MEDIA: Interview

Alternative History (fragment). UN-REAL

...In parallel with the groups performing hard rock and heavy metal, performers of more extreme music began to appear: thrash, death, and black metal. Such teams as, for example, Akhineya, Vigilia Mortum, Monstera, Rattler. The wave of super-heavy music, generated mostly in Ida-Virumaa, reached the beginning of the 2000s.

One of the leaders of killer metal of that period was certainly the Tallinn death metal Postmortem band. For its leader, vocalist/guitarist Sergei Shelepov, the path to music began like for most teenagers. At first he listened to tape recordings of more advanced friends, then the first acoustic guitar appeared.

Sergey Shelepov:

In 1990, my friends and I started trying to play in a group. We really didn’t have electric musical instruments. We played with whatever was at hand. Some boxes, a homemade bass guitar. Our bass guitar was exactly the same acoustic guitar, we hit [the bass strings]. One played rhythm, the other played bass. Also on an acoustic guitar.

And in 1991, Mark Hecht and I decided to form our own group, and already there I [was] with my classmate Alexei Sannikov. He bought a bass guitar. We already had a real bass guitar - Orpheus. And then my brother Denis got a real hat somewhere, a hi-hat for drums. We bought a pioneer drum from the Priisle store. We moved to Lastamae at that time. This is already 1991, the beginning of 1991, still Soviet times. And we began to rehearse something.

In 1991, somewhere in February, we had a question about the name of the group. I had a notebook in which I wrote down various songs of groups and looked at the titles. And I liked the name POSTMORTEM. This is a song by Slayer. What it meant, how it was translated into Russian, I honestly had no idea. But I thought it sounded somehow so convincing. And so we took this name and began to work under it.

Our first attempts to play hard rock, or death metal, or something like that, they did not lead us to success. Because we lacked experience, some skill. We tried to play thrash and something else, but it always turned out to be punk. ))

Because we couldn't squeeze anything else out. But, nevertheless, even this delighted us when we listened to our rehearsal recordings. We thought it was all incredibly cool.

Our group, Postmortem, had different lineups. But what remained unchanged was that I played either the bass guitar or the guitar, and my brother, Denis, he played mainly the drums, but there was a period when he also played the bass guitar. Dmitry Samorukov, nicknamed Butcher, also played for us - such a famous Tallinn musician. Now he already lives in Novosibirsk.

We probably already started playing melodic death metal in 1996. We had already more or less formed ourselves as a melodic death metal band.

We recorded our first album, Bloody Justice Comes, in '96. The next album began recording in 1997. Guitarist Alexander Kobzar has already joined us. In 1998, we already released an album. We printed cassettes.

The group broke up due to the fact that, strictly speaking, people moved away. People (musicians) started families, their own affairs, worries. And on this basis, it’s not like it fell apart right away. No. We continued to work somehow, doing something.

But anyway, people simply have other interests. And in 2009, with a completely new lineup, we gave our last concert. After which we officially ceased to exist.