Bass Cover #117: AUGUST - Metal

You may have never heard of the band called August (Август in Russian) but these guys will always have a place in my heart. For reason. Excuse me for a long read, you can skip it :)

First, their album “Demon” (Демон) released in 1987 was one of the first metal albums I've heard in my life and while being not experienced in metal music at all back then I was pretty stunned. Like wow it was an entirely different musical universe for me :) Just remember it was the beginning of the end for the USSR and the officially released rock and metal albums were just starting to appear on the market. No surprise people were buying them all like crazy! We were f***ing hungry for rock like probably no one else on the face of this planet. Like we were seeing some hairy guys on the cover wearing leather – we were buying it on the spot! Music could be total shit, of course, but we still appreciated what we had... Anyway, August wasn't a bad band. Heavily influenced by Deep Purple and some AOR bands from the West – of course, but not bad at all.

And secondly, August was my very first metal show! It was 1988 I guess and the band came to my town. I was 12 years old, not old enough to attend it alone, so my mom bought tickets for us both and made it happen for me! Sweet memories! I was never the same again.

So... “Metal” is a basic rock song from the second August LP called “Ответный удар” (“The Strike Back”). Cool track with really dumb lyrics about possible world war, like the USSR being surrounded by enemies who want to start the nuclear war while the Soviet country is too relaxed about it for no good reasons, blah-blah-blah (all Soviet rock and metal bands were OBSESSED with the topic of nuclear war in the 80s). The “metal” mentioned in the song is not the music style but what the Western evil guys make weapons from (like the USSR didn't do the same, aha). A real “strike back”... to Ronald Reagan and his administration? Meh, who cares. Still, the song was kinda cool and I just wanted to cover it come hell or high water. The job is hard (or should I say hardly needed by anyone?) but someone's gotta do it :)