Punks in exile — Faultline

Church or punk shop? The front door of Muha Bar in Yerevan

The punks are already there, but they have to wait outside. The small park on Marschall Baghramjan Street is filling up. There, in the basement of the house of the Armenian Writers' Association, is the "Muha Bar". Three punk bands have been announced for the evening: Lower Minds from Tbilisi, Nul from Barcelona and a surprise guest. But the Spaniards' flight was delayed. So wait and drink beer.

The “Muha Bar” has existed since November 2023. “Previously there was only a very small selection of bars where you could play concerts,” says operator Anna Schwartz. "They all charged exorbitant fees, so we opened our own." You hear more Russian than Armenian in the park. Anna herself is Russian and came to Yerevan from Moscow in May 2022. Apparently many from the Russian punk scene followed her. »The scene in Russia has developed, Moscow and Saint Petersburg have reached international level. But then everything went south.”

The audience tries to move to the blast beats, but they are too fast for the already tipsy Russians. D-Beat, named after the English band Discharge, who increased the tempo considerably in the early eighties.

Outside while smoking, even more people say they quit four years ago. One of them has an eyebrow piercing and rings on his fingers, and his white shirt has the sleeves cut off. He left Moscow when the war started, he says, and has never been there since. He and his girlfriend would work at the "best ruin bar in town," whatever that means. None of them think about returning any time soon.

The first band begins. It's the debut of a band that is so new that it doesn't have a name yet. The two who had just served the beer suddenly appear on the stage. One screams so that it sounds like a pig is being stabbed, the other sits on the drums. “He was a local D-Beat celebrity in St. Petersburg,” says Anna about the latter. The audience tries to move to his blast beats, but they are too fast for the already tipsy Russians. D-Beat, named after the English band Discharge, who increased the tempo considerably in the early eighties.

Lower Minds, says Anna, also left Russia and set up a punk club - just in Tbilisi. The music is reminiscent of British Oi-Punk from the eighties. Hardly any song is longer than a minute; Nevertheless, the three testosterone-controlled bald heads in front of the stage, who have now found the stairs to the basement, run out of breath halfway through the set - thank Punk. Otherwise only a good shower of beer would have helped: If you lose your footing, you can't do any senseless high kicks. Your wallet thanks you for being spared this; After all, the beer in the “Muha Bar” costs the equivalent of around five euros.

“We mainly play metal here,” says Anna about the subculture in Yerevan. "Therefore, Russians who fled Russia after the large-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops form the core of both the audience and the music scene." But it's not as if there hadn't been any punk in Armenia before: Incest, for example, was founded in 2000. the first all-female Armenian punk band. They did absolute pioneering work in what was then still a small and conservative scene. The successor band Pincet even played their electropunk at Istanbul Pride in 2011.

The plane from Barcelona has now landed. Nul arrive, go straight on stage and do a sound check, to which the first ones start dancing. Testosterone-controlled baldness is also back. Unfortunately, her aggressive style of dancing doesn't seem to bother anyone else in the audience. And unfortunately they are too far away for a kick in the back of the knee.