Story
By Mike Rude
Russia
Summer 1998. Stavropol, Russia.
If you come to a live metal show anywhere in our hometown of Stavropol you couldn’t help wondering one thing: why nobody plays thrash metal?! – It seems like a progressive style, suitable to any age and any audience. A legendary band “Green Hell” was dead by then, and “Dentist” was the only living group in our town. There was one more gig called “Odium” but you can only describe their style like “Odium-metal”. So I couldn’t stop asking myself this question. I always imagined myself playing drums in a metal project. Thrash wouldn’t really apply to my existing gig “Exbitremal”. Sveta Skripal’ didn’t sound nearly as heavy as a thrash metal screamer should be. Stas (Sis) just sucked playing guitar and would never be able to pull it off. Koldun was practicing and was pretty much ready to try something faster and heavier. So the day had come. “Exbitremal” played their first and last show at School #23 with the new members: Koldun– guitar (now a big boss at FedEx), Rhytsar’ – guitar (now computer distributor), Roma Dmitrichenko – bass (our future sound engineer), and Seryoga Fomin (now a successful banker). We played a couple of our songs, a few Metallica covers and something from Guns ‘n Roses. That was fun…
At the same time a new band was born: “White Fear”. Vlad – lead guitar, Petrovich – guitar, Shved – drums. They were students of the Linguistics and Translation faculty at SSTU (Stavropol State Technical University). At first they were a faculty band that was playing at their university parties, but then they were using it as a cover to use school equipment and practice space for a metal project. Shved wasn’t much of a drummer and was holding them back, so he was replaced with Vadik (now Stavropols famous metal whore, I can’t even count how many bands he has been in) and they started gaining some recognition…
I knew Vlad from high school and we were hanging out once in a while. I was on my way to get some beer, and that’s when I saw Vlad and Petrovich sitting on the bench, talking about music. So we decided to discuss this sensitive subject with the presence of a refreshing beverage together. It turned out that Vlad and Petrovich were not very happy with what they are doing in White Fear. Vadik didn’t feel like playing some of the written material because he was more into hard-core and industrial metal, and the guys didn’t feel like playing what everybody expects to hear on metal “seishens” (concerts). They were more into thrash, speed, and death metal. After telling me all of this, they asked me straight up – Do you want to play drums for us? And I didn’t say no.
I would want to consider that the birthday of “Hell I Feel”. It was August 25, 1998. All of this talk was signed with a word – Cheers! And soon after, we had our first jam session. That was something! Vlad was the best metal guitar player in Stavropol then and the first practice was a pure orgasm. The name Hell I Feel came from one of the phrase dictionaries that Vlad was surfing at school. What a hell I feel, meaning both a terrible physical and psychological feeling at the same time. To us it sounded like waking up with a terrible hangover, realizing that you had drank so much to forget that someone you loved died a painful and long death. Happens every day…
After that we started looking for a bass player and a singer. “White Fear” slowly suffocated and was forgotten. Our first show took place at a venue called October Theatre. We were opening. Our first line up was Mike Rude –drums, Vlad – lead guitar, Petrovich – rhythm guitar, Roma Dmitrichenko – bass, and Vadik who we asked to sing for us two days before the show. The current singer Nasgul dumped the band (what in further events turned into a traditional curse of the band). It was pretty difficult to learn 6 songs within a day and of course he didn’t. He was singing, what we like to call, “fish”. It’s like when you come to a seishen and you hear the guy screaming – Fiiiish! Fish-fish-fish-fish feeeesh! We were rocking so hard and loud that Petrovich ripped the cable from Roma’s bass and no one even noticed it for two songs. The audience was blown away, the venue was torn apart and we were absolutely satisfied. After the show we all decided that we needed a permanent bass player and a vocalist. Unfortunately Roma didn’t want to be part of a metal project and Vadik had veered toward his own black metal gig, “Internal Frost”.
I thought: Why would the world need “Exbitremal”? The project didn’t really mean anything and “Hell I Feel” needed two more musicians. We gathered the beer assembly and Petrovich agreed to play bass, and we took Koldun as a guitar player since he at least had a good instrument and was actually gaining skills. “Exbitremal” was created as a school project under the supervision of Sasha Danilchenko, who was a lead singer for the already popular local band “Foggy Albion”. His drummer was Fima (Eugene Efimoff), he also was a good singer and talented songwriter. It only made sense to combine our efforts.
The idea of “Three Sisters” came to him in a drunken dream. He woke up in the middle of the night because he was getting “vertigo” and found a piece of hand-written paper on his desk next morning. The line up was set and the band started its victory march around stages and venues around the county and other regions. Endless shows and festivals attracted radio stations, newspapers and TV shows (unfortunately not national but local). Everything was perfect until Petrovich got tired of the non-profitable gig and decided to quit the band right before recording of our first album. “Foggy Albion” was invited to London to work and Fima left the band too. So, again, we were left without a bass player and a singer. There was no way we could back out of the studio contract. So, Vlad had to write and record all bass tracks, and asked his friend Mishgun Shatalov to lay down vocal tracks. Everything was recorded by Roma Dmitrichenko and Savva Skorikov from “Odium”. In 2002, Vlad decided to try luck overseas and took the CD to the U.S. Once Vlad was gone we found a new bass player Zheka Airian and continued rehearsals and concerts. Until we received a phone call from US…
America
Summer 2002. North Carolina, USA
A chain of islands on the Atlantic coast called the Outer Banks became the first base for “Hell I Feel” in the United States. Koldun and I joined Vlad and tried to adapt to the American lifestyle. This was not easy at all. Just like every other exchange student, we had to work two jobs. I was lucky enough to get a job at a veterinary hospital. I was a 4th year student of veterinary college when I left Russia. Vlad and Koldun were working at gas stations, restaurants and fast food joints. At the same time we were looking for a practice space. Our first couple of jam sessions took place at CR Nichols’s barn. Soon we rented a house with a garage and started to gather concert equipment. Mishgun joined us the next year as a bass player but unfortunately, not for long. He had too much stuff going on back in Stavropol to sacrifice to music. By that time we made some connections with local musicians and already had a reputation as bad-ass metal heads. We didn’t hide our addiction to metal and stood out from the beach crowd. But we had the same old problem: no bass player or singer.
One day CR called one of his friends and hooked us up with Alan Beaty. He turned out to be a pretty good musician. By that time we came across Small Fry who started screaming along. He was a person with great ambitions but no potential. We just couldn’t work with his attitude and soon Alan brought his friend Joeman into the band. With that line up, we played tons of shows all over North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland. In 2005 we were invited to headline the Chicago Metal Fest which was an absolute blast. We recorded a couple of demos, EP’s and made a home video DVD. We grew out of OBX venues and its crowd and were looking for bigger audiences and venues.
In September 2006 we moved to suburbs of Washington D.C. We thought the American capitol would have a lot to offer, but it we were wrong. There were a couple of clubs that welcomed metal bands, a few venues that would charge you to play there, and a few good metal bands around who barely had a following. It took us two years to realize that we made a very bad decision moving there. Something had to change and we needed a new location target. From day one Vlad wanted to move to California but the American half of the band disagreed and their perfect place to go was Florida. To Vlad and I, it seemed like another bad idea and we broke off. Koldun decided to stay in D.C. while Alan and Joeman moved to Florida. We hit the road to the west.
We wanted to be close to a major city but not in it and we’ve always loved the beach, so Santa Cruz seemed like a perfect place to be. Sunny California, the Pacific coast, San Francisco bay area – the cradle of metal music, life is perfect. It took us almost a year to adapt to the new environment and economy, and to get to know some people. Vlad took over vocals; we hired a great guitarist Steven Hawkins and got a new bass player Danil Sulimov. With this line up, we recorded a new EP “Between Death and Dying”. We are full of hopes and believe that this time we’ll reach success.
Many people ask us: – “Why are you doing this for 11 years already? and what’s the point?” The answer is plain and simple – Music is our craft, music is our faith, metal forever! We can’t imagine life without concerts, recordings and rehearsals. In our music we find a release from the negative energy that most people spill on their friends, family and random strangers. We are not far away from the time when we are going to gather stadiums. We are unstoppable and our spirit is unbreakable.
Santa Cruz, California
Spring 2010
Changes in the line-up: new bassist Josue Monroy replaced Danil Sulimov. Steve took over most of the vocals and officially became the front-man of the band. Hell I Feel is currently working on the new album which is expecting to be released this fall.