A year ago Nizhny Novgorod's «Элизиум» reached the Serbian capital for the first time. On September 17 the band returned to Zappa Baza with the Greatest Hits Tour — with a song that isn't on any streaming service yet, and the promise fans have been waiting for since 2017.
Thirty years on
Zappa Baza sits right by the water, below Kalemegdan, a stone's throw from Beton Hala. A club, not a stadium — and perhaps the right scale for a band that began in 1995 in Nizhny Novgorod and has since stubbornly mixed punk, ska, reggae and metal into what it calls "cosmos-rock". Founder and bassist Дмитрий Кузнецов writes most of the songs, and Александр Телехов has sung them since 1997. Widespread recognition came with the second album «Все острова!» in 2002, and alongside the romance of distant lands and planets the lyrics have long been full of politics, ecology and war: the live album from 2007 is aptly titled «Мир — а не война!», and those words still hang on the band's homepage.
The Belgrade night fell in the middle of a packed September schedule: Tbilisi, Novi Sad, Belgrade, then Chișinău, Yerevan, Almaty, Bishkek and Tashkent — eight cities in thirteen days, with flights across half a continent.
Opening act: sila
The evening was opened by sila — a Russian-language band from Serbia that defines its genre as "alternative female rage rock". In two years the project has released a string of singles: «челюсти» and «молодая злая» in 2024, «кто ты?», «удобный человек» and a studio version of «невеста канье уеста» in 2025, and in June this year — «розы / roses». Kristina Tochilova writes the songs, with recent releases co-written.
The hall was already full when they came on, and the vocalist didn't hide it:
"Wow, how cool, so many of you tonight."
She also didn't hide that opening for «Элизиум», and in Belgrade at that, "was something I couldn't even dream of". Their set was short and angry, as the genre demands. Before «удобный человек» she invited the audience to "dance at the funeral of a good person", and the band turned «невеста канье уеста» into a small ritual: a bouquet was thrown into the crowd, and whoever found the red ribbon in it won free entry to their next show on October 23.
Old school
"Good evening! Wishing you all a great mood! The band Элизиум is here!"
And straight into "Старая школа", no warming up. The program is called Greatest Hits, and for the first hour the band honestly earned the name: «Что сделал ты для своей мечты?», «Ветер надежды», «Слёзы-зеркала», «Ад наш!». The twenty-year-old lyrics were known by heart — which was obvious from how the choruses kept coming back to the stage louder than they left it.
But the night wasn't pure retrospection. "The next song is very recent... I don't know if all of you have heard it. It's a new song that just won't be released. Or maybe it will," and the band played «Карантин», a track that's not on any release. Another song Кузнецов introduced with a grin: it's "on all streaming services — well, except the Russian ones, of course", and merch with its cover art was available in the hall.
The second half of the set was less about nostalgia and more about physics. "How's the mood? The hall seems to allow it — let's make the circles ourselves," and during «Чёрное знамя» the first circle pit of the evening spun up in Zappa Baza. There was room for improvisation too: "Now a song that's not on the setlist. But we'll try." When Телехов briefly left the stage, another band member, also Alexander, closed the pause:
"My name's Sanya too. I'll chat with you for a bit. Very beautiful city."
A local treat and encores
The reason for that pause became clearer toward the finale: Телехов, colleagues said from the stage, had arrived in Belgrade with a cold and between songs went off to "treat" himself — though it didn't affect his voice. The crowd answered as best it could: chanting the musicians' names, and at one point — «Жыве Беларусь».
Before the encores the band thanked the Belgraders for the гостинец — a traditional local one, in bottles — and invited the audience to share it with them. We'll leave the details of that part of the evening to those who were there.
The final stretch gathered the essentials from the thirty-year catalogue: «Обратная сторона Луны», «Улетай», «Все острова!», «Интересно», «Ослепительный мир», «Всё и ничего…», «Не верю», «Снегири и драконы». And then came what many had waited for: "A couple more songs left. We'll be back next year with a new album — a hundred percent." The last studio album «Яды» was released in 2017; nine years between records is a span after which such words are not thrown around lightly.
They closed with "100% хит" and "Когда мы были младше". "That's it, you are wonderful," — and a reminder that the band had a transfer in Turkey in the morning: next up, Chișinău, Yerevan and Central Asia. Belgrade was reluctant to let them go.
See the full photo report here.
Photo: Ilya Svishchev. Reels: victoria.prosh.
