#lvmen

Every Record I Own - Day 52: Lvmen s/t

I should be delving into the first “B” title in my library today, but I wanted to talk about the Czech band Lvmen instead. On the first Botch European tour back in ‘99, we played a few weeks’ worth of shows with the Prague band, though the shows were spread out over the course of the seven-week run. We didn’t know the Lvmen guys at all prior to the tour... hadn’t even heard of their band, but they blew me away from their very first show. “Post-metal” and “post-rock” weren’t terms in my vocabulary back then, and Lvmen’s combination of Fugazi’s dramatic dynamics and Neurosis’ sprawling tumult seemed like something truly fresh and inspirational to my ears. It wound up that Lvmen was supposed to play even more shows with us on the tour, but a lot of promoters were very hesitant to book Eastern European bands back then, so they just hopped on the shows where the promoters weren’t hostile to Slavs.

With the exception of one member named Tschepitz who went on to help found a backline rental company that Russian Circles and SUMAC continue to use to this day, the Lvmen guys didn’t speak English very well. Consequently, Tschepitz is the only member I’ve kept in touch with. But a few years ago I heard that one of the guys died by getting decapitated by an elevator, and yesterday I heard that their guitarist died of a heart attack this week at the age of 42. Consequently, it felt like a good day to pull out this excellent two-song LP in remembrance.