Volkolak, meaning "werewolf" in Russian and a number of other slavonic languages, is a highly controversial Russian folk/black metal band from Eastern Siberia. The band was formed in 1997, but it took 5 years before their first release "Feat of the Gray King" became available on the market. The album is filled with well-performed traditional Russian folk songs, and was in the musical sense well rerceived. But there are completely other reasons that the band was and is a paria and, if they manage to continue, will remain so.

These reasons are to be found in the openly declared and defended national-socialist and rascist stands of the band. Where for a lot of other bands who define themselves as national-socialist, the ideologie is no more than skin deep and merely a means of attracting publicity, for Volkolak's members it is a most serious conviction thing. Off stage the band members have been continuously active in a variety of illegal national activities, making for that they have been in continuous trouble with the Russian law, which is rather much stricter in this than in a lot of Western countries. As the group uses its music as a propaganda tool, in fact the band itself is considered an illegal organization by the police.

Although their open and fanatical nazi convition have made operating very difficult for them, by producing solid, well played music, they still managed to gain a certain fan base, not in the last place in Western European countries where mostly the Russian language is not understood and thus their highly unpopular message goes largely unnoticed.

With all the problems the band is calling over itself, 2004 was a remarkably active year for them, first issueing a split release with White Amur Wolves, (An even more notoriously nazi Russian band), followed by their second full length album "Hail to the god of the sun", the last still in acoustic, traditional folk style.

2005 saw a radical artistic change in the outfits direction, moving rapidly towards fully electrified black metal style songs, a change that is immediatly obvious to all who listen to their third full length release The Shine of Scales. As it might have gained them some new fans in the NSBM scene, it certainly made them lose whatever fan following on purely artistic base they had built up with their earlier releases.

Although never officially disbanded, after 2005 it became ominiously silent around Volkolak. Now categorized with other most notorious nazi outfits like Temnozor and White Amur Wolves, they started to experience increasingly grave troubles in finding opportunities to play live in Russia, (Let alone abroad, a feat that even their much more popular political buddies of Temnozor have failed to achieve). As also no serious record label or distribution company was willing to burn their fingers on further releases of the band, it seemed the curtain had fallen for them. Great then was the surprise when in late 2010 a new release of the band appeared. This self released effort titled "Dissapear" saw the band returning to their Russian folk roots and is certainly worth listening to. With all the - selfinflicted - troubles the band has been experiencing, they certainly have shown determination and staying power, and it will be interesting to see what happens next.

Source : Gletscherwolf, 10-01-2011