Komu Vnyz

Komu Vnyz got its start in the year 1988. Unknown young actor Andriy Sereda and educator Volodyslav Makarov worked together in the same theater. Sereda and Makarov joined with three more artists (Serhiy Stepanenko, Yevhen Razin, Volodyslav Maliuhin) to make Komu Vnyz. They wound up at their first festival Chervona Ruta completely by chance. It was too late to submit the sample recording to the panel of judges for the tryout, but Taras Petrynenko, after listening to their work, insisted that they participated in the event. They received second place.

After releasing their first album "Padaya Vverkh" ("Falling Up"), Komu Vnyz and the rest of the Chervona Ruta winners toured in Canada, Poland, and many Ukrainian cities.

From 1996 onward, Komu Vnyz came out from the precipice of financial difficulties. Playbills started to appear railings and fences in Kyiv for their 1997 concert, In Kastus, named for one of their albums.

In 2000 the band played at Ivan Franko theater, performing a concert dedicated to the memory of 300 young students killed under Kruty. They also headlined at the first Ukrainian gothic festival, "Dity Nochi" ("Children of the Night"), organized by Ukrainian Gothic Portal, and started to work with UGP. In 2002 the band played at the European gothic festival, Wave Gotik Treffen.[2]

In 2003, Makarov left the band. He died in January 2016. As of 2019, the band still continues their activity. Premier Minister of Ukraine, Oleksiy Honcharuk, has even visited "Veterans Strong Party" war-veteran charity concert where the band performed along with others.[3]

The members of Komu Vnyz joined the nationalist party Svoboda in 1995. Svoboda have praised the group, saying that "many Ukrainians' initiation into self-awareness [Ukr. самосвідомість, samosvidomist, a term used in Ukrainian nationalism to mean patriotism or nationalism] is from listening to Music for the Higher Spirit [a term Komu Vnyz have used to describe their music]".[4]

The Ukrainian division of Neo-Nazi music promoter Blood and Honour have stated that the band are "the pride of the Ukrainian radical scene" and "propagate [Blood and Honour's] worldview".[5][6]

In 2011, a video went viral in Russia of bandleader Sereda raising his hand in a Nazi salute and stating that "to be Ukrainian means to be human, and to be human means to be Ukrainian", also calling Ukraine "the homeland of the 'Aryan race'".[7] He has also called Ukrainians and Russians "two different nations with nothing in common" and called Jews "the aggressor".[8]

In 2017, the group performed at a neo-Nazi music festival alongside Die Lunikoff Verschwörung, M8L8TX, Sokyra Peruna and other well-known far-right acts.

• Official Komu Vnyz website