This is a band from St. Petersburg that was created in 1998 by Sergey Laskin. They play orthodox gothic rock in the aesthetics of the fathers of the genre (Sisters of Mercy, Fields of the Nephilim, Bauhaus, etc). As misfortune would have it, due to certain reasons (and one of them is finance) there's no stable line-up, so the only standing member of the band is its leader, Sergey. In the end of 1999 the band finished recording the first demo, "Black Weepers"; one of the sons called "Igni Natura Renovatur Integra" (on the demo it's called "From the Dark") you'll be able to hear on Russian Gothic Compilation.

"Black Weepers" - 2000 (demo tape)


Compilations:
Russian Gothic Compilation - "Igni Natura Renovatur Integra" - 2000 (CD)

"Black Weepers" - 2000 (demo tape)
Igni Natura Renovatur Integra

PHANTOM BERTHA "Black Weepers" - 2000

This band succeeded in what the others could hardly achieve: they recorded a gothic rock album in Russian, which sounds like gothic rock, not like Russian rock. In fact, it's a big achievement, I'm serious: the disadvantage of the most Russian gothic rock bands is that their albums thanks to the magic of the Russian language sound like Russian rock (for instance, No Man's Land), so the very fact of a fine Russian goth rock CD is very encouraging, although the lyrics in "Black Weepers" isn't very adequate - some phrases puzzled me. BERTHA'S PHANTHOM is a project of Sergey Laskin, a poet and musician from Saint Petersburg. His love for the early post-punk gothic rock reflected itself in this project (In general it's not surprising as the likes of goths from Saint Petersburg are within gothic rock/post-punk), here you can find echoes of Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim (there's even a cover of Fields' "Celebrate" on the demo) and even Bauhaus. The characteristic feature of BERTHA'S PHANTHOM is the sound of the eighties; everybody knows that gothic rock feels free in the nineties too, having changed a little under the influence of time, but various bands keep trying to play it "like it was played in the eighties". Some people like such sound (oh, the good old gothic rock), some don't (nobody plays this way any longer), both viewpoints are correct. To cut the long story short, this is very good material, even if not too original (I guess it's pretty difficult to create anything original in the field of orthodox gothic rock).

no

Sergey Laskin
Roman Gromov

address: Russia, 191025, Saint-Peterburg, Nevsky pr., 63-25, Laskin S.