Great read. Patiently waiting for SSUS' comment.

Pieces like this are among the many reasons why I'm proud to be working on Metal Storm alongside you. I wasn't aware of any of this, despite it being such an important story to be told. This is the kind of courage that people fighting imaginary wars against cancel culture and so called "wokeness" cosplay. It's easy to have principles when there's nothing at stake, and it is encouraging to see people stick to their values and not yield, even in the face of harsh adversity. As it is encouraging to know there are thoughtful people out there who know how to appreciate the complexity of a situation without rushing to conclusions.

I had no information about the band and the singer herself. Thank you for bringing this to my attention, and for taking a stand yourself.

Great stuff

Great writing, thanks a lot Ivor! It's always good to read thoughtful stuff like this

Great article. I appreciate the what you notice; the nuances and different aspects within that act of noticing; and that you are able to express your impressions.

I'd read your other articles on Ecosystemic Alternative Culture Festival and Battling Nostalgia. Different topics, but they stuck in my mind for the same reasons.

Thank you for sharing this one.

Thank you for writing this.  Not just the dedication (which I appreciate, as Metal Storm's resident Slot/Daria follower for the last 16 years), but all the sentiments preceding it.  As poring dark said, it is always interesting to see how apparently random details prompt you to make deeper observations, and this one has an aspect of particular significance to me. I'm glad you went to the show so I could get a taste of it from afar.

My relationship with Slot over the last few years has been uneasy.  It had cooled a little bit anyway since Инстинкт Выживания, which was the first new album of theirs I didn't immediately love, and then when the war started I was hesitant about how prudent it would be to continue supporting them, depending on how or whether they would approach the situation.  I had forgotten it until reading this, but I also remember that nonspecific pro-peace message that appeared on their Facebook page, and I even remember noticing at some point that it had mysteriously gone missing.  At the time I found it so vague as to be annoyingly noncommittal - the onus to end the violence is very clearly on a particular one of the two sides in this war, and if you're going to say nothing even after opening your mouth, you might as well keep it closed. I concluded that it could only be dangerous for them to be more explicit and I couldn't ask more, but it still rankled me.

Then it was quite a shock when Nuki left the band; the parties weren't going out of their way to talk about it to their Russophone audience, so there was certainly little public information coming to the Anglosphere. I was aware of the blacklisting and saw all the show cancellations in real time, and pretty quickly there was activity on the grapevine so I had some idea that there was a political angle to the split. Eventually I gained this fuzzy account that Slot had agreed to play nice with the government and Nuki evidently didn't want to so they went their separate ways, but it wasn't until you and I had that conversation a few weeks ago and you pointed me to that interview that the picture came into focus.

Now I understand much better just what was involved in this process - how much they pressured Nuki to conceal her views and then sign them away altogether, how far Slot have gone to rehabilitate themselves for the government. It was a much more antagonistic process and required a much greater sacrifice than I had imagined, evidenced very well by your observations at the show. The admiration and respect I already had for Nuki as an incredible artist are now compounded by the strength that she demonstrated in acting according to her convictions, standing up not only to powerful forces beyond her control but to the bandmates with whom she had shared a stage for almost her entire adult life. In that interview, she said something like, "I believe that freedom means being able to say no". For her own freedom to speak out against the war and against the government, she walked away from 18 years of hard work to start all over again. That to me is something heroic.

For all this time I've had these same questions that you raise: what am I to think of Slot now? What would I do if I were in the band's situation? Can I really say with confidence that I would throw away my life's work for an easily snuffed breath of dissent? I don't believe I would. I think I would choose the path of least resistance and I would successfully rationalize it to myself. Given that, who am I to say how the rest of the band should be judged for keeping themselves safe under a regime that freely disposes of problematic figures? It is easy for me to say what the correct decision is when I don't have to face it myself.

These questions may not be answered yet, or even answerable, but whenever I begin to wonder, it all starts to melt away before the example Nuki has set. What of their quandaries, when she has demonstrated what it looks like when you don't compromise yourself for something unjust? There is an alternative. You can walk away. Here is someone whose decision I don't have to rationalize, someone whose code is not an empty sentiment but principles that define her life. For that I'll pay 50 bucks for a CD.

Meanwhile, Slot has continued with Daria Ravdina, and I still haven't brought myself to listen to their new album, which is something that should be unthinkable. I'm sure that I will eventually. I don't know how my relationship with them will continue evolving. I actually love Ravdina's voice, enough that I wish I could have had her just fronting a different band with this new material, under different circumstances. I don't necessarily wish for them to fail. But even two years ago, when they released their first single with Ravdina, long before I had such a clear idea of what had happened, something about it struck me in a false way. They called their first single post-Nuki "С.М.Г.О.": "Slot Must Go On". I've listened to that song many times now and I have to admit that I love it, but when it was released, my first thought was, "...must it?" Is it so imperative that the band continue? Is there nothing else that should be considered? What price integrity? What price justice? Even as I've been unable to get it out of my head for the last two years, it seems so self-serving; all the more so now that I have so many more details about what transpired behind the scenes. Whether or not Slot's political image can ever be repaired, whether or not they can be forgiven for taking the route of self-preservation, I find it most difficult to overlook how poorly they treated their own friend when they were up against the wall. Nuki's obstinance was just an obstacle they had to bulldoze in order to keep going. They belittled her beliefs, her art, her will, and her worth as one of them, and whatever it might say about them as people to have stepped in line and followed government orders, to me it says something deeper that they would trample their own comrade to do it. I hate this in a band that I have done so much to support, that has been so central to me for half of my life, that for a long time was my favorite and maybe still is.

There's a project called Forces United that's sort of a large-scale collaboration between members of the Russian and adjacent metal scenes; it was co-founded by Kirill Nemolyaev, who among other things was Slot's producer for most of their career, and many of the releases featured Nuki, Cache, and ID. My favorite song of theirs is the opener on IV, a song called "Stand Together". And while the lead vocals are Alexander Kontuzov-Vantula and I don't think that's one of the tracks to feature ID (Oleg Izotov is clearly the guitarist there), Nuki performs fantastic backing vocals on it, and the chorus is this: "We'll stand together / Once and forever / Against the grain and against it all / We'll stand together / We'll stand forever for us all / To rise against the world". I keep thinking about that and how after all was said and done Nuki was the only one standing by those words she sang.

(Well, that's not entirely fair - the drummer on that song, Alexander Karpukhin, is actually the drummer in Nuki's band. I guess he was listening, too.)

One genuinely nice thing that's come out of this, just for me, is that in the aftermath of our discussion I went back through all my Slot CDs and read some of the liner notes for the first time in ages (or ever, in some cases), and I learned that my impression of the creative balance of the band was way off. Somehow I'd gotten the impression that Nuki wrote infrequently and that was primarily lyrics, and it was all ID and Cache otherwise. In reality she was co-writing music and lyrics for multiple songs on every album from the moment she joined the band, including a lot of their best. Not only that, but she's credited as the sole producer for 200 кВт - and some of those lyrics, holy shit. She practically explained right there exactly what she was going to do. I should have paid closer attention. And I guess they should have, too.

I'm glad you brought up the incident where she was stabbed, because that, too, reminded me of Nuki's character. The nightmare it must have been, to have been singled out by a madman and stabbed right there in public, and in the neck, no less. It was a terrible shock to read, to say the least. But the next year, they declared her recovery by coming out with the Бой! EP, which felt like her saying, "Here's my fight song, again and again and again". And then it was only the next year that she went on The Voice and dominated it. This whole situation feels like her doing the same thing again. That's the character of someone to be admired.

Well, I apologize for the wall of text. This situation has given me a lot to think about; it is complex and nuanced and I will continue wondering about all the questions you posed probably forever. But as I said to you a few weeks ago, if there is one person I would want to come out of this with my respect, it's Nuki, and she has. Thank you for facilitating that.

Something I've been thinking about lately. Like, for some reason, from the Nazi period, we're not really remembering many "decent Germans" - meaning those we would collectively consider decent today - unless Nazis killed them. Like Sophie Scholl. Oskar Schindler is not really remembered as a German, it feels, he is remembered as Oskar Schindler. Is it really so necessary to die to be considered worthy of living - in the eyes of the rest of the world? Like, there's no amount of anything else I could do to make up for what "my country" (which isn't even mine, I got there by accident and it nearly killed me before I could walk) is doing to others. In the others' eyes, I must make sacrifices. And I did, and I'm not asking for a medal, it was the right thing to do. But it's not enough. I must make more. And even if I will, everyone will forget about it and move on, because it won't be enough anyway. So what options do I have. To try to make the world a bit of a better place, and to try to not make it too much worse of a place. On my level, the ways I can. That's all there is. And just live with the fact I'll always be hated, always met with suspicion and prejudice. It will never go away. And it is warranted, and needed, too, because most of my happen-to-be-compatriots, as of now, genuinely deserve it. This is just the sad truth. This society is torn so far away from what we'd consider shared humanity and shared human values. The world went so far ahead, especially in recent decades, but this society stayed uneducated, pressurized, and now it doesn't want to catch up and learn anything - more than ever. It's been deliberately reduced into this thing, and it will take decades to unwind even that. The decades that the rest of the world will spend speeding further ahead, with different speeds, but still. For individuals, there are no good answers, there are no good options, those who are capable of thinking and weighing options only complicate their own lives by doing so. Just to be a bit more at peace with themselves. I haven't followed Slot or Nuki, was never interested in the local alternative scene, and I'm surprised to discover that it's been having any audience abroad, more so - so far across the world. But if you feel like this or that artist is worthy of support because of their stance, please do support them. This might mean the world to them, and be a catalyst for something better. But be very careful and very deliberate about who it is and what they really stand for. Demand more if you're not seeing enough. And also, please don't support them financially if these proceedings go back to Russia. We all know where this money ends up being these days. Instead, if it's possible to motivate them to keep this money outside of Russia, maybe it will be easier for them to consider, eventually, moving out. And - thank you. Truly. Just for asking these questions.

Thanks for the great review. Had absolutely no idea of this - I didn't even know of SLoT before this. However, Appreciate your deep analogy of the whole thing.

I don't think seeing such prices at the merch table would trigger all of these questions like it did for you. Although, I gotta admit, I have been noticing higher prices at gigs lately, which I attributed to the rising costs of touring post-Covid.