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Artist
A Rifle Surprise
12+ albums
russianindiemath rockexperimentalpost-hardcore
about
The Moscow trio A Rifle Surprise are allegedly named after a magazine article found by one of the band members. It tells of two soldiers, close to death from constant, bloody combat. Each has a single bullet left in his rifle; in a final moment of desperation, the two men shoot at each other - simultaneously. The bullets meet in midair, canceling each other out. Both soldiers survive; hence the surprise! Were we looking (really hard…) for a segue from that story into a brief outline of the band and their initial discography, no doubt metaphorical parallels could be drawn between the “similarly dramatic” generic or structural “confrontations” in the work of A Rifle Surprise, namely their attempts to bring the angular forms of math rock to Russian shores - in English. These attempts to push the envelope of Russian rock have been ongoing for almost three years - together with rigorous daily rehearsals - all in the name of some elusive, contrary style that the band calls “something between post-hardcore and the mazes of prog-rock…” Getting breakfast airtime will not be easy. Asymmetrical time signatures do not sit well with the simple rhythms of “cornflakes-into-mouth-while-still-hungover.” Elsewhere, when directly confronted on the issue of whether they see themselves as exponents of math rock in the classic sense, the trio reply: “Math rock tries to express simple ideas in complex forms… or, in a much more banal sense, it’s rock that uses difficult meters.” The daily rehears
