The history of the well-known Russian hard-n-heavy bands, ANGELS & DEMONS and Tolerance, is actually the history of one person, gifted composer and musician, the history of his life and creation. Alexey Nelidov was born 23 February 1966 in Kazan, the ancient Russian city and the capitol of Tatarstan. He started to sing when he was only three years old. But when he was 14, his voice was broken and he could not sing some years. When he was 16 he finished musical school as pianist and started to play guitar. Three years later he continued his vocal exercising. His first band was called MUSICAL MAGAZINE, he played there since 1983 when he was a first-year student of Institute Of Chemical Technology. Their music was hard rock, and the guys naively tried to mix it with jazz-rock, blues and so on. In that period Alexey Nelidov, hot hesitating a long, chose guitar as his favourite instrument. And since 1986 he was vocalist/guitarist of ORDEN, a hard-rock band. In 1988 he was invited in the band BROTHERS to play guitar. Later this band was renamed into ANGELS & DEMONS. Beside Nelidov, the line-up was: Victor Zheludyakov (vocal, guitar), his brother Alexey Zheludyakov (bass guitar) and Innokenty Mineev (drums). One day Victor hurt his throat copula, he took a cure but without result. So Alexey Nelidov was forced to become a frontman of the band. In that time guys made a correct decision: they started to sing English, not Russian. The music became more perfect. In 1989 Alexey Zheludyakov left the band, his place were occupied by Eugeny Vaskov. And soon the first recording was made. In 1990 the first LP was released, it called "Outlaw". The music was a sort of combination of hard-rock, lyrical songs and aggressive heavy metal. This album was recorded at SNC Studio (Stas Namin Center), the best Russian record studio. "Outlaw" was being sold well, not only in the huge territory of the USSR but also in Eastern Europe countries. It got good reviews of the main Russian rock magazines. It was a good step towards professionalism. As a result, a contract with a well-known American booking agency was signed. That agency dealt with R.E.M., AC/DC, METALLICA and others. The members of the agency thought that Russian rock movement was getting more powerful, and they wanted to be on the top of it. So, there was very successful tour across Baltic countries of former USSR; the band, as headliner performed with an American musicians, visited Minsk (Byelorussia), St.-Petersburg with the final show in Moscow. Then foreign managers gone to USA and relations between them and the band become more cold and finally stopped. During all that period (1991-1993), the band prepared their new material, rehearsed a lot, played many shows, took part in fests. The skill of the musicians was growing up step by step. Their music, though it was the same hard'n'heavy, become more complex and more interesting, their lyrics were full of soul and feelings. In 1992 Eugeny Vaskov, the bass guitar player, left the band. It was an unexpected event. At that moment, the guys were ready to start a record session but they lost a very good musician. The guys could not find a replacement, and they decided to play as trio. This line-up was in the next album "Melting Ice": Alexey Nelidov (vocal, guitar, bass), Victor Zheludyakov (guitar, bass) and Innokenty Mineyev (drums). The album was recorded at SNC Studio in 1993, released in 1994 by "Soyuz". In spite of the fact that it was a real gift for all the patriots of native heavy music, the band was fell apart. Since 1994 Alexey Nelidov worked in many commercial and non-commercial company that was not connected with music, but he also created his new material for his solo musical project simultaneously. When the material was ready, he start to find musicians for the realization of his project. The musicians were: Alexander Makin (drums), Leonid Kominer (keyboards) and the Alexey's good old friend Eugeny Vaskov, who played bass guitar in the first line-up of ANGELS & DEMONS. In 1996-1997 the new material was recorded at the same SNC Studio. The name of the material was Tolerance. It was released by "Soyuz" and "MetalAgen" together. And though Russian economic crisis of 1998 upset the selling of the album, the music of Tolerance got good reviews of all the Russian musical press, and German "Hammer" gave point 6 of 7 and marked high skill of rhythm section. In early 2000 Alexander Marshall, the vocalist of most well-known Russian band GORKY PARK, decided to start his own project. He thought to leave the band. And the leader of GORKY PARK invited Alexey Nelidov, who was forced to learn bass guitar playing and Russian style of singing in a short period. As you remember, he played bass, but the Russian singing was a new work. Anyway, Nelidov was included in GORKY PARK. Soon drummer Alexander Lvov left the band too. The winner of the competition to replace him was Alexander Makin, the drummer of Tolerance. At the moment GORKY PARK recorded their first album on Russian. The name and the date of release are the secret now. Since the first days of October 2001, is disposable the reprinting of the Tolerance album with a new cover (by Eugeny Smorodinov a Russian illustrator) and new graphic made by the Italian label Midnight Records (a division of Northwind Records) label specialized in hard rock/Aor. . But Tolerance exists still too. Alexey Nelidov wrote a lot of new good materials, he is occupied with arrangement and lyrics now.

Source : http://www.northwindrecords.com/b/b/tol/x.htm