MEDIA: Interview

Melodic and heavy death metal. SATANIZER

"That's how most record companies and people have described our work, and I personally agree with them," replied Sergei Shelepov, the singing guitarist of the Tallinn band Postmortem, when I asked him to define the music he plays.

"Actually, it's completely arbitrary for us, because not even a certain style of killing makes the band's music good. We just play heavy music, let the listeners decide what to call it."

The band was born in 1990, when two TTU students, Mark Khekht and Sergei, met, who both wanted to start cultivating heavy metal music. In 1991, Sergei invited his former schoolmate Aleksei Sannikov to play bass, and the band was named Postmortem. The first rehearsals took place at Mark's home and Sergei's brother Deniss Shelepov joined as a drummer, who was only 11 years old at the time and hardly understood how the drumming works.

Two years later, Postmortem entered the studio for the first time, where it was planned to record a few or three songs. However, they only started with one song - «Nightmare Again» - and this recording became the band's first demo. At the end of the year, the second demo «Prince Of Darkness» followed, and in 1996 the eight-song debut album «Bloody Justice Comes...»

At the moment, however, Postmortem fans should be thrilled to know that the band is about to release a brand new album «The Call Of The Sea», which seems to be even better compared to the previous one. The sound is stronger, the guitars are more perfect, the vocals are meaner and there is more power.

The album's best song, "Bitter Tears", was heard many times ago, and "Seitsmes vapras" was also heard. I wonder what prompted the band to embroider there?

"Actually... I don't even know. We just wanted to introduce ourselves to the crowd and show them good death metal. Just like that, we decided why not. By the way, I still can't believe that Uncle Bella's buggy song got more points than ours. But, of course, the people need music that matches their IQ,» laughs Sergei.

But what do men prefer to listen to when the instrument is put away?

"Honestly, a lot of different things," Sergei admits. "Personally, my favorite bands are Deicide (with whom I performed on the same stage as the bassist of Rattler in Lithuania three years ago), Napalm Death, W.A.S.P., Manowar, Metallica (earlier), Amorphis and Old Man's Child. But I'm also able to listen to lighter stuff like Nirvana, Abba, Madonna, etc.»

Looking to the future, the men hope to achieve fame in areas beyond the border and attract the attention of local labels. And since one's music is already considered good enough and of high quality, this dream does not seem like a special utopia either.

The best chance to see Postmortem on stage should be on April 25 in Tartu. In general, you can get information about the concert schedule and everything else from the band's website on the Internet