A Light-Hearted Chat with Siberian Funeral Band Station Dysthymia

To the über-generalized Western imagination, Mother Russia seems like a cold, unforgiving mistress. At best, we see it as an exotic, mercurial winter wonderland populated by wolves, displaced aristocrats, and Vladimir Putin’s naked torso, and at worst, a vodka-swilling KGB strongman with his nuclear-enabled Krokodil-crazed babushka shouting at you about potato prices. Mention Siberia and we’re immediately dreaming of howling Mongol hordes and gulag archipelagos. Sorry, people of Russia; we as a nation obviously watched too many James Bond movies when we were little. The recent developments in the Syrian crisis and Russia's attitude towards LGBT folk further complicate matters, and are far too serious to properly discuss within the (relatively) light-hearted confines of a doom metal interview.

There’s no denying that Russian’s outer limits can come across as just a tad unwelcoming, though. Given the area’s sterling reputation for soul-crushing poverty and maddening isolation, it makes sense that one of the country’s most interesting underground music scenes is anchored in the permafrost. Funeral doom is huge in Russia (inasmuch as something like funeral doom can be “huge”), and Siberia’s vast steppes offer a perfect refuge for bands like Station Dysthymia, whose lumbering, near-glacial doom riffs offer misery on tap. Based in Novosibirsk, they cheekily describe themselves as a “gravely song and funeral dance ensemble,” and have just released a thoroughly depressing new record, Overhead, Without Any Fuss, The Stars Were Going Out, on the Cash Money Records of Russian funeral doom, Solitude Productions.

With the opening strains of “A Concrete Wall” reverberating through our skull, I spoke with B, the band’s 24-year-old vocalist and bassist, about vodka, black metal Nazis, and life in the middle of fucking nowhere.

Noisey: Western folk have this tendency to romanticize Russia; it's all snow and wolves and Tolstoy and imperial gold and vodka. Obviously, we're not the smartest. What is Russia really like? What do you want people to know about your life as a Siberian doom dude?
Thanks for the question! First of all, I would like to let everyone know that although the weather gets really cold in Siberia during winter, most of the region has also pretty hot summers. Yeah, we’re that extreme. Second, by far the greatest danger of venturing into the wilderness in Siberia is not wild predators, but motherfucking mites. Those tiny assholes are encephalitis and Lyme disease carriers. They latch onto you from tall grass and crawl into whatever hot spots you have to bite into. Third, Russia is no longer socialist—it’s an ultra-capitalist, dog-eat-dog society now. Can you guys please stop with the comrade jokes already? Fourth, pass this one on to Hollywood—we don’t really mind you using us as the bad guys in scripts, but please, for the love of all that is holy, get some real Russian actors to dub the lines! As for Russian metal, I think the only time a Russian metalhead was featured in any Western media was in the first Clerks movie, so there are no myths to debunk yet.

So what is Novosibirsk, the so-called "Capital of Siberia," like? Is it as bleak as one might expect, or are we missing out?Novosibirsk is an industrial city. Amongst other cities past the Ural Mountains, it was a destination for the evacuation of people and production during WW2, which cemented its status as an industrial hub. Most parts of town are pretty ugly—gray box-like buildings, lots of noise, yearly assault of snow and mud… It’s not all bad, though. And there is also Akademgorodok which hosts the Novosibirsk State University, as well as a vast array of affiliated research facilities and now also IT companies—a Silicon Taiga, if you will. It’s from that campus town that Station Dysthymia hails from.

Unlike everyone else in Station Dysthymia, I didn’t actually grow up in Novosibirsk. I was born in Moscow, and after a while, my family moved to Germany and then to Mexico. I still absorbed a lot of my native culture while growing up—we always spoke Russian at home and we had a huge collection of Russian literature and films. I returned to finish high school in Russia. Pursuit of higher education made me move to Moscow and then Novosibirsk, where I’m living for seven years now. Incidentally, my family’s history is very tied to Akademgorodok—looks like it is the wampeter of a karass I’m part of that I do not fully comprehend.

It's easy to assume that it's a bleak place to live, especially since Station Dysthymia's music is so fucking miserable. Is there a big drinking or drug problem out there? Your music sounds like it could inspire some serious boozing alone late at night.
Russia is the world’s top heroin consumer, and Siberia is one of the most common destinations for drug traffic stemming from Afghanistan. It’s not as common in Novosibirsk; we don’t look that bad compared to other Siberian cities, like, say, Novokuznetsk. Apart from that, cannabis is quite popular, like almost anywhere these days. Cough syrup has its share of fans, due to the accessibility. So yes, we have drug problems, but it’s not hordes of junkies roaming the streets and mugging people for a fix. Unless it’s Zatulinka, of course. If you’re ever in Novosibirsk, just… don’t go there.

As for alcohol… The stereotypes are true to some degree; Russians—and Siberians, particularly—drink a lot. There is a Russian joke that goes: “In good times, we drink out of joy. In bad times, we drink out of sorrow. But usually, we drink out of boredom.” It’s hard for me to gauge what you would call an alcohol problem, but when I lived in a bad neighborhood, I had a couple of neighbors who could go on a drinking bout for a week or two. I assume this would be considered pretty serious in the US, but over here it’s relatively common; everyone has a friend, cousin, or uncle who does that.

We did take some inspiration from alcohol-induced states on our 2009 recording. Imagine, for instance, walking back to your apartment drunk at three in the morning in a snowfall through the town’s empty streets. The blinking streetlights, your hands freezing, the crunch of your footsteps in the snow, the delirious train of thoughts going through your head… Yeah, I would say it represents the mood. We did base our new album’s sound in part on what we did on the debut, but alcohol is not a direct inspiration. Although, I get where you’re coming from—I wouldn’t call the soundscape we created "pretty," by any definition.

With an album title like Overhead, Without Any Fuss, The Stars Were Going Out, you must be a sci-fi fan, or at least, pretty into Arthur C. Clarke. What about this story resonated with you deeply enough to use it for the album?
I’ve always been a fan of eschatological themes in art. I’m an atheist, yet I find the Book of Revelation to be morbidly beautiful. It just so turns out that I am also into sci-fi, so I notice these themes while reading. The Nine Billion Names of God evidently has religious and apocalyptic motives. There are several concepts in it that are tangentially related to the album’s concept, but the plot hasn’t much to do with the message we are delivering. We do use a similar figurative language—that last wham line, “Overhead without any fuss, the stars were going out,” expresses perfectly how we no longer care about reaching for the sky and settled for rotting in our own ontological cradle. It also hints towards the source of inspiration and sets the mood, especially in conjunction with the album art that The Secret Door made for us. I’ve had a heated discussion on this subject with our drummer, O, who insisted I was insane and no one would ever “crack the code.” I was so very glad to prove him wrong—it is deeply satisfying to see people figuring it out.

How isolated do you feel from the rest of the world? The Internet is, of course, a great equalizer and connector, but, dude—you live in fucking Siberia. How much would you say your environment has affected your music? If you lived in Brooklyn or Barcelona, do you think you'd be playing crust punk or polka or something?
Novosibirsk not so much as other towns, due to the academic and economic importance of the city. It’s not uncommon to meet people from other regions and countries. Geographical location still plays a major role—other cities are a lot more self-contained.

As for extreme metal, it’s a paradoxical effect; since we’re equally isolated in that regard from the rest of Russia and other countries, we’re just as likely to draw inspiration from any of their scenes, this influences the way we write music. But you can’t really fight the genius loci; your surroundings will always affect what you do.

I’m not sure I would even be playing music if I were anywhere else. Station Dysthymia was the reason I picked up the bass in the first place—I was the vocalist, the only one with my hands free. It was a coincidence that four like-minded people with interest in funeral doom and no propensity for drama happened to be at the same place at the same time.

Metal in Siberia does not have too much history, unlike punk. The only thing that resembles a doom scene are Siberian sludge bands like Fire to Fields, Dirtpill, and Relic Point. There are a couple of funeral doom bands in the region—besides us, it’s The Extinct Dreams and Funeral Tears, all from different cities. I recently stumbled upon a promising funeral/drone hybrid, Below the Sun from Krasnoyars—waiting for their full-length now. Anyway, there’s no contact, we are more in touch with the Moscow scene. That, combined with absence of local interest for doom, makes gig opportunities scarce.

At least from what I've read and observed in my own Russian friends, the Russian character is deeply emotional, and also pretty morbid. Funeral doom seems like such an obvious choice that it's almost a cliché—a band from what many people would consider the ends of the Earth is producing this equally desolate, hopeless, dark music. Do you think that there is any correlation between this style of music and the Russian personality?
Definitely. Russia has a long history of defending itself from invaders, be it Mongolians, Poles or Germans. That, combined with authoritarian government and our cultural disrespect for authority, creates a whole culture of untrusting, hostile and morbid people. You’ve visited Russia; you might have noticed, that people don’t tend to smile a lot or even just be polite when engaging with strangers. People even get hostile when you treat them otherwise—unfounded niceness is subconsciously perceived as an attempt to fuck you over. Overall, we’re prone to reflect on negativity, which meshes well with funeral doom.

On the good side, we tend to be passionate and direct; you’ll know what a Russian thinks about you, certainly helps in work and personal relationships. Paradoxically, we tend to form very tight-knit groups when united over the same purpose, as we really bond over shared experience.

We seem to respect all of the above qualities in people from other cultures. For a doom example, Who Dies in Siberian Slush featured a song about Marvin Heemeyer on their latest album. Why would a band so conceptually focused on the Russian Spirit write a song about an American welder? Simple: what he did was very Russian.

What do you know about the origins of the scene? When did people really start becoming interested in funeral (or death/doom) and who are some of the most popular bands?
Death/doom was popular in Russia, but many of the bands were pretty derivative, mostly My Dying Bride clones, not much to talk about. Fortunately, we now have bands like Who Dies in Siberian Slush and Revelation of Rains to break the tendency. Wine From Tears, although not my cup of tea, are having huge success with their new album. What really is booming right now is the sludge and stoner scene. Lots of bands: Without God, Lord of Doubts, Kamni, Magnetic Tar Trap, Clarence Boddicker, Evoke Thy Lord, to mention a few. Our drummer O, now residing in Moscow, plays in Predicted, who are in the middle of recording an album.

Now funeral doom… What did trigger a wave of interest was Comatose Vigil, the most prominent and now-defunct Russian funeral doom band. Personally, I always preferred Abstract Spirit, who are tightly related to them. We recorded our latest album at Primordial Studio that is run by two of their members, working with and talking to them in-person made me respect their music even more. If you allow me to broaden the margins and include bands from other post-Soviet states, I would like to mention Ennui, Ego Depths, and Reido, all with their own original and recognizable take on the genre.

What are your thoughts on the larger Russian metal scene? What's popular? I saw a lot of thrash t-shirts and dodgy black metal patches when I was there last.
Whatever you had, we have it too, with a couple of years’ lag, which is fortunately decreasing. What really is a problem is lack of proper recording. There are few studios at which metal bands can record properly on the budgets they have. In general, there’s a lot of mediocre and derivative metal bands in Russia. There’s a huge deathcore and metalcore following, but purer breeds of metal are also represented. Anything sounding like bombastic mainstream metal is pretty popular. Same thing goes for whiny gothic doom and sympho black metal. On the extreme side, since the beginning of the 90s, there’s a steady stream of death and grind bands of different quality. NSBM, folk black, and just folk metal have a die-hard fan base, united not only by music, but also by aesthetics and ideology. As far as I know many of them are also pretty popular abroad. I guess the next big thing is going to be stoner and sludge. Wouldn’t mind getting some of that occult hard rock revival you’re having, though.

There’s a lot of fascist/NS/white power sentiment filtering through Russia's black metal scene; does that influence seep into doom metal at all, or do those kinds of people stick to black metal? How liberal are the majority of Russian metalheads?
NS views seem to be relatively popular amongst the black and folk metal crowd, but that does not seep into doom metal. Most Russian metalheads are apolitical, which is good and bad at the same time. Good, because ideology does not interfere with the music. Bad, because political apathy is not something to be proud about. I would like to point out that Station Dysthymia is apolitical, but I’m personally not. The Nazis puzzle me, but so does the Antifa movement “fighting” them for all the wrong reasons. They’re both hate groups with no constructive ideology. It’s good to be conscious and proud of your national and ethnic heritage; it’s pathetic to not have anything else to be proud about, and downright foolish to hate people for not sharing your cultural context.

How do your families and friends react to your band? Are they supportive?
I grew up on what my dad listened to – blues, jazz, art-rock, ethnic music. I got into metal when I was 15 years old, when I was no longer living with my parents, so they missed the moment I started spinning metal records. They weren’t too receptive at first and they’re still worried about the intrinsic morbidity of extreme metal, but my dad was delighted by our new album’s concept.

As for friends and acquaintances, attitudes range from approval and interest to apathy and derision. I think that goes for all the band members. Fortunately, we have a limited supply of shits to give about uneducated opinions and have a strong tradition of not taking ourselves too seriously. It certainly helps with not getting your head stuck up your own ass and not to be affected by opinions of people with no context.

What's coming up for Station Dysthymia this year?
For now we’re taking a break, writing new stuff separately. We’re planning to resume rehearsals in 2014, so we can polish and extend what we came up with. I would certainly be glad to participate in gigs during that period, but I highly doubt any promoter would pay for plane tickets out of Siberia. For now, at least.

The last words are yours. Spasibo! Give my regards to the lions at the Novosibirsk zoo.
I sure will next time I’m there! Thank you for the interview! I would like to use this space to give a heads-up to the doom fans reading this on the upcoming albums of Ennui and Ego Depths—they’re fucking mind-blowing, keep an eye out for news on release dates!

@grimkim