AN NCS INTERVIEW: NEUROPOLIS

(Here we have Comrade Aleks‘ extensive interview with vocalist Vladimir Alekseev from the Russian doom/death metal band Neuropolis, who released their debut album in February of this year.)

The St. Petersburg death-doom band Neuropolis was founded in 2016 and had two very solid EPs in their discography – Temptation / Искушение (2019) and Golem (2020) plus a reputation honestly earned through live performances and, in general, thanks to an active position on social networks. But what we have now is this: The Neuropolis lineup has been radically updated after 2021, with vocalist Vladimir Alekseev as the only member who has remained in the group after those previous sessions.

However, these changes seem to have given Neuropolis an impetus in a new direction, and, having released the full-length album All Nothing / Всё ничего, these St. Petersburg doom-heads have not given up weekly rehearsals and are already recording new material. So doom metal is not only about inertia. And an interview with Vladimir will serve as proof of this assumption.

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Greetings, Vladimir! How’s it going? What’s new there in the band’s life?

Hello there. Perhaps, when viewed from the outside, one may get the impression that Neuropolis is alive in one moment and completely flatlines in the next, but that’s, in fact, not the case. Despite the lengthy periods of occasional creative and media silence, the band’s life never stops. We rehearse weekly, both old and new material, trying various combinations of our songs and how we can sequence them together in a cohesive way. Work is constantly underway on new lyrical stories, and our musicians are persistently honing their skills. We’re toiling on our sound, and writing song arrangements. In other words, intensive, scrupulous, technical work – but no less creative overall – is done each and every day.

Almost all of the band’s musicians are involved in some side projects with different concepts, styles, creative approaches, and presentation of material. Something new happens in Neuropolis‘ life every day. Lots of things to do other than our own.

In addition to writing poetry and lyrics for Neuropolis, I am currently preparing to launch a side project with my friend Ruslan Pavlov from the group Splatterums. We are aiming at something very unusual, literary and cinematographic-wise. The project will be called TRAUR (“mourning”). That’s all I can tell about it for now. I’m also slowly preparing a collection of my poems for release.

The band’s bass guitarist Vladimir Kalmazan is engaged in teaching, session, and composing work, and is actively involved in the media sphere in general. He is also the current bass player for the band Drakon. Our guitarist Nikita Smorygin is also involved in some other projects – he solo-writes electronic and ambient music, and does arrangements and guitar recordings for other musicians.

Drummer Ivan Chepurnov sells almost any kind of drumming-related stuff, plays in the band Dyrokol, helps people with song arrangements, and has recently dipped his feet into teaching. Vocalist Alisa has her own group Hvergelmir where she is the founder and leader. It’s a very interesting project with lyrics based on northern Scandinavian mythology. Everything is well-researched, properly made and very sincere in its core – which is, well, rather unique for the Russian symphonic folk metal scene, let’s put it like that.

So, this is how life goes in Neuropolis, its ebb and flow resonating in various other creative structures, planes, and spaces.

Splatterums – https://splatterums.bandcamp.com/

Drakon – https://drakonblackmetal.bandcamp.com/

Dyrokol – https://vk.com/dyrokolll

Hvergelmir – https://hvergelmirofficial.bandcamp.com/

 

 

Neuropolis’ first full-length album All Nothing was recently released, and I noticed very noticeable positive feedback all around. How actively were you promoting the new material?

Our brainchild received a level of promotion from us that, in our opinion, was most appropriate to our own vision of it first and foremost. In a way, it’s like raising a child, with the intention of properly preparing them for adulthood. Redundancy and overparenting here can be unnecessary and even harmful; the main thing is to properly do the minimum that corresponds to your goals and ambitions.

Moreso, a material like ours is not that easy to promote: it’s rather narrowly targeted, aimed at a certain, elitist to a degree, public. We’re not creating a mass-consumption product after all, but rather engaging in art as it is, the mastery of self-expression. Thus it was important to correctly convey this to the people who would respond to our sound, our stories, our meanings. In the end, they’re the ones who will come to the concerts and support us by purchasing merch, CDs, etc. The Ovinov Organization (https://vk.com/ovinovs_org) provided us with enormous assistance in promotion; the entire advertising campaign was planned by us together.

I’ll also say this: the album’s promotion as a whole is far from over, steadily gaining momentum even as we speak. News about it are popping up here and there across social networks, and numbers on music streaming services are slowly growing, too. Over the course of the year, we will present the album at several concert venues, and we will certainly talk about it more: we are already being asked for interviews on a regular basis; people want to hear our comments, our feedback on album’s feedback. As you can see, the release keeps its steady motion – making waves, finding its way into the minds of the masses, and continuing to take root in the history of the genre.

 

The band was formed in 2015, and until recently there were only two EPs in your discography – Temptation (2019) and Golem (2020), but in 2021 the lineup changed drastically. How and why did this happen?

I don’t know what was happening in the band in 2015, since I myself was invited to be part of the lineup at the end of 2018, if I’m not mistaken. At that time, as far as I know, quite a lot of people had passed through the lineup already; they were also creating some kind of content on their own and occasionally even performed somewhere, so not complete amateurs. Yet overall, the band’s early creative output was pretty low-quality and not very well developed, and it all looked more like “pretend-a-band”. So it naturally sunk into oblivion.

Then, from 2018, a more conscious history of the group began to be created, when the superfluous was cut off, and only the most passionate and ideological members remained in the team. That’s only natural: any formation tries to throw overboard everything that weighs it down as it keeps developing and growing. At that time, we basically had just one guitarist, and when he left, we were also left – left completely without guitars. I remember that we searched for quite a long time, posted recruitment announcements, even tried to fill in the gaps with friends.

Although at that time the Golem EP had already proven itself well in reference circles, there was little trust in us from the musicians. Everyone needed absolute guarantees of success and (pretentious) outward coolness, yet no one really wanted to, you know, work, on par with all current members. “Eugh, work? What even is it?” Guitarists were looking for bands to show off right away, to “look like a rockstars” without actually putting in work to become one. I still don’t know anything about the fate of these people and their Incredible And Utterly Unique Projects. Time has put everything in its place, and those who were sincerely involved – guitarists Nikita Smorygin and Alexander Seredin – received their due honor, respect and legacy.

Let me tell you a story of how Nikita and Sasha (short for Alexander) joined the band. I think it hasn’t ever been told this way in any interview, so we can say that this story is an exclusive one. Together with drummer Alexei Antonov, who now plays in his own project Koschei, we wrote a rather ironic and detailed recruitment announcement for guitarists. Only really purposeful (and moderately unusual) people could possibly respond back.

Sasha was the first to respond, and this happened at the end of June 2021. We met in a cafe not far from the rehearsal point. Sasha’s eye was twitching like that of a psycho, he took some kind of noisy unshielded guitar to the rehearsal, and he didn’t really look like a rockstar. None of us in fact did, but hey, we still half-seriously entertained the expectation that Ol’ Mustaine himself would come. After the rehearsal, Alexey told me, “Nah, that’s not it at all”. And the vocalist of one very famous band in St. Petersburg, who was just passing by, said, “Well, no, Vova (short for Vladimir), excuse me, but this is definitely not who you need…”.

I wasn’t really doubting my own choice, though, since I believe one should always try to look deeper into people before judging them, and that we needed to try and work with him longer. However, as the frontman, the onus was on me to politely refuse. So I said “Sasha, listen. For now, you can stay with us, rehearse with us, play with us. But if a hulking hairy virtuoso clad in riveted black leather comes to join the band tomorrow and blows you out of the water, then, well, you know…”. And Sasha responded with “no problem at all!”.

Nikita responded to the advertisement in August 2021. Arriving at the rehearsal while already knowing almost all the musical parts, his confidence and external gloss immediately created in some of our members a feeling of some kind of personal inferiority, even. It seems to me that with his passion and energy he instantly pulled us up to some previously unknown level, and then we all continued developing together, fully in sync. It is also worth mentioning that Nikita had considerable experience playing in different bands and different genres, while Sasha got into Neuropolis from his couch, practically.

Nevertheless, they turned out to be equal to each other in level, even complementing each other in some ways. But most importantly, they turned out to be dependable comrades, true ideologists and excellent companions. They are a vital part of the band to this day and have become so ingrained in it that it would actually make more sense to change the vocalist rather than them, should any critical creative differences ever arise.

 

 

Of the six members of Neuropolis, you are the only one founder still present. How much of that original Neuropolis remains on the album All Nothing?

I will once again mention that I wasn’t one the founders. The band was originally formed by guitarist Dmitry Kim, former vocalist of the group Dmitry Andriychuk, and drummer Alexey Antonov. They can rightfully be called the founding fathers of Neuropolis. I got into the group by accident and it just so happened that due to many circumstances, multiplied by my personal vision, strategic stubbornness, and intractability, the band eventually became “mine”.

Unlike band’s original creators, for me the starting point is 2018, when we were looking for our new and authentic sound. And, starting with the raw, non-format composition “Crimson Sunset”, we found it for the first time on the Temptation EP. For me, the history of the band begins from this exact moment and everything that has been created since then is what we’ve been looking for, it’s The Thing.

Don’t think that the band has stopped in it’s tracks, though. Neuropolis is, first and foremost, a path, a process, the development of certain conceptual ideas. It doesn’t matter who will replace whom in it and who will remain in the end. I believe that everything that follows will only strengthen and multiply what has been done by those who preceded today’s success. Yes, due to the fact that the same person has been responsible for both lyrics and overarching ideological component since then, certain handwriting will be easily recognizable. But the music itself will change, even with the same band lineup. We will not do the same thing over and over, even if we will accidentally find something popular, something that is in demand as of now. The essence of Neuropolis‘s creativity is in constant movement, in continuous exploration of the untreaded paths, in the fleshing out of one’s own aspirations, embodied in the form of music and lyrics. There will be no retreads – only clarifications and, of course, new chapters of this chronicle.

It is also worth noting that all the songs for the new album, just like earlier for Golem, were illustrated by Alexey Sivitsky, in which I see some welcome continuity. Initially, I wanted to try a different hat, as the saying goes, but after the first unsuccessful attempt at creating a cover myself, I realized that all roads lead to Alexey.

 

 

Was it easy to recruit a new team? After all, there have always been problems with doom metal music in St. Petersburg, even if we look at it from a black metal perspective.

There was never a situation where we were left completely out of staff, prompting the need to hire new people “turnkey”. Some were leaving, others were joining, and over time it was happening quite smoothly. I mean, yes, while searching for guitarists, we were out of business for quite a long time. But the history of the group also includes, for example, Alexei Antonov and I rehearsing just together – he was on the drums, I was on the microphone, so we weren’t too discouraged. Even if we couldn’t recruit anyone at the end of the day, the band would just continue exist as a purely studio project.

Confidence is contagious, you know. Confidence always stems from faith, but we didn’t just believe, but outright knew that, in due time, everything would come together as it should, as if it’s fate. At least, I personally have always treated this with a huge degree of fatalism – and still do.

After Alexei left, we changed two drummers. Due to the varying reasons, they left the group. The first one, Sergey Yeskin, left with dignity, deciding to pay attention to his own projects first. Nothing but gratitude to him and his contribution. The other drummer, however… yeah, that was a way more difficult case. In short – we couldn’t make it work as a team.

Coming back to the present moment, though… Vladimir Kalmazan, an outstanding bass player, joined our ranks. And through his own circles and channels he eventually brought Vanya Chepurnov, a drummer who, by the way, is only 18 years old! Vocalist Alisa Polyarnaya very quickly became a natural and essential part of our previously men-only collective – this is, of course, thanks to both her talent and the feminine wisdom inherent in her, as well as her profound otherness and dissimilarity from many others. We don’t have just random people in the group, no – but those who are present are all unique, special in their own way. (Internally in the band, we jokingly call our bunch “schizo”).

In the context of belonging to the doom scene, what can I say… We do belong to it in form, but never belonged to it in terms of the degree of acquaintance. This is still the case, by the way. This scene is generally very disconnected and, due to its niche nature, is tense, suspicious, envious, and touchy. Before Covid, the scene in general started to take shape, yes – we made compilations, organized joint sessions, formed and nurtured platforms for discussions, wrote articles. Supported each other where we could and how we could, and traveled together even during Covid. But in the end, everything is starting over again now, as it always does. To think, maybe it does make sense – every man for himself. And, in rare cases – the worthy next to the worthy.

 

 

By the way, the Temptation EP attracted attention, among other things, with its expressive “St. Petersburg-style” cover and the track “Doom of the Neva,” together distinguishing Neuropolis from most domestic death-doom bands. Why did you decide to move away from this concept?

We didn’t. We still walk along the same cold, gloomy streets of infra-Petersburg. At some point we just went outside the city to explore the surrounding area. The Golem EP takes place in exactly the same place the cover of Temptation is showing, it’s just that Golem is a look inside the self of a person standing on the same embankment where the muse, captured on the cover of Temptation, lies.

Speaking of it, let’s lift the veil of secrecy and designate our intentions, so it would be easier for them to penetrate from the ethereal spaces, of which inspiration comes into our corporeal realm. The technical (and so far main) title of the next Neuropolis album is Saint-Petersburg’s Tears, and I guess no further explanation is needed here. On one hand, this will be a return to those roots of ours, but moreover, it will be an attempt to say which was, at the time, left unsaid and thus made Temptation not an album, but just an EP. Now it all has matured, found a firm ground to stay on; it was experienced through by us, and is finally ready to be said and sung.

We are preparing a real St. Petersburg album. One about love, about feelings, about death, about the coldness of the city, which sucks the souls out of loners, wandering along its streets in freezing despair. We also promise that there will be song hits with geographical names to match the song “Doom of the Neva”. Stylistically, the album will not be a retread of our last work, All Nothing, no. Rather, it will have an emphasis on gothic style and measured, despondent old school-doom. Be ready for some experiments in the form of grindhouse action films and depressing funeral-doom as well.

 

How often did the band perform live last year and what are the plans for live performances in 2024? As I understand it, we can’t count on events like Moscow Doom Fest and Petrodoom right now.

Last year we were busy working on the album and didn’t play live much. But we don’t strive for frequent live performances, actually. In 2024 there will most likely be no more of them than in the past. On May 25 we are performing in Arkhangelsk at the festival  Among Cemeteries and Swamps. Then, on October 18 in Moscow, we are organizing our own doom metal fest. So far the lineup consists of Neuropolis, Shallow Rivers, Halter.

Next, on November 9, we will organize (as always, on our own) the Doom on the Neva IV festival in St. Petersburg, already its fourth part. And here – here we won’t even be spoiling the lineup, because it promises to be an utter killer. It will be a revival of the traditions, ones that festivals you asked about once established, but on an even larger scale. And we’re confident in that – after all, we managed to brilliantly hold the Doom on the Neva III festival on November 11, 2023 (https://vk.com/naneve3). Those fests you are talking about no longer exist in their original form, but we picked up the banner and raised it high above our heads.

For the concert in Arkhangelsk we are preparing a program consisting of our new album, with a few of our old tracks thrown into the setlist. This program will be special in that, in addition to my usual vocals on studio recordings, there will be clean backing and even solo vocal parts performed by Alisa. And of course the finally found live drummer is the main star of the performance. With him on board, Neuropolis will surely perform with all our due groove.

 

 

The new material shows a strong lean towards black metal. How natural was this transition from more traditional death-doom? Did this change somehow affect your personal perception of Neuropolis?

Survivorship bias would be a fitting analogy for what I see here, except here it’s the mistake of listening not enough times. In addition, the nature of the mixing can tilt the opinion towards black metal. There is no black metal here, except in the song “Our Daily Bread”, but it was also intended to sound blackened. It’s just that the genre boundaries are being blurred as time passes. Some people are already calling metalcore as melodic death metal, simply due to the sounding similarities.

So it comes as no surprise at all that if the listener’s ear perceives a slight rise in frequencies upward, or hears vocals a little higher than usual, it immediately transmits the signal to the brain – this is black metal! No, this is not black metal, no matter how the plushie-ass bands of the new formation try to fit themselves into these frames. Here we have something closer to the real, true doom-death, but with more modern and progressive arrangements. Again – true-doom, and not monotonous disinterested strumming with vocals sounding like they were sung into the old bucket. Which, for some reason, is now attributed by critics (and self-proclaimed Musicians Who Are In The Know) to “old death metal”. Talk about the dichotomy of a positive and stagnant elitism, huh.

Following the previous statement, all this in no way affected my perception, because it was dictated by intention – to do it exactly this way, and it was perceived from the height of looking at what had been previously done. We listened to it, after all. Together we made and adjusted the sound. We accepted the final work together. This album, in contrast to the suffocating, poison-breathing, death-looming Golem, was supposed to become a little militant, life-affirming, albeit doing this through reflection. Through dark and ugly reflection, sometimes, as in the song “In the Cellars”.

The next album will also have a clearly discernible tilt; I roughly described this fact above. We want to do and are ready to do different things, wandering around the same ink-black starting point, around the same original source of dark poetic and musical insight.

How do you assess the Russian doom scene today? If we can talk about the totality of doom bands existing today as a scene, of course.

The coming year was marked by the release of several landmark full-length works within the genre. Namely, the albums of the groups Yakor / Яkорь, Vo Skorbyah / Во Скорбях, Who Dies in Siberian Slush and, of course, the album of our band Neuropolis. It also seems that full-length releases from IL / ИЛ and Endless Ocean are on the way, too. The band Megalith Levitation is working on a new release, that I know for sure, and Shallow Rivers is cooking up something as well. I’m also looking forward to the new release from the adherents of trad sound, the band Train to Elsewhere…

The stage came back to life, and I am sure that even those who have not made a sound for a long time, after sounding their comeback, will get in the groove. The doom scene is divided, but that’s okay, that’s the nature of this scene. Most groups do not understand the financial aspects of their activities and when suddenly, sometimes briefly, often completely accidentally, achieving success, they put themselves right in the hands of the managers. Not everyone has enough vital and organizational energy to build something together, completely on their own, so they delegate the financial side to the above-mentioned managers. And, well, some are taken advantage of in the end, and until they are completely drained of their potential by the third parties, they will not start to think about the future – their own future. It’s an everyday smartass-y occurence, what else is there to say…

We, in turn, are happy to hold the DOOM on the NEVA-series events every year, even at a loss. Because, firstly, we are talking about a cult cultural phenomenon here, and secondly, there are certain signs already clearly visible that allow us to look optimistically into the future. Here, we take full responsibility. The upcoming festival may be attended by real rising stars, a kind of Katatonia a-la Rus – Inside the Rain, a band from Komsomolsk-on-Amur. Even if they don’t come, we are at least glad that we learned about them, honestly. And there will always be a place for young groups who’ll decide to express themselves; this is one of the main credos of the festival.

If we take each group separately, then I evaluate the Russian doom scene much cheaper than the demands that they put forward for their performances, because I do really know how much and what for they play – and who pays them. And most importantly, what does it cost for the event organizers. In contrast, we could achieve so much more within the framework of joint projects and festivals, but, you see, this is a whole different way of thinking. It is much closer to investing in the future and rational business thinking, and not the dumbfound magical thinking “that we will succeed somehow and everything will just somehow work itself out”.

 

Vladimir, thank you for the interview. Have we missed anything? What are Neuropolis’ plans for the rest of 2024?

On May 25 we are performing in Arkhangelsk at the festival Among Cemeteries and Swamps. At the moment we are recording a new single, Winter; we are also working on the, dare I say, epic single Woe, which will be a completely separate canvas, a conceptual work unlike all our existing releases. Woe will not be included in any of the albums; it will be completely separate. Winter will be the first piece written for the album Saint-Petersburg’s Tears.

The album itself has already been practically written in text form and ideologically adjusted, the order of the tracks and their mood have been determined, and the vocal melodic lines have been worked out as well. The arrangements will gradually came to be, too.

On October 18 we are organizing a festival in Moscow. Not very big, but fairly elite within the genre. On November 9, the day after my birthday, St. Petersburg will host DOOM on the NEVA IV. And that about concludes our plans for now.

https://www.facebook.com/neuropolisspb/

https://neuropolis.bandcamp.com/