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DR. DOOLITLE - they had some really heavy and epic doom tunes, and some equally poppy and cheesy "hit" songs mixed in between

MAX WEBSTER comes to mind... they were kinda quirky & new wavy with a slight metallic rock edge. I love them!
Even though considered 'progressive', I guess some of that early FISH-fronted MARILLION were a bit like that as well, especially with songs like Assassing etc...??

Worth to mention that Talking Heads in 'Afraid of Music' do a song called 'The Overload' with a heavy -I'd guess- Eno influence that is more doom than Charon himself. Not metal, of course, but it hits the same emotional point as much superficially heavier music than it.

I've always had a strange fascination with "disco metal" as I call it. Unfortunately the hard rock/metal influences are usually far too subtle. I would prefer it the other way around, as with songs like Accept's "Save Us" or Demon's "Into the Nightmare".

Listening to Lombard right now, and I'm actually quite enjoying it. If you like this, then you definitely need to check out Stutz. They are even further removed from metal, but at least the track "I'm Gone" is worth checking out.

CANIS MAJOR "Freeway Rock" 7''EP I think fints in this category.This band have quite Heavy guitars for 1980 year.But also lot's of strange keyboards involved as well as some efects,punk influences.Plus female vocals.

Just played the KRUIZ-song "Ne Padaj Dichom" (schmelling..) from the "Rok-Panorama '86 pt.2" compilation. Pretty dead-on what I was hinting at with this thread, and a killer song at that. I also remembered another great example: Swedish crossover-act SLAM's "Tragedies" single, which I'm now gonna upload in the "Swedish Steel.." thread for interested parties.

All the Russian metal came from poppy bands. for example - Kruiz, before the self titled metal LP (as Trio Kruiz actually) were a crappy pop rock band. Avgust were totally poppy before their LP's, I think they existed from about 1982.
All the guys in Aria cam from pop bands, can't recall their names now, I think one was Volshebniye Sumerki ...
Oblachniy Kray (Cloudy Land) were actually not intended as a Heavy Rock or Metal band. It's a heavier, punkier version of music called Russian Rock.

The poppy bands all these metal guys came from were referred to as VIA (Vocal-Instrumental Orchestra) and were part of the Estrada (harmless mainstream music scene). Don't forget Heavy music was forbidden in the USSR since it was immoral, too Western, and corrupted the youth. Even the Beatles were banned there, although high ranking government officials were huge Beatles fans and had all their LP's.

boris wrote:All the Russian metal came from poppy bands. for example - Kruiz, before the self titled metal LP (as Trio Kruiz actually) were a crappy pop rock band. Avgust were totally poppy before their LP's, I think they existed from about 1982.
All the guys in Aria cam from pop bands, can't recall their names now, I think one was Volshebniye Sumerki ...
Oblachniy Kray (Cloudy Land) were actually not intended as a Heavy Rock or Metal band. It's a heavier, punkier version of music called Russian Rock.

The poppy bands all these metal guys came from were referred to as VIA (Vocal-Instrumental Orchestra) and were part of the Estrada (harmless mainstream music scene). Don't forget Heavy music was forbidden in the USSR since it was immoral, too Western, and corrupted the youth. Even the Beatles were banned there, although high ranking government officials were huge Beatles fans and had all their LP's.

Cheers for the input. Yeah, I'm familiar with the history of these bands. Still, as eclectic and all-over-the-place as O.K. where, I'm sometimes tempted to dub them the first Heavy(ish) band from Russia (possibly in competition w/ "99%")

Well, OK is not considered in Russia so much as a heavy metal act but more a sort of punky hard rock.
anyway the first to play heavy in Russia from what we know were 99%, in around 1982.
OK's 1980 tape will testify that they sounded like some strange wanna-be proggy rock back then...

Another band is Legion, their first heavy tape album came out in 1982 ("Bitva" - "the battle"), although they started playing heavy in 1980.

There were also many super obscure acts, like the probably rehearsal only act "Prosto Tak" (pre- Hrustalniy Shar), whose 1982 extremely low quality rehearsal tape shows some strange proto doom sound on a couple of songs.

The Product EP on Gargoyle Records is sublime.

S.A.D.O. - "Shout!" is the ultimate poppy roller-coaster. It will bury you under tons of cheesy keys and disco drums and then dig you out with sharp riffing.

Hologram - Steal The Stars.

Just listening to this and it fits the poppy/metal genre perfectly.

The Def Leppard debut would also fit given the last few named, after the chorus of the first song you think nothing good can come of this band.

But these bands just have a commercial edge, not really like the real poppy/wavy bands mentioned earlier in this topic.

Jesters Of Destiny is totally underrated! Fun at the funeral is perfect all the way!