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HISTORY


Back in the 1990s, there were only two Progressive Rock bands in Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, and the Middle Asian 'center' of Heavy Metal, - Rare Bird & Edgar Poe. For the first time, the members of these bands met each other when playing before Rock Music fans at Tashkent's annual Rock Festival in 1990. A few months later Rare Bird & Edgar Poe organized their joint live show on a scene of Uzbekistan's Puppet Show. It needs to be mentioned that at that time, each of the bands included seven musicians. Unfortunately, progressive music was never a popular genre in our republic, so both Edgar Poe & Rare Bird quit in the middle of the decade.
Just before Christmas 1996 (i.e. at the end of December of 1996) bassist Vitaly Menshikov (ex-Edgar Poe) along with keyboardist, guitarist, & vocalist Albert Khalmurzayev and drummer Valery Vorobiov (both ex-Rare Bird) decided to form a new band. Both Vitaly and Albert continued to compose new songs after leaving their previous bands. Furthermore, it turned out to be that their compositions are in many ways similar among themselves - both stylistically and structurally. Thus, X Religion was born. All three of the band members are, in fact, multi-instrumentalists (especially Albert) with a wealth of Rock and Classical Music-based experience behind them.
Both of the albums that X Religion have at the moment were recorded at "Sound X" - an ultra-modern recording studio of Uzbekistan's Youth Theatre where the band is based since its birth. Since the middle of 2002 Val has been using both of the Yamaha acoustic and electric drum kits. What's interesting is that the "Dances On Gobelins" album was recorded long before "Sodom & Gomorra XXI", though both of them were completed in 2001. X Religion's intricate and quite hard fusion of Classic Symphonic Progressive and Classical Academic Music is a wonderful world where practically alternative contrasts live in harmony with each other. All artwork from the "Dances On Gobelins" CD booklet and the band's logo were created by our close friend and well-known painter Vladimir Finkilstein (to see his gallery, click >here).
Management: Nabi Abdurakhmanov.





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