The Iconic Now

Thank you for taking the time to talk to us Yan. As a Russian group that came up in 1992, it was probably a hardship in the post soviet union times. You started as Distimiya, and then changed name to Dissector. Why did you change the name?

Well, that’s truth; it wasn’t easiest time for musicians at Extreme North, far from big cities. Very little good instruments and equipment, no recording possibilities, very expensive transfer to go out to the festivals, for example, noticeable migration and as a result unstable line-ups. But anyway we had enough big scene for such a small town and hard to live-region, several places for live activities, tape trading and of course lots of fun and underground experience. First and the last change of our name has happened during autumn 1993, while changing our first active line-up. After we parted ways with our first vocalist Vladimir Yarkeev, I took his duties together with guitar-playing, and we start compose and play more aggressive and fast form of trash-death-metal in vain of Massacre and some Swedish melodic-death metal bands. The name Dissector suited much better for this music. So, we were young and didn’t care much about changes or keeping title forever. For us it was enough serious but we understood that we are completely unknown band, and no one give a shit about our title. It was all only for our pleasure and first years was kept only in local music-community.

Back in 1992 you’ve released a demo called “World of Radioactive Dreams”. Your latest is from 2014, “Subhuman”. That’s a very long journey, and you must be one of pioneers of Russian Metal Scene. What can you tell us about it?

Yeah, that’s a long long way to go, no shit. It’s a pity of course, but we were living so far from first and second waves of Russian metal underground, which had place most in big cities. It was so much Russian metal bands back in those times. I speak about 1985-1993. But DISSECTOR is one of the long runners for sure. Ok, we don’t have much professional releases yet because of different reasons, but we are still here and make music.

Let’s talk about your latest record, “Pride and Hate”. What’s behind it? What will we find inside it?

Our latest EP “Pride & Hate” is kinda additional release to support our previous album “Grey Anguish”. During 2013-2014 we have recorded about 30 tracks and have use only part of them for longplay and some additional digital and physical promo-releases. So was the simple idea born – to make another CD for our discography with additional tracks, including two b-sides from “Grey Anguish”, and at the same time to make rare item for possible collectors worldwide. We also wanted to present our new joint-track “Paradise”, which we made with guest singer Anna Dust from Decadence Dust. I asked also my friends, DJs Q-Ran and Electro-Senka to make some different remixes. For those who prefer CDs its really rare release, only 100 copies were made in digipack-format. And you will get more than 40 minutes music on it.

You’ve released your first full album after a few demos back in 1997, your style took a big change from then. What made you do this change?

I have to say, that Dissector develops right from the start and during all this years. In fact we have no one similar release. First demos, first DIY-albums and all last professional CDs all the time sounded different and had different approach and styling. Well, at the end of the day it’s all about constant creating our own style and melodic substance, sometimes not obviously or consciously. I still found some of our old ideas from nineties good enough to rework or re-record. We had all the time big melodies in our music from my point of view. We had nothing against experimenting or using something unusual in music. Sometimes with very interesting style-decisions. They are still deserved to be re-recorded in a good quality, which we didn’t had in 90-s. Sure now we compose simple structured songs with simple melodies, something between classic heavy, melothrash and melodeath, far from prog-rock or math-metal. But as far as I know and understand, it’s easy for people to recognize our style and remember our songs, and that’s the point.

What is your most iconic moment as a band?

Besides our founding back in 1992 and our reunion in 2008, I think the only iconic moment of Dissector is NOW. It’s the fact that we are still here with old line-up, recording and releasing music in a way we like and making merchandise in a proper way, supported by best designer, friend and countryman Pablo Antonov and many other friends and metalheads all around the world. We as the studio project have nothing against social-network’s support and try to communicate as much as possible. It’s a big part of the game nowadays. And after release of “Grey Anguish” we have so much attention to our band, as we never had before, big thanx to FB-community Metalheads Forever (http://mhf.rocks). So it’s also part of our iconic NOW-moment. Maybe we would develop much faster as a band if we were supported by big label and contract etc. But this time in the music-business is over. We are who we are, do everything by ourselves and try to enjoy our situation.

You cooperated with Metalheads Forever to create their official anthem: Metal On Loud (the title sounds familiar). You released the track as a free download EP. How did this come to pass?

Good that you have to mention about it! It’s was very inspiring project for us. This summer, as Dissector starts composing stuff for new releases, we come into contact with the boss of MHF David Maloney and moderators Tanya Legrand and Randy Gerritse. Surprisingly, this international team of friends and metal addicted enthusiasts like our previous records. So we got the offer to compose the official Anthem for MHF-community. The music I composed in 10 minutes after getting the offer, together with a couple of other variants. The lyric for this anthem was written by Randy Gerritse; using first demo we’ve fixed all creative aspects, and in August and September 2015 the song called “Metal On Loud” was recorded in Russia and mixed in Germany in Music-Factory Studio by Christian Schmid. We are very happy with results and glad, that this song has got so much support. You can get the separate song for free on different pages in FB; we have made also a digital EP “Metal On Loud” on our bandcamp page with additional music and remix (https://dissector.bandcamp.com/album/metal-on-loud-ep). And we will put the song in our next full length album too.

What are you planning for us in the future, as one of the most active bands of the Russian Metal Scene?

As I said, we are radical studio project. Last concert I personally played live was sometime in 2005 together with black-death metal band Tartharia in Sankt-Petersburg, if I remember correctly. That’s why I can say that we have no plans to play live or take part in festivals. No doubt concerts are very good thing, and I know this unbelievable feeling of being on stage. But to rehearsal together and to do other necessary activities right now will cost too much for us in our life situations. We make enough sacrifices. But what we can tell for sure is the fact, that we are constantly composing and recording new music. Now we start working parallel on three studio albums and hope to get ready the next Dissector’s long-play release in spring 2016. Other projects will take time because of participation of guest-musicians, vocalists, Djs, and because of constant composing and recording of new tracks. Anyway it’s a question of time and our financial resources. I have to say we compose too much, not able to record everything. Or we have to live in the studio – than we will make 12 albums a year. It’s all the time a big problem to choose better track for release and to finish one new song without having next two or three to be recorded. Personally I like very much studio work, like the process of birth of a new song.

Tell us about each and every member of the band.

Dissector has three core members from 1992 – bass-player Oleg Aleshin, drummer Andrei Glukhov and guitar/vocal Yan Fedyaev. We all live in different cities and communicate per Internet, work together in studios or meet from time to time in different places or on concerts. We have different jobs, Oleg is programmer, Andrei is lawyer, and I’m freelancer for many years – kind of translator and content-manager. Oleg is a happy family man and has two sons, me and Andrei still have no families and no children. On all professional releases of Dissector we have an electronic/keyboard support by Max Delmar, the keyboard-player of another project of mine – kind of gothic-metal band with female voice The Lust. Of course I need to mention our friend and longtime designer Pablo “Elephant” Antonov, very creative person with big heart and maker of all our merchandise and artworks. I can say he is like in-house member of Dissector. And I also like to mention some other people which help us for many years to record our albums – with Alexei Bolotov (very skillful sound-engineer) and Igor Anokhin (my colleague and buddy from band Tartharia, where I also play guitar) we record guitars for Dissector and The Lust, with Simon Oblomkin (synth-pop and music soft guru, radiosong.ru) we record all vocals. All those people help to make our music better with every release.

Please recommend to our viewers about your favorite bands.

I would say, we all are old-school guys and don’t listen much modern music. Though we can also listen to some adult pop in the everyday life, but not kinda funny happy shit. I personally don’t listen to new or unknown bands very often. The list of my favorite bands doesn’t change drastically during last years. If we speak about my actual metal stuff, it’s Carcass, Katatonia, Paradise Lost, Nightrage, Haunted, At The Gates, Rotting Christ, Yearning, Anathema. I also listen from time to time lots of AC/DC, Sentenced, Exodus, Slayer, Entwine, Soilwork, Overkill, Testament. I like to listen to the music on the road very much. It’s very inspiring time, full of thoughts, plans and dreams. From my non-metal list I would recommend Ludovico Einaudi, Seal, Deep Forest, EBTG, Lighthouse Family. But when we start making new album, usually I only listen to our demos and nothing else.

Any last words for the fans?

Support your favorite musicians and bands by buying their music and merchandise. It’s really crazy time – one full-blooded CD costs in Russia as much as a bottle of cheep vodka or two bottles of good beer. Sure people prefer tank up till death, or buy stupid coffee in Starbucks instead of paying a couple of bucks for a digital album which will fill them with emotions for a long time. Soon people will hit the bottle in silence or supporting by shitty news or comedy shows for idiots from tv. Don’t steal music! That’s in general. Here I sincerely thank everyone who is interesting in our music for any kind of support! I don’t wanna speak much about it, everyone knows what he is doing for us. It just inspires us to go forward. Hope You will enjoy our next album.

Thank you very much for participating and supporting us, and the worldwide Metal Scene!