Unlike the previous bands I've talked about, GrOb were completely underground up until the fall of the USSR. Their releases were only distributed from person to person via tape recorders from stereos throughout the USSR and never were properly released until the fall of the USSR. This system of distributing censored music was called magnitizdat. Their singer/frontman/song writer Yegor Letov was even captured, interrogated and tortured by the KGB after the aunt of one of his bass players in the early days outed them for "anti-communist" activities. The official slogan of GrOb was "I will always be against". Musically and lyrically GrOb were one of the most subversive punk bands to ever exist on the planet in my opinion. Completely unique Siberian-styled punk that is almost folky but completely noisy, blown out, fast and driven punk. The noise levels are at the same level as Japanese punk bands like GAI for Confuse. I have no idea how the context of the sound for GrOb was imagined or created without hearing or being influenced by western punk acts, but amazingly enough, it does exist on it's own pillar of originality and creativity and developed completely on it's own based on all the info I've been able to find.
Lyrically, GrOb are one of the most brutal and honest bands in critiquing their surroundings. The opening and title track has Letov screaming "Peace or War? WAR!... God or Death? DEATH!... Love or Fear? FEAR!... Freedom or The Lash? THE LASH!".
Or the third track Философская Песня О Пуле (Philosophical Song about a Bullet) the lyrics are
"Wicked bullet, teach me to live
Good stone, teach me to swim
Humanism spawned genocide
Justice has given the tribunal
Deviations of established law
What we sow - and then are reaping"
Or their Song About Lenin (Песня О Ленине)...
Lenin - Hitler, Lenin - Stalin is
Lenin - is Kim Il Sung, Lenin - is Mao
Lenin - the Buddha, Christ, Abel and Cain
Lenin - is the yin and yang, Lenin - is the Tao
Lenin - a joke that we have poisoned
Lenin - is a carrot, by which we beckon
Lenin - is the hand that we mold
Lenin is a spotlight that blinds us
Lenin - is a hammer which we pierce
Lenin - that is all that drives us
Lenin - a tank that crushed us
Lenin - is the truth that we have poisoned
Lenin - is the bullet that cures us
Lenin - is the fear that cripples us
Lenin - is an ass, that we all stink
Lenin - is the blood that we slurp
Lenin - Hitler, Lenin - Stalin is
Lenin - is Kim Il Sung, Lenin - is Mao
Forever young, forever with us
He always, always alive!
Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live
Lenin will be, will be
Lenin, Lenin will live!
There's a level of self-destructive, melancholic, desperate and urgency that I can only find in GrOb's music. I can only imagine what context this album was recorded... Right at the end of the USSR, the end of communism, the end of an era, the end of the world is what life must have felt like for people at this time, and the 4 (FOUR!) albums recorded and released by GrOb in 1989 reflect this. I read a very interesting interview conducted with Letov after the fall of the USSR and how people in the USA can't imagine the hostility, danger and environment in which he operated to make his art in the USSR and that people in America do not know what true oppression is, or something to that effect. Unfortunately the Kill From The Heart original website is down, they had that incredible interview available there.
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Voyna!
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