Gospel of the damned – Newspaper Kommersant No. 211 (7412) dated 11/15/2022

Ten new songs of one of the most popular Russian rock bands came out under the cover with the name “Hallelujah”. Tells Boris Barabanov.

Shortly before the album “Bi-2” “Hallelujah”, a collection of songs by various artists was released, dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the film “Brother” by Alexei Balabanov, and the best track on this tribute was a reworking of the song “Bi-2” “No one writes to the Colonel”, made by Shortparis group. So talented over “Bi-2”, it seems, has not yet been mocked, and this cover was noted by everyone who wrote about the tribute in the media and in social networks. But you can mock so talentedly only at a thing that is talented and recognizable in itself. There is not a single concert where “Bi-2” would not perform “No one writes to the Colonel”, and there was once a risk that the rest of the band’s catalog would be in the shadow of this song. Fortunately, this did not happen.

“Hallelujah” is the 11th studio album of “B-2”, and the previous ten definitely cannot be called one long song. And this record documented the period in the band’s biography, when the musicians turned from observers, talentedly portraying the era, sitting on the rock and roll Olympus, into victims of the new time, a real banned group.

The first single “Inferno” was released at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and was full of disturbing forebodings. While the listeners were trying to adapt to the realities of the new time, “B-2”, as if having risen a step higher, evaluated not only the details, but the whole bleak picture: “Greedy power is a natural disaster”, “Rock and roll pulls with a stench” and most importantly – “There will be no other road.” Another new song, “God of the Damned”, said that “the search for truth has been trampled into the mud and communication between loved ones has been severed.” Then it seemed that all this was probably still about a pandemic and a general metaphysical lockdown. In the songs from the future album, “Bi-2” broadcast anxiety and impotence, and eventually came to the prophetic anthem “I don’t trust anyone”, whose hero lives in the middle of a burning world without alternate airfields.

The song “Lullaby”, dedicated to the memory of Alena Meshkova, director of the Konstantin Khabensky Foundation, came out in a new period, when, against the backdrop of growing geopolitical upheavals, the musicians refused to perform in Omsk under the banner “For the President” and were among the “cancelled”. The entire Russian tour was called into question, the group was excluded from the list of participants in the cultural program of the St. Petersburg Economic Forum, the performance of Bi-2 at the Zenit-Spartak football match caused discontent both in fan and political circles. Meanwhile, in the clip “Lullaby” Leva Bi-2 cut bald one by one teenagers with a doomed look. There were still three months before partial mobilization.

The album “Hallelujah” was released at a time when the group is playing new songs on a tour of the cities of Central Asia, ahead of Cyprus, Israel, Dubai. Now a familiar route for a group that has become a victim of cancel culture in their own country. But for the group it is important that the album was made in Russia, and there is no talk of her “departure”.

The album “Hallelujah” begins with the song “Lullaby”, in which, it seems, there is nothing but fear and pain: “This holiday turned into a disaster, everything that happened was divided into before and after” and further – “The animal world is initially cruel, but it is not the animals who pull the trigger, but the people.” However, “Hallelujah” is not the kind of album, acquaintance with which can be limited to reading texts. This is the quintessence of the Bi-2 corporate style, melodic guitar-synthesizer rock with elements of post-punk, gothic, industrial and gospel. And in these ten tracks, along with ringing sorrow and fear of the unknown, there was a place for the musicians’ desire to remain faithful to their ideals. Throughout the album, they constantly return to the idea that the main battle takes place in each individual person: “… the main battle takes place inside” (“Inferno”), “… I have no roots, and in any weather I internally free ”(“ I don’t trust anyone ”),“ It’s hard work to control the soul ”(“ Trolleybus ”),“ Do what you have to do, boldly, because you believe ”(“ Hallelujah ”).

Neither rock music nor any other art saved anyone from disaster, and the prophetic hymns of B-2 did not help either the world or themselves. But there are songs on the album that are quite suitable for the role of an effective antidepressant, a four-minute refuge from everything that is told in the others. This is the familiar to the listeners “Depression”, and the encouraging “Hallelujah”, and the epic “Personal Space”, which closes the album.

This song is followed by five more bonus tracks, which are the band’s experiments with guest musicians and with their own back catalogue. Music lovers will be interested to hear, for example, how the bass of jazzman Anton Davidyants, the guitar of Yuri Kasparyan from the Kino group, the vocals of Tatiana Tkachuk (My Michel) and the piano of prog rocker Gleb Kolyadin coexist in the track “Light Falls”.

But the main thing is the story arc of the hero of the ten main songs, going from fear and impotence to a reassessment of his own role in the world and, in general, to the light. “Hallelujah” is in every sense the heaviest album of “B-2”, but it is also the most melodic and solid. As in the days of “The Colonel” and the film “Brother-2”, “B-2” found the right chords for their time. Only now it is unlikely that anyone will want to parody these songs even after a quarter of a century.