Totten Mechanismus Biography
TOTTEN MECHANISMUS is a band set up in 2008 in Miass, Russia playing Dark Electro / Aggrotech genre. It’s an interesting fact that the name of the band translated as “a dead mechanism” has an intentional mistake: there’s double “t” which as the musicians think should weight and harden the complicated name of their band as it was.
History, origin
TOTTEN MECHANISMUS was set up as a home project by Milkom Taus and Olga Taus. The music part had the forn of experiments with sound and works in progress influenced by such bands as PSYCLON NINE, HOCICO, GRENDEL.
Later the girl left the project and Milkom worked alone for some time until Gatz joined the band and brought lyrics and criticism with him which probably had a significant impact on what we hear from the band today.
In summer 2010 Kiro joined the band bringing with him and idea of percussion aimed at supporting the marching rhythms of Milkom and motivational lyrics of Gatz.
That summer a track called ‘The Shadows Of Doubts’ came up at the web and almost immediately won hearts and minds of its Russian listeners. The song’s lyrics are in Russian influenced by “The Matrix” movie. Later that track would be re-recorded several times and remixed by OBSIDIAN.
The debut
The 1st of October turned out to be the debut performance of TOTTEN MECHANISMUS on the stage of Cheliabinsk youngsters’ music fest. The band immediately attracts attention of the regional and federal mass media with its outrageous image and industrial show.
The project development
In winter 2010 TOTTEN MECHANISMUS changed their image to the darker one calling themselves “the soldiers of a battle submarine”. Also a new member bass-guitarist Nikel joined the band.
In spring 2011 due to personal reasons Kiro left the band and percussion also left the band’s live shows with him.
In October 2011 the first release of TOTTEN MECHANISMUS called “Pre-Release” came out. It contained three original tracks (including final version of ‘The Shadows Of Doubts’) and a one track written together with OBSIDIAN.
In December 2011 Moscow promo group U-RUN became the official promoter of TOTTEN MECHANISMUS.
March 2012 was marked with a truly important event for the band – the release of its first full-length album “Retreat Is Impossible” (rus. Отступление Невозможно)! Eleven tracks unreleased before saw the light, they are all in Russian except Mexican band C-LEKKTOR ‘See My Hate’ cover.
The same spring TOTTEN MECHANISMUS was invited to the two biggest Dark Scene fests of CIS: “U-RUN” (Moscow) and “Cyberfront” (Kiev).
In autumn 2013 the band participated in the main gothic fest of CIS “Children Of The Night. The Black Rada”.
1st June 2014 is the date of the release of the long awaited second full-length album “Ab Initio”. The sounds of bagpipe and furious screams of warriors thristing for blood from ancient times, noise of machine gun strings from nowadays conflicts – the music of “Ab Initio” surrounds a listener with an atmosphere of sanguinary battles. This release is aimed at proving that any frames are just a sort of condition and everyone can find himself outside of them.
LINE UP:
- Milkom Taus – Idea, Music, Mixing, Mastering, Lyrics, Vocals, Artwork, Persona
- Olga Taus – Live keyboard, Artwork
- Alexander Taus – Live drums
- Vyacheslav “ATANT-i” Butakov – Samples
DISCOGRAPHY:
- EP “Pre-release” 2011, CD-r
- LP “Отступление невозможно” 2012, CD-r
- Sinle “The War Song” 2013, WEB
- LP “Ab Initio” 2014, CD / WEB
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