If it hadn’t been for frontman Ilya Lagutenko’s explosive appendix last year, you’d already have had a passionate love affair well underway.  Passionate enough for pickles and polar bears….A new digital single, "Polar Bear" is right around the corner. The band will be performing at SxSW on Friday March 19 at 4:30 PM at Jovita’s and again at Valhalla 1 AM (Saturday morning).

Mumiy Troll began in Vladivostok, Russia deemed “one of the most socially dangerous bands in the world” by a local Communist party chief in the former Soviet Union; yet, was hailed as “Best Band of the Millennium” by leading Russian music critics after the fall of communism. Mumiy Troll began playing club dates in their hometown beyond the reaches of Siberia itself, and steadily built a large fan base that now packs arenas in Moscow and St. Petersburg as well as the Baltic States.  Having played over 1,000 gigs since the turn of the century, and boasting a back catalogue of eight full-length CDs, MUMIY TROLL are the most influential and successful independent artists in Russia today.
 
Part of MUMIY TROLL’S success can be attributed to their multi-genre sound, a hybrid of rock and pop which songwriter Lagutenko calls "rockapops", which was flaunted in its full glory on the band’s 2009 North American debut of Comrade Ambassador.  Despite being recorded in Russian, reviews of Comrade Ambassador were overwhelmingly positive.  CMJ New Music Report put it this way: “It’s easy to see why MUMIY TROLL has made such a splash, even without English translation.  The vocals are swollen with an air of restlessness that naturally fuses their half Jet-esque rock and half experimental pop with a punk attitude that wants to scream, but instead walks calmly away, giving the music an edgy, mysterious appeal.”

MUMIY TROLL will be releasing their new EP POLAR BEAR on March 16.