Melnitsa

For the animation studio, see Melnitsa Animation Studio.
Мельница
Melnitsa

Natalia O'Shea
Background information
Origin Moscow
Genres Folk rock
Years active 1999–present
Labels Navigator Records
Website melnitsa.net
Members Natalia "Hellawes" O'Shea
Sergey Zaslavsky
Alexey Orlov
Alexey Kozhanov
Dmitry Frolov
Sergey Vishnyakov
Past members Alevtina Leontyeva
Alexander "Grendel" Stepanov
Natalia Filatova
Natalia Kotlova
Evgeny Chesalov
Alexander Leer
Inessa Klubochkina

Melnitsa (Мельница, Russian for windmill) is a Russian folk rock band. It was founded in 1999 by Natalia "Hellawes" O'Shea and Alexey "Chus" Sapkov around the remnants of a local folk band 'Till Eulenspiegel'.

Style

The band fuses Russian, Irish and other North European folk influences with guitar pop/rock. Natalia "Hellawes" O'Shea, the lead singer and primary songwriter, is an academic and a specialist in medieval European languages and cultures by day. Her expertise lends the typically complex fantasy-laden lyrics a degree of authenticity.

History

For the first several years the band had worked the club and festival circuit, earned a bona fide cult status in the folk-n-fantasy teenage sub-culture and released an acoustic album Doroga Sna (Дорога Сна, The Road of Dream) featuring the underground hit Gorets (Горец, Highlander) set to the Russian translation of Robert Burns' Highland Harry Back Again.

Luck struck in 2005, when the lead single Nochnaya Kobyla (Ночная Кобыла, Night mare) off their second, more pop-infused album Pereval (Перевал, Mountain Pass) had been sneaked into rotation on Nashe Radio (the name and lyrics of the song are a complex allusion to Mara, a Norse mythical entity that caused nightmares). A grass-roots chart effort by fans propelled the song to No. 1 position in the "Best Of Year" chart, and the band to the small arena circuit (sparsely populated in Russia).

Their latest albums Zov Krovi (Зов Крови, Call of Blood) and Dikiye Travy (Дикие Травы, Wild Grasses, released early 2009) features the same lyrical and melody themes underscored by more rhythm section support from the band.

Discography

Original title Transliterated Title Translation Year of release
Дорога Сна Doroga Sna The Road of Dream 2003
Master of the Mill (EP) Master of the Mill (EP) Master of the Mill (EP) 2004
Перевал Pereval Mountain Pass 2005
Зов Крови Zov Krovi Call of the Blood 2006
Дикие Травы Dikiye Travy Wild Grasses/Herbs 2009
Рождественские песни Rozhdestvenskie pesni Christmas Songs 2011
Ангелофрения Angelofreniya Angelophrenia[1] 2012

There was also a compilation album, "The Best," in 2007.

Lineup

Former members include:

External links

References

  1. ↑ A portmanteau word referring to obsession with angels and angel motifs