Discovering Moldovian music scene: Walk Alone and 6 more interesting bands
We almost covered all neighbor countries and today the talk is about Moldova, which is represented by local hardcore band Walk Alone. The guys have something to tell about their last release, as well as about their numerous trips to Odessa and local rap-bands. So, here we go.
The band Walk Alone was formed in 2011, when most of us were 14-15 years old hardcore kids. We had thrown out some demos and EPs since then, played lots of local shows with tons of cool bands from all around the world, had a few trips to neighbor countries where we played some really fun shows. There’ve been a few changes in our lineup but now we have the same membership it was for the first 5 years.
"Towards Death" EP
In late 2020 we started to record our last release – short EP "Towards Death" which came out in the beginning of 2021. We’ve been kinda lazy for the last 3-4 years to be honest, and that record was a cool studio hangout for us, we learned a lot from that experience. Then we were super-excited to start recording our new material and we hope it will happen as soon as possible, because this year was busy for us with rehearsals. We also did a lot of jamming with some new music, went a bit out from fast crossover stuff to some groovy early 90’s hardcore-metal sound. For sure, new jams are kickin’it, so we hope ya’ll will dig it, too.
Connection with Ukraine
We had a bunch of shows in Ukraine, including very special ones in Odesa, which became a second home for us. We made it to the mighty Mayak fest in 2014 and since then we had a couple of gigs to play there almost every year. There are awesome local hardcore gigs and festivals, thanks to Dying Sky Booking for taking care of that, respect, yo.
Also, we love UAHC (Ukrainian hard-core – ed.) in general, we consider it one of the best hardcore scenes ever. There are so many great bands and such variety of sound that is ahead of the time, and most importantly – many good dudes we are connected with. We know and admire such bands like Leviathan, Bluesbreaker, Kingpin, Reminded, Aspire, Clearsight and lots of more – it was always an honor to share the stage with them.
Underground scene in Moldova
Regrettably, we have to confess that the heavy underground scene of Moldova is mostly dead now. Comparing with 6-7 years ago, there are not many active bands at all. So we hope that a younger generation of bands will change the situation for better and justice will prevail, whish ’em good luck.
Well, you can’t kill what’s already dead, but still COVID era is like a sure shot to strangle all underground noncommercial heavy music movement in here. It’s not allowed now to have shows with crowds of people, we come through lockdown meres and all that. But there’s a hope it will be over as soon as possible and we’ll be able to go back in the pit.
Top 10 Moldovian bands (who they are and why we picked them)
Moldova, especially Chisinau, had a pretty solid heavy underground music scene in 90s and ‘00s. There were lots of good metal bands, as well as cool death metal and grindcore acts –too sad that almost none of them made it to these days…
First of all, we want to mention AXIDENT band from early 90’s – that was groovy thrash with hardcore and punk, still the best one till nowadays!
ТAlso we cannot skip our good friends Abnormyndeffect — grindcore chaos at its finest.
Dead years it was the most influential local hardcore band for us, our singer even sang there:)
D.N.S. — masters of boom bap hip-hop from early 00s; bands like Ginta and Unda Comuna are to be named along this hip-hop section, too.
Walk Alone in social networks:
https://walkalone.bandcamp.com/
https://www.instagram.com/realwalkalone/
https://www.facebook.com/walkalonemdhc
Earlier we wrote about other European scenes — Polish, Czech, Slovakian, Hungarian and Romanian.
Photos provided by the band
