Please tell us about the history of your band and its members.
Project Vesssna was started in 2016 by Marianna «Vesssna» Lukianova (guitars, vocals, music and lyrics) and Marina «Felis» Scherba (keyboards). Before that both girls participated in Fright Night and Mea Vita bands.
The word «Vesssna» (Весна) means spring in Russian. Felis is the 2-nd constant band member, and also there are several guest musicians in a band. Vesssna has recorded two albums and presented a few video clips.
Discography:
“Улыбка Свободы” / “The Smile Of Liberty” (EP, 2017)
“Почти Святая” / “Just About Saintlike” (2018)
How would you describe your style? Which bands influenced your music?
The music of Vesssna may be characterized as dark rock although we do not associate themselves with any particular style. Emotional female voice is complemented by thick guitar sound and intricate keyboard arrangements which make for a powerful and vivid music. The main subject of our art is the world of human emotion, dreams and aspirations. Irony and realism combines with subtle romantic and sometimes fairytale visions.
The bands who influenced our sound are: Flowing Tears, Scream Silence, Xandria, some of the Russian bands and Russian folk.
Why should a metalhead buy your demos/albums?
First of all how many decent products from Russia have you heard of? Quite a few probably. Even fewer actually strive to meet western standards of performance and record quality and are not downright copycats. We do know our albums are quality material. We understand that CDs are a thing from the past are no more in great demand and we decided to release the digital versions of the albums. And we also made USB flash drive as a collectible item. The whole thing is quite a treat for dark and gothic metal fans. It has high female vocals, beautiful melodies, a world of melancholy and emotion there, all the stuff a good album requires you're going to get if you buy it.
What have you released so far and how were your releases received by the public/media?
Well, we now have two albums. The first one – “Улыбка Свободы / The Smile Of Liberty” (EP), released in 2017 received positive feedback from our fans because it was our comeback after a long pause (our previous band Fright Night broke up in 2014).
Also we made some video clips and invested much in promotional campaign. Therefore we received new listeners who were waiting for our full-length album.
It was called “Почти Святая” / “Just About Saintlike”. We released it in November 2018 and there were also a couple of singles before it and a new strange and mystic dark folk video for the song “Вспомянувши меня заплачешь / One day you'll look back on all this and cry”. It all was interesting for our fans and for a new auditorium. Besides that, the album was accepted well by Russian rock and metal webzines, magazines and radio stations.
Do you play live as well? How's your live activity so far?
We do play live from time to time. Mostly here in Moscow and nearby towns. Live shows is always a useful experience for the band. And I hope that someday we'll be able to perform at some festivals abroad.
What should labels/zines/promoters know about your band? Why should they be interested in it?
Well I guess the zines and labels are going to like the idea of a band run by a girl who plays a guitar. Lots of female vocals nowadays, but not many guitarist girls. Not only a guitarist but a composer of all the stuff. And also we pay great attention to the visual part of the project - photos, videos, costumes, etc. There are some world-wide known Russian folk metal bands singing in native language, and we think that gothic metal with Russian lyrics sounds equally interesting.
What plans do you have for the near future as a band?
First of all we compose and rehearse new stuff and do everything we can to hasten the recording of the new album. In the nearest future we also plan to create a video for another one song from "Почти Святая".
Where can we listen to your band and where can we buy your stuff?
You may listen to our tracks and support the band at Bandcamp: https://vesssna.bandcamp.com/
Also there you can buy our limited edition kit which includes:
1) USB Flash Drive (8gb) with the album "Почти Святая" (wav-files), video for the song "Вспомянувши меня заплачешь" and PDF-booklet with all lyrics and information.
2) Printed 12-page booklet
3) Postcard
Also you can buy the digital version of our albums at iTunes, Google play and many other webstores which sell mp3s.
And please check our recent video at youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wiq_tYs_Se4
August 2019