Cranking up the absurdity factor in Russian politics to 11, the leader of Russia’s arguably most campy metal band said on Monday he will run for mayor of a Moscow region city.
Bassist Sergei “Spider” Troitsky, the founder of Corrosia Metalla, will take on a motley crew of contenders, including opposition champions, in a mayoral race in Khimki, set for October 14.
Khimki gained nationwide notoriety after a long-running and violence-ridden campaign to stop construction of a federal highway from passing through a local century-old forest.
Though the campaign failed, it made a rising political star from its leader, environmental activist Yevgenia Chirikova, who will run for the finally vacated seat of the Khimki mayor.
Six mayoral candidates have already applied for the vote, but none of them apparently counted on Troitsky, whose band gained notoriety for hatemongering, though tongue-in-cheek lyrics and violent live shows.
“The Spider” lived up to his reputation, pledging in an interview to RIA Novosti to establish a new order for Russia in Khimki if elected.
All people in places of power will be Germans, “like in Greece now,” 500,000 migrant workers will be brought into the city and tagged with huge luminescent numbers, and Chirikova will get her own zoo complete with robotic animals from China, Troitsky said.
“These people are nobody to us,” he said about the opposition, which intends to turn the Khimki mayoral race into a decisive battle with the Kremlin’s “power vertical.”
Chirikova, who rolled out an extensive campaign program on Monday, dismissed Troitsky as a spoiler candidate by the authorities.
“It’s part of a big campaign to distract attention from what really matters,” she said. “But ‘The Spider’ will come and go, and the problems will remain.”
However, as far as the Russian rock scene is concerned, Troitsky came to stay. His crossover thrash band, founded in 1984, has 11 records under its belts, including such gems as Russian Vodka (1989), which saw stateside release in 2008, and Computer Hitler (1997).
The still-active Corrosia Metalla slammed rap musicians, police, street hooligans and ethnic minorities, among others, in their over-the-top lyrics, and their legendary live shows came complete with strippers, a freak show and even a Hitler impersonator.
Troitsky has also dabbled in politics before, but with little success. He was set to run for Moscow mayor in 1993 on the ticket of Radical Party of firebrand writer Eduard Limonov, but the vote was canceled because of a bloody failed putsch in the capital. In 1998, Troitsky run for the State Duma in Moscow, but his victory was annulled on a technicality.
