It’s an attractive day within the neighbourhood, and Alex Horrible is arguing with a bear. The Slaughter To Prevail frontman is standing shirtless and tattooed on a suburban avenue nook in Los Angeles, confronting a grizzly that stands practically three metres tall. Out of the blue, he begins grappling with the beast, burrowing into its thick brown fur.
The bear and the Russian-born singer stagger in a death-grip on the sidewalk till the monster shoves Alex down onto a neatly trimmed garden. That’s when a tall, blond determine seems behind the bear. That is Alexander Volkov, a Russian UFC heavyweight fighter. Volkov faucets the animal on a shoulder, and it runs away in terror.
Fortunately, there isn’t a real-life bear operating wild on the streets of LA. Alex is capturing a video for Russian Grizzly, a single from Slaughter To Prevail’s upcoming third album, Grizzly, with a Russian/Ukrainian digicam crew. The bear is an elaborate costume with an animatronic head that grimaces and growls on command. The scene is performed for comedy, however Alex is fast to level out the truth.
“In Russia, whenever you see a bear, it’s not fucking humorous,” he says with fun. He ought to know. This bear could also be faux, however he has expertise of wrestling the true factor again in Moscow – particularly a lumbering brown bear named Tom. Alex Horrible is that sort of man.
Grizzly represents a giant step up for Slaughter To Prevail. Since releasing their debut single, Topped & Conquered, in late 2014, they’ve risen by the deathcore ranks. Every successive launch, together with their two earlier albums, 2017’s Distress Sermon and 2021’s Kostolom, has taken them additional out of the underground and nearer to steel’s mainstream.
By at the least one metric they’re the largest deathcore band round proper now, with greater than 1 million month-to-month listeners on Spotify – nearly 200,000 greater than Lorna Shore, 400,000 greater than Whitechapel, and practically twice as many as Suicide Silence. In 2024, they performed Obtain, a welcome shot of brutality at an occasion headlined by Fall Out Boy, Queens Of The Stone Age and Avenged Sevenfold. It’s a pattern Alex hopes to proceed, following the likes of Knocked Free and Turnstile onto such US festivals as Coachella and Bonnaroo.
“This underground music is changing into like pop – mainstream,” says the singer. “I really like that, as a result of it was my objective to carry that shit outdoors.”
The place Slaughter To Prevail music movies have usually been low-budget DIY productions made by a buddy with a digicam, the video for Russian Grizzly steps issues up. Yesterday, the band shot efficiency footage on the Whisky a Go Go on the Sundown Strip, with the bear in a circle-pit. This morning, the band and movie crew have been on the boardwalk of Venice Seashore, dealing with off once more with the bear and lining up for intestine punches from Volkov’s gloved fists. For environment, the video manufacturing crew have rented an outdated Lada wagon, a boxy little Soviet-era automotive painted utilitarian beige. In a single scene, Alex struggles and fails to squeeze the bear into the backseat.
Between takes, Alex and Volkov stand on the road to check one another’s toughness. At 6’ 7, the golden-haired fighter is a full head taller than the singer. Alex braces himself as a smiling Volkov sends his fist into the singer’s abdomen, touchdown with a loud thud. Alex instantly doubles over with a real groan of ache. He then returns the favour, firing a punch proper into Volkov’s abs. The fighter doesn’t flinch.
“Was it good?” the singer asks in Russian. Volkov nods with a smile, and Alex provides a hopeful, “Hurts?”
“A bit bit,” Volkov solutions, and Alex laughs out loud. Regardless of a fearsome exterior and a singing voice from the depths of the netherworld, in individual the frontman is fast to giggle at himself and the scene round him. Slaughter To Prevail are constructed round Alex, a superhuman steel screamer who bounds to the stage like a warrior. He appears like an inked-up Wolverine up there, together with his beard and ripped musculature, a deep scar deliberately carved into his face as savage ornament. The truth that his hobbies embody bear-wrestling and cagefighting isn’t a shock.
He’s fiercely bold too, and the brand new album is a signifier of that ambition. Final 12 months’s single, Behelit, was a relentless steel anthem that wore the influences of Rammstein, Pantera and Slipknot. Its lyrics have been impressed by the character Guts from the anime Berserk, based mostly on a Manga comedian a few warrior preventing his manner throughout medieval Europe.
“Once we wrote this monitor, we have been fascinated about making an attempt one thing epic, and possibly change a little bit bit with the vocals, and put some… not clear vocals, however extra comprehensible, emotional,” says Alex. “We’re not afraid to strive one thing new.”
One other monitor, 2023’s Viking, was a swirling, intense, bloodthirsty rant, opening with a threatening growl and a navy beat.
“I say, ‘I’ll shed the blood. I put together for battle. I’ll go into battle’, and it’s simply artwork,” says the singer. “I’m not a political man. I’m only a musician and I do music. It is dependent upon my temper.”
That concept of artwork versus actuality is backed up by an announcement Slaughter To Prevail launched within the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022: “No to battle! Our band has nothing to do with politics, we don’t take sides… We don’t settle for ANY navy motion.”
As of late, Alex and his Russian bandmates – rhythm guitarist Dmitry ‘Dima’ Mamedov, bassist Mikhail ‘Mike’ Petrov and drummer Evgeny Novikov – reside in Florida, the place Grizzly was largely recorded. British guitarist Jack Simmons lives a nomadic life between the UK, Poland and Florida.
Alex first fell in love with the Sunshine State throughout a stop-off on tour with Florida deathcore act Bodysnatcher. After the battle in Ukraine started, he determined to relocate there.
“Palms all over the place, seaside, good climate, good roads, constructive individuals. They’re not in a rush,” Alex says dreamily. “I like this way of life. My city may be very gray sky, brutal winter, very soiled roads, very indignant individuals, as a result of all of this shit is round. After I was in Florida, I used to be like, ‘Wow, that is sick.’”
Grizzly represents a giant step up for Slaughter To Prevail. Since releasing their debut single, Topped & Conquered, in late 2014, they’ve risen by the deathcore ranks. Every successive launch, together with their two earlier albums, 2017’s Distress Sermon and 2021’s Kostolom, has taken them additional out of the underground and nearer to steel’s mainstream.
By at the least one metric they’re the largest deathcore band round proper now, with greater than 1 million month-to-month listeners on Spotify – nearly 200,000 greater than Lorna Shore, 400,000 greater than Whitechapel, and practically twice as many as Suicide Silence. In 2024, they performed Obtain, a welcome shot of brutality at an occasion headlined by Fall Out Boy, Queens Of The Stone Age and Avenged Sevenfold. It’s a pattern Alex hopes to proceed, following the likes of Knocked Free and Turnstile onto such US festivals as Coachella and Bonnaroo.
“This underground music is changing into like pop – mainstream,” says the singer. “I really like that, as a result of it was my objective to carry that shit outdoors.”
The place Slaughter To Prevail music movies have usually been low-budget DIY productions made by a buddy with a digicam, the video for Russian Grizzly steps issues up. Yesterday, the band shot efficiency footage on the Whisky a Go Go on the Sundown Strip, with the bear in a circle-pit. This morning, the band and movie crew have been on the boardwalk of Venice Seashore, dealing with off once more with the bear and lining up for intestine punches from Volkov’s gloved fists. For environment, the video manufacturing crew have rented an outdated Lada wagon, a boxy little Soviet-era automotive painted utilitarian beige. In a single scene, Alex struggles and fails to squeeze the bear into the backseat.
Between takes, Alex and Volkov stand on the road to check one another’s toughness. At 6’ 7, the golden-haired fighter is a full head taller than the singer. Alex braces himself as a smiling Volkov sends his fist into the singer’s abdomen, touchdown with a loud thud. Alex instantly doubles over with a real groan of ache. He then returns the favour, firing a punch proper into Volkov’s abs. The fighter doesn’t flinch.
“Was it good?” the singer asks in Russian. Volkov nods with a smile, and Alex provides a hopeful, “Hurts?”
“A bit bit,” Volkov solutions, and Alex laughs out loud. Regardless of a fearsome exterior and a singing voice from the depths of the netherworld, in individual the frontman is fast to giggle at himself and the scene round him. Slaughter To Prevail are constructed round Alex, a superhuman steel screamer who bounds to the stage like a warrior. He appears like an inked-up Wolverine up there, together with his beard and ripped musculature, a deep scar deliberately carved into his face as savage ornament. The truth that his hobbies embody bear-wrestling and cagefighting isn’t a shock.
He’s fiercely bold too, and the brand new album is a signifier of that ambition. Final 12 months’s single, Behelit, was a relentless steel anthem that wore the influences of Rammstein, Pantera and Slipknot. Its lyrics have been impressed by the character Guts from the anime Berserk, based mostly on a Manga comedian a few warrior preventing his manner throughout medieval Europe.
“Once we wrote this monitor, we have been fascinated about making an attempt one thing epic, and possibly change a little bit bit with the vocals, and put some… not clear vocals, however extra comprehensible, emotional,” says Alex. “We’re not afraid to strive one thing new.”
One other monitor, 2023’s Viking, was a swirling, intense, bloodthirsty rant, opening with a threatening growl and a navy beat.
“I say, ‘I’ll shed the blood. I put together for battle. I’ll go into battle’, and it’s simply artwork,” says the singer. “I’m not a political man. I’m only a musician and I do music. It is dependent upon my temper.”
That concept of artwork versus actuality is backed up by an announcement Slaughter To Prevail launched within the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022: “No to battle! Our band has nothing to do with politics, we don’t take sides… We don’t settle for ANY navy motion.”
As of late, Alex and his Russian bandmates – rhythm guitarist Dmitry ‘Dima’ Mamedov, bassist Mikhail ‘Mike’ Petrov and drummer Evgeny Novikov – reside in Florida, the place Grizzly was largely recorded. British guitarist Jack Simmons lives a nomadic life between the UK, Poland and Florida.
Alex first fell in love with the Sunshine State throughout a stop-off on tour with Florida deathcore act Bodysnatcher. After the battle in Ukraine started, he determined to relocate there.
“Palms all over the place, seaside, good climate, good roads, constructive individuals. They’re not in a rush,” Alex says dreamily. “I like this way of life. My city may be very gray sky, brutal winter, very soiled roads, very indignant individuals, as a result of all of this shit is round. After I was in Florida, I used to be like, ‘Wow, that is sick.’”
Alex Horrible was born Aleksandr Shikolai within the Ural Mountains of west-central Russia in 1993. His childhood was spent first in a small village known as Bolshoy Istok, earlier than he moved to close by Sysert, the place his stepfather, a veteran of the Russian navy, co-founded a navy college for boys (Alex’s organic father left when he was six). A lot of the college students there have been youngsters with no mother and father. Alex has in contrast the varsity to a “jail for kids”. It was a troublesome, indignant crowd.
It was there that one other scholar launched Alex to the music of Slipknot, Convey Me the Horizon and Suicide Silence. “The vocals have been so aggressive, however on the identical time, it was like artwork for me,” Alex remembers of the latter’s landmark debut album, The Cleaning. “It was the scream from the underside of the soul, from the underside of the guts.”
At 13, he tried singing in that very same guttural model, and was critical about it from the start. He started to gather tattoos over his arms and chest, paying with the cash his mom gave him to purchase breakfast each morning. The designs echoed what he noticed inked onto the pores and skin of Convey Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes and Mitch Lucker from Suicide Silence.
“I used to be like a copycat: I’m gonna do the identical as a result of this works,” remembers Alex, who ignored the considerations of his mom, sister and associates that the skulls, snakes and horned demons inked onto his pores and skin would spoil his probabilities of ever discovering a job. “I all the time mentioned, ‘I can’t work for anyone. I can be a giant rock star.’ I used to be positive.”
He adopted the identify Alex Horrible, an echo of brutal Sixteenth- century Russian Tsar Ivan The Horrible. His largest problem was discovering musicians to play deathcore with the identical degree of seriousness. He started posting movies of himself on YouTube singing cowl songs in his bed room, taking over something from Nirvana and Linkin Park to the bleakest deathcore songs he might discover. Considered one of his earliest clips confirmed the boyish singer in a pink Nike polo shirt, contemporary tattoos on his neck, roaring with guttural rage by Unanswered by Suicide Silence. He quickly heard from musicians seeking to collaborate.
The one who stood out was Jack Simmons, a member of UK deathcore band Acrania. Jack reached out to Alex by Fb, they usually quickly started writing songs collectively on-line. The guitarist constructed instrumental tracks and despatched them to the Russian.
“I used to be so excited to place my very own vocals on this new music, our music,” says Alex, who added closely accented vocals that blended Russian and English lyrics. “It was not simply brutal slam. Jack has these visions for making this sound contemporary and fascinating. And it all the time sounds catchy. You begin to headbang and the melody has this soul.”
Their first releases have been explosive, main with the Topped & Conquered single in 2014 and the EP Chapters Of Distress in 2015. The band’s first US tour in 2016 was with Cannibal Corpse, and Alex might hardly consider it was taking place.
“I used to be like, ‘I’m residing in The Matrix.’ It was unreal,” he notes of a sense that continues for him even now. “I didn’t even dream about all of this.”
In these early years, bandmembers got here and went, together with UK and US musicians, earlier than they settled on a largely Russian line-up. Alex wore a demonic masks of his personal design, impressed by Slipknot and the comedian ebook antihero Spawn, with horns and a transferring jaw. At first, solely the singer wore the masks onstage for his or her opening music, however step by step the opposite members started sporting them. At this time, Alex sells the masks for greater than $100 every, whereas their latest single Child Of Darkness refers back to the identify of the masks.
Slaughter To Prevail’s second album, 2021’s Kostolom, was a turning level. The flailing, layered monitor Demolisher represented the sort of progress Alex had hoped for. Then, when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the band responded with the punishing single, 1984, named after the George Orwell novel a few totalitarian society. Alex had already expressed opposition to the battle on social media, however this put the total muscle of the band behind an antiwar message: ‘Please cease the violence / please cease the bloodshed on Earth!’”
“As a musician, what can I do? I can do solely music,” Alex says. “So I write a music about battle, and it’s simply disgusting. I might by no means go in for battle as a result of I don’t need to be killed. I don’t need to kill any person. I don’t need to see this chaos… However I by no means say I’m in opposition to my very own nation. I really like my nation. I really like Russian individuals. I simply don’t like this silly state of affairs.”
That unfiltered strategy has additionally gotten him in bother. In 2023, he posted an exaggeratedly macho video titled ‘4 Guidelines for Actual Males’, which instructed males to reveal heavy steel devotion, get pleasure from fight sports activities, eat with their palms, and carry out oral intercourse on ladies. He’s mentioned it was meant to be comedy, however when he was criticised for it, he responded with a combative notice to Instagram: “There are lots of people who begin pointing fingers at me and calling me a homophobe or a women-hater. You’re loopy! In case you don’t like that I’m a straight man and have conventional household values, please unfollow me!”
The tone was each aggressive and defensive, and he went on to cloud the problem additional in the identical assertion: “I hate propaganda in any kind, particularly when making an attempt to brainwash kids! I contemplate it a criminal offense, kids take up every thing like sponges and don’t realise till they’re of a aware age.”
Some interpreted his phrases as an indication he agreed with right-wing commentators who don’t need LGBTQ-inclusive schooling in colleges. Alex hasn’t addressed the outcry since. At this time, he doesn’t come over as somebody who has given a lot thought to why individuals have been upset, or the challenges dealing with the LGBTQ neighborhood.
“Generally it hurts my status as a result of I’m an trustworthy man and I’m not a intelligent man,” he says. “I’m from a small village. I by no means completed highschool. I’ve all the time been within the music trade, so I by no means discovered about politics, enterprise, philosophy or all of this sensible shit. On the identical time, I’m a really open individual. My philosophy is reside your life… don’t contact others’ faith, don’t contact others’ opinions about this life, don’t contact others’ morals. However on the identical time, I get up with my morals, with my views, and I’m by no means propagandist.”
It’s not the one controversy surrounding him. Among the many many tattoos on his physique was a so-called ‘black solar’, an historic European image later appropriated by the Nazis. The tattoo prompted questions on the web about his political and racial beliefs.
Alex has made no secret that he fell in with a far proper clique in his late teenagers and early 20s (earlier than that, he frolicked with a far left, Antifa-style group), although has insisted that he’s now not that individual.
“In fact, I’m not a Nazi”, he instructed the Rock Feed podcast in 2024, including: “I’m not remorse [sic] about something, about errors in my life or any silly shit or no matter, as a result of I’ll by no means change it, I’ll transfer ahead. And proper now, I’m a unique individual.”
The tattoo has now been lined up, however his rationale for getting it within the first place – that he was younger and silly and searching for a spot to belong – mixed with a refusal to fully denounce that interval in his life as a result of it’s a part of what formed who he’s right this moment isn’t sufficient for some, and controversy nonetheless simmers. However anybody anticipating Alex Horrible to again down from a battle can be ready a very long time.
Per week after the video shoot, Alex calls us again. He’s again in Yekaterinburg, Russia, the place it’s midnight. Most visits again residence final a few weeks, however this time he’s staying together with his mother and father for a number of months in order that he can compete in a bareknuckle/blended martial arts Russian Cagefighting Championship (he received his very first bout in January 2025). He trains exhausting within the gymnasium every single day.
He’ll in any other case be on the street with Slaughter To Prevail for a lot of 2025, decided to unfold his enraged music all over the world. He stays thrilled to be taking part in for the lots and for no matter comes after.
“Perhaps in a number of years you’ll return to smaller venues, as a result of no one will give a shit about you,” he says with fun. “However I’m prepared for this, as a result of I’m doing what I like to do, and that is from my coronary heart. If we get standard, it’s cool. If we don’t, I don’t give a shit.”
New Slaughter To Prevail album Grizzly is out July 18 by way of Sumerian. Order an unique pink splatter vinyl variant with pop up artwork by way of the official Steel Hammer retailer, the place it’s also possible to choose up a restricted version Slaughter To Prevail bundle with unique Grizzly tee.
