A few interesting facts about the Russian area/province known as Chelyabinsk Oblast:
*The region, located in the southern Ural Mountains, has been home to top-secret nuclear research since the ‘40s. There was a serious nuclear accident northwest of Chelyabinsk City in 1957 which led to evacuations, fatalities and the province being closed to all foreigners for 25 years.
*A 1994 documentary by Polish-American director Sławomir Grünberg titled Chelyabinsk: The Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet chronicled the region’s environmental history as well as more recent unsafe dumping of radioactive waste in local rivers and lakes. Russians are probably still pissed about foreigners being allowed in the area.
*In February 2013, a 10,000 tonne meteoroid passed over the southern Urals and exploded in a meteor air burst over the area. Fifteen hundred people were reported injured and 3000 buildings in six cities across the region were damaged by the explosion and impact.
*Chelyabinsk Oblast is home to more than 3700 lakes covering an area over 820 square miles. That Chelyabinsk City’s basketball team is called BC Chelbasket Chelyabinsk and not the Lakers is a serious injustice.
I don’t purport to know what life is like in Russia these days. I especially don’t know what life is like in Russia for a death metal band, but against what are likely some hearty odds Chelyabinsk quartet Insect Inside are set to release their second album, Reborn in Blight, tomorrow courtesy of Gore House Productions, a label based in Los Angeles, a city with far fewer than 3700 lakes whose local hoops team is nicknamed the Lakers. If you like your death metal rough, tough and inspirational enough to make you want to go out and punch cops, and you’re a fan of Devourment, Internal Bleeding, Cryptopsy, Stabbing and Defeated Sanity (whose Josh Welshman makes a guest appearance) why not take the below stream of the album for a whirl? When asked about their latest work, the band replied: “We hope that we will be able to please our music fans with this new album. We managed to create a symbiosis of groove-based slamming and dark brutal death metal. The lyrics are about the domination of the insectoid race.”
