An alternative to alternative rock
Published 13 October, 2008, 13:33
Russian punk band Lumen have triumphed at the Rock Alternative Music awards by winning the prize for best group for the second year in a row. The fourth year of the event was headlined by Sweden’s In Flames and hailed for its strong line-up of top bands.
Sunday’s ceremony, held at Moscow club B1 Maximum, featured a fresh set of Nu-Metal and other alternative rock forms.
Each group's task was to prepare an original programme complete with a new set of songs.
As well as Lumen it included groups Agatha Christie, Noize MC, Sakura, Sun Say and English psychedelic sensations, the Klaxons.
While Lumen took the main prize, among other winners were Slot, who took hit of the year for 'They killed Kenny'.
Zemfira won gongs for album and concert of the year and fellow Russian group, Blanche, took underground act of the year.
The idea for the awards came from Slot’s Ilya Uglava in 2004.
He first presented his proposal to Russian channel Neo-TV in 2004. They quickly accepted and in October of that year, the first ceremony was scheduled to take place.
However, due to personnel changes, the event didn’t get off the ground and Uglava, along with fellow producer Andrey Milichenko, was forced to look elsewhere.
In 2005 the project was offered to MTV Russia, but they turned it down.
But in the spring of 2005, the old team from NEO-TV formed the country’s first alternative music channel, A-One, who decided to host the annual awards.
The first event took place that September, and the organisers managed to secure the famous Nu-metal rock band, Korn, to headline it.
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