berlin. Kreslina has an apartment in Riga, Latvia, but said it didn’t look like a permanent address. Since he left Russia, he said, he had not yet found a place that “he gave a feeling of home”.
Russian musicians often struggle to reconstruct their careers abroad. Distance from their base of national fan and, in some cases, traitors designated by their government, many end up playing small concerts for other emigrants.
This is particularly true for traditional pop acts, but some alternative groups, such as IC3peak and the slaughter of the Deathcore band to prevail, have maintained or even cultivated popularity from abroad, even if the Russian cultural cache immersed the nose.
KostyLev said that, based on streaming data, he estimated that about 70 percent of IC3peak fans live outside Russia, therefore going into exile did not have a significant financial impact. “In a sense we are lucky,” he said: “We can have personal crises, because we have food on the table”.
The distinctive look of the band was a fundamental part of his international appeal, said Michael Idov, a former editor -editor of Russia GQ who lives in the United States. The band completely wears black with white face paint and its videos often seem horror films, with zombies and monsters. Idov said that those images appealed to users of social media who seek unusual acts online, as well as fans of music. “They always felt ripe for the crossover,” he said.
During a joint interview with Kreslina in a restaurant on the outskirts of Riga, Kostylev said that the duo intends to maintain its bold sense of fashion, even if it revolves for more delicate music. For the album campaign “Coming Home”, the Duo dress in the role of Goth Angels in Tracksuits.
Formed in 2013, when Kreslina and Kostylev were at the Moscow college, IC3peak had meetings with the Russian authorities from his first days. In 2018, he released “Death No More” a track whose video presents the members of the band who light up in front of a government building in Moscow while Kreslina sings “all of Russia is looking at me / lets everything burned”.
At that time, KosttyLev said, police officers and security service agents tried to close many IC3peak shows. He and Kreslina were detained and Spati, added Kostylev. (The FSB did not respond to a commentary request.)
Initially, the couple found “funny” attention, said Kostylev, and every performance seemed “how to show the middle finger” to the authorities. But over time, Paranoia has grown and Kostylev left Russia before the vast invasion of 2022 Ukraine began because he had found the atmosphere suffocating.
Nadya Tolokonnikova, founder of the artistic collective of Pussy Riot, who also had problems with the Russian authorities and now also lives in exile, said he saw IC3peak for the first time in Moscow around 2018, in a concert with “Thousands of girls who dance and scream long. “
IC3peak was important as “one of the first artists” in Russia to speak openly about state repression, added Tolokonnikova. “I’m more than one band,” he said, “build a world.”
“Coming Home” does not present openly political traces, although there are thin allusions to the war in Ukraine and the experience of exile. In “Where’s my home?”, For example, Kreslina said he was singing from the point of view of a soldier who returned from a foreign battlefield to find that their country had changed. “Is my house / but where’s my house?” She sings.
Both Kreslina and Kostylev said they wanted to reach a Russian audience with the new album, as well as listeners in the West. They had agonized for months if to extract their music from streaming services in Russia, added Kreslina, but they decided not to maintain a connection with fans there that oppose the government.
What long -term IC3peak enthusiasts will make the new direction of the band, KosttyLev seemed uncertain. “Many fans will find it confused,” he said, “but we can’t do anything about it. We are only doing what we feel.”