Articles from Volume 13 Issue 4

Out There

Everybody likes to jaw on and on about indie rock and indie labels and indie magazines and indie rap (that's the worst indie), but what about indie distros? Full story

Full Metal Torture

Rape in the Red Army

Over the recent New Year's holidays, Private Andrei Sychyov's superiors tied him to a chair and beat him continuously for hours and hours, taking breaks only to sustain their drinking binge. Full story

Dooms Day Metal

Does it make any sense to even try to explain what has gone wrong with Death Metal? I see you scratching your bleached hair going "Huh!? Metal still rawks man!" Full story

Drunky Monkey

Freezing at the Zoo

In Russia, it isn't just prison inmates who go without heat. One million homeless kids get in on the freezing-their-fucking-balls-off action too. Full story

Bribing With Blue Jeans

Bartering at the Velvet Rope

Just how valuable ARE a pair of old black Levi's 550s and a fresh roll of Kleenex-brand two-ply toilet paper to today's deprived Muscovites? I recently hit the fanciest nightclubs in town to see how far I could get on the real cultural currency of 1980s Russia. Full story

Dubiina Box *

Tuning In Russia

Fuck, Russian TV is bad. It takes "so bad it's good" into entirely new realms. The best (worst) of Russian TV is so utterly abysmal that it's completely amazing. Here are the worst (best) shows that it has to offer. Full story

Bob Odenkirk’s Page

Russian Bra Busters

I never really grasped what they meant when doctors said people who lose a limb often feel a pain where their arm or leg once was. It didn’t make any sense to me. Full story

Bible Bashers

What's With The Maccabees?

Sometimes, you’ll know a British band by how they make something poetic out of their experience of living in the UK. You’ll usually notice that their songs find some way to romanticize what is essentially a small, rainy country where summer lasts ten days. Full story

Grimewatch

With Roll Deep being kicked off Rinse FM, Essentials splitting up and my quest to become grime’s own JT LeRoy moving as swiftly as Sharky Major’s career, I was ready to file this month under “WASTE.” Full story

Records

Music Reviews - The Russia Issue

You know me and joke rap. I don’t usually fuck with it. That said, if you’ve got enough perseverance to milk a joke for the length of an entire album, I’ll give you daps. Full story

Literary/I Want My DVDs

Book/Movie Reviews - The Russia Issue

There was a time I was way over black-and-white photography. Now I seek it out and feel relieved when I am looking at it, like, “Ah, that’s nice.” Color photos were starting to burn my eyes. Full story

TB in Russia

Like Ticking Time-Bombs?

Tuberculosis is a contagious disease that spreads through the air just like the common cold. Someone with TB can cough or sneeze and infect others (10 to 15 people a year on average) with the bacteria known as bacilli. Full story

Russian Cocktails

What Can't They Drink?

“In America, you drink vodka. But in Soviet Russia…vodka drinks you.” —Yakov Smirnoff, comic genius Full story

Games

Games Reviews - The Russia Issue

This game expertly preys on the fantasies of all devoted gamers. No, we don’t specifically want to be black-ops guys with ninja clothes and guns from the future and shit. Full story

Ra-Ra Rasputin

Is The Favourite Sons' Favourite Russian

The Favourite Sons are the reason Ken Griffith isn’t currently mopping vomit off the floor of a Brooklyn drinking hole. After Irish noise-pop demi-gods Rollerskate Skinny split in 1997 he decided to have one last go with Kid Silver. Full story

Vice Fashion - Russian Guys Gone Wild

I eat out every night. The money in promotion over here is ridiculous but there’s no such thing in Russia. I love it here and I hate my own cooking. Full story

Whores On Wheels

Moscow's One-Stop Shopping

Moscow is awash in whores. They come to Russia's capital, the lone island of wealth in a Eurasian ocean of wretched poverty, from all over the former Soviet Union. Full story

Over The Counter Habits

A Brief History of Getting High in Russia

The FSB (which is like the FBI but waaaay scarier) gassed the “Nord-Ost” hostages with it in October 2002 to prevent some Chechen mujahadeen from blowing the building up with 900 or so hostages inside. The women and children simply OD’d on the stuff. Oops! Full story

Wussian Wabbits

Art With Floppy Ears And Fluffy Tails

Nathalia Edenmont is a 30-year-old Russian artist who has been bashed by literally everyone for the crime of making of art with dead bunnies. She gets hate mail from militant vegans, Nazis, and even regular people who say things like: "That's not art!" Full story

Tidbits

A Monthly Look At Things We Love - The Russia Issue

A hundred years ago all Russians wore these primitive-looking straw slippers made by peasants in Belarus. They look like Steve Martin’s “Cruel Shoes,” but holy shit are they comfortable. They feel like you’re putting your feet into vaginas. Full story

The VICE Guide To Russia

An A-Z of the World's Biggest Country

Russia is poisoned. It’s poisoned from shitty old cars running on leaded 76-octane fuel and it’s poisoned from decades of Soviet waste. Its capital is the largest city in Europe and the most polluted. Full story

Vice Pictures - Jerry Hsu Goes To Russia

The Russia Issue

I flew into Moscow alone. After the 14-hour flight I got to stand in an immigration line for three hours while hundreds of Russians cut in front of me. They are the world’s greatest cutters. Full story

Vice Fashion - True Riggers Don't Play

The Russian Rap Fan's Life

And you thought wiggers were bad. At least some of them have met a black guy before and could kind of identify with what it's like to be poor and shat on in America. Full story

Vice Fashion - Homesick

In 2004 Chechens took siege of a Beslan school and killed and injured up to 1000 people. There are about 1 million street kids in Moscow, infant death in Armenia is 36 to every 1000 and procreating close to Chernobyl is risky for the next 3 million years. Full story

Vice Mail

Letters - The Russia Issue

I should start this off by mentioning that I generally consider writing to publications, companies, or other abstract entities the exclusive province of dumbshits and an all-around waste of time. Full story

Russians in London

A Blight on Blighty?

Dasha is a 19-year-old Economics student and the only child of a media tycoon from Moscow. With a Hermès Birkin collection that would make Paris Hilton piss in her panties, Dasha loves to blow her family's cash. Full story

Born to Run

Why Do Russians Always Leave Russia?

Do you miss Russia? Full story

Literary Gulag

A Writer's Retreat Behind Bars

Edward Limonov is the leader of the National-Bolsheviks Party, a radical left-wing movement that was outlawed by the Russian Supreme Court, but which has emerged as the leading opposition to President Putin. The NBP’s membership numbers in the thousands. Full story

Vice Fashion - Mail-Order Brides

The real Russia is in provincial cities and towns like Tver, where we found these girls. They are all members of a local bridal agency (tverromance.com) and would like to marry you. Full story

Russians Yawn At Death

Few countries can boast a death count as high as Russia's in the 20th century. Twenty million were killed by Hitler and Stalin each, and millions more were lost in the Civil War, WW1, and the Famine. Full story

Electric Independence

"Vodka for Russians is like a warming water. When it's cold you have to drink a glass of vodka to feel warm-I don't drink vodka to get drunk," says Alexey Orchensky, the 20-year-old Russian genius behind Amen Orchestra. Full story

Playstation Pirates

Russian Home Entertainment

Russia is one of the world's largest pirate markets for electronic media. From music and DVDs to video games and software, Russia is ranked right up with world-leaders in piracy China and Indonesia. Fake shit is sold everywhere here! Full story

Gross Jar

If you’re a guy in high school and completely surrounded by jocks and dogmatic straight-edgers, it’s fine to take a year or two off to dabble in acid and not be stressed out all the time. Full story

Fuck Katrina

DJ Chicken Does Dallas

Hurricane Katrina was a total disaster and everything but for some of the people of New Orleans' projects, who are used to dodging bullets while slanging yay and shocking out to jittery 808 beats and O.T.T. synth-driven hip-hop, Katrina was nothing. Full story