Industrial meltdown. Chaos. Spatial cold. Darkness. Endlessness. VERGELTUNG is the Retribution that anyone feared but unconsciously waited. High-tensiled cyber-metal will uncover your inner fears and plunge you into the dreadful abyss of mankind's death. Social collapse, civilization's demise, global war and universal cataclysm; humanity's self destruction and non-existence – all that shape the concept of VERGELTUNG's work. The very name of the band embodies the cruel truth about the technology progress driven by the development of arms that bring mass destruction and death. It's not a secret that first rockets were built not to explore space and travel to the moon but rather to attack England and the US.
VERGELTUNG's beginning dates back in 2002, when LEXX (keyboards), KOT''h (guitar) & EVG (drums) left Azeroth, one of the most successful Russian black metal acts (released 4 albums, including a live one; supported Behemoth and Children of Bodom) to realize some new ideas beyond black metal concept. A few months later, though, LEXX was drafted to military service and the project was put on hold staying so for the next two years. Upon the return of the main composer in 2004, the band set about working on new material. In 2005, after a long search BRWN (bass) and DMTR (guitar) finally joined the band, but still no good vocalist was found in the whole St.Petersburg.
But the band never lost heart and kept on working in instrumental key. It was this decision that eventually gave birth to the unique VERGELTUNG's style. To compensate for the lack of vocals, the music was imbued with electronic effects, loops and samples and shaped by the extremely dense guitar, bass and drum sound, melodic but not in the least sentimental. It was the first gig in the beginning of 2006 that made the heavy scene of St.Petersburg speak of the band as of new leaders. It's worth noticing here that within the last 10 years practically all band members were the driving force of prominent local acts such as Painful Memories, Ora Pro Nobis, Azeroth, Inhuman Race, Exhumation.
VERGELTUNG is especially meticulous about their live performances, which are the band's strong point. Apart from regular gigs played locally, the band appeared at Rock Palace 2007 together with Grave and Dismember, made a few appearances in Russia and Finland with Let Me Dream, their old friends. A promo video, System Overload, was shot at one of those gigs.
In summer 2006 VERGELTUNG set about recording their debut album in NEVA studios. The whole process took much longer than expected but this happened to be only beneficial for the album. 121, the creator of Velehentor supplied the lyrics, and LEXX recorded the vocals, some of them using vocoder. So the music of the band got a new edge, still remaining extremely intense both instrumentally and compositionally.
In August 2007 EVG managed to rescue the St. Petersburg performance of Dezperadoz that was about to be cancelled because their drummer fell sick just before the concert. Within one day EVG learnt the whole set and joined the band to play the gig. As a consequence of this the band got in touch with the famous Dennis Ward (Pink Cream 69, Axxis, Krokus, Angra etc) who agreed to mix the album. The mixed album was mastered at Cutting Room Studio, Sweden.
SYSTEM OVERLOAD released on biggest russian label CD-Maximum in October'08