The sixteenth season of the legendary Tula rock festival turned out to be not just young, but very young: among finalists are musicians from twelve years of age. Well, how can you choose the best among them? “Tusovka” tells.
In 2024, MOLOTnyak turned 21 years old, the very first festival took place in 2003, and since then he has changed several venues: Hammer and Sickle, Pioneer, Rodina, Backstage, Octave, Concert Hall. A lot has happened over the years: clubs opened and closed, lockdowns were announced, but the main festival idea – to reveal and promote local rock talent – lived on and remained unchanged.
“More than 650 groups passed through MOLOTnyak during this time, some names remained only in the memory of the organizers, others resounded loudly not only in Tula, but also far beyond its borders,” the permanent organizer of the festival, Anastasia Asfandiyarova, told Tusovka. — It’s nice that for many guys MOLOTnyak determined their fate. In 2007, the group “Krona” from Aleksin performed with us and did not even make it to the finals. A year later they tried again and took third place, and Ivan Kryuchkov then firmly decided to become a professional musician. He organized a modern music school, where today more than two hundred students, young and old, study. And of course, they participate in HAMMER!..
During a pandemic 2021 In compliance with all restrictions, as many as seven qualifying concerts of MOLOTnyak and the super final were held, which discovered new Tula stars – the Single Malt team. In February 2022 Screampie, playing in the glam&heavy style, won, and the discovery of the year was the now well-known “OMAYGAD” and “Carbon GaZz”. Last year once again lit up the stars – the group “TE-SAMIE”, pop rockers with female vocals, and death metallers “Hallucinogenic Dog” from Novomoskovsk.
Since 2023, MOLOTnyak has opened a new page in its history, winning a grant from Rosmolodezh. This made it possible to take the festival to a different level: to release branded merchandise – T-shirts with a blacksmith-guitarist, patches, badges and sticker packs. The festival now took place simultaneously at several venues in Tula – and always sold out. This is exactly how the final of MOLOTnyak-2024 turned out, which took place in the Concert Hall on April 21.
Six groups participated in the main competition and four more performed as guests. The fifteen-year-old lead singer of the alternative metal band Sand Witch led the Sand Witch team to victory. The youth rock band Ali Di Pollo, despite the young age of the participants, has already accumulated solid concert experience, the same can be said about the pop rock band from Venev VыSTREL, which even performed on the children’s stage of “Wild Mint”, and for the Tula Festa wrote a song called… “HAMMER”. The audience award at the qualifying concerts was won by young punks from the team “T.S.”, alternativeists Missid Turn stated that they were in the stage of a creative experiment. Well, the oldest participant in the 2024 season was 23 year old frontman of the band Twin Picks from Yasnogorsk Sasha.
Opened the finale 16th season of MOLOTnyak, the experimental group Fox Major performed, the winners of the season before last, Screampie, the folk team Runa Project, and members of the musical theater Gorizont Entertainment showed everyone how to sing. There was a big concert and, according to tradition, a grand music jury. There were only… no winners. More precisely, this year EVERYONE won!
“We decided not to distribute places and not award the Grand Prix in order to give our young participants the opportunity to enter the MOLOTnyak festival in 2025,” Nastya Asfandiyarova explained the cunning move.
Nevertheless, the jury named the top three: “TC”, Sand Witch and Ali Di Pollo. The TC team also took home the Audience Award. The guys received golden hammers, diplomas, certificates for the purchase of musical equipment from the Baston company, as well as the opportunity to participate in the Tula open air Oktava Lab Fest.
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