“Tonight, it’s the Bataclan in Moscow,” a Frenchman in Moscow commented on the spot. The information is still incomplete, but it is difficult not to think of the attacks of November 13, 2015 in Paris, which notably targeted the Bataclan concert hall, where the American rock group Eagles of Death Metal was playing. This Friday evening, an armed attack, which has already left at least 40 dead, hit the Crocus City Hall concert hall, 16 kilometers from the center of the Russian capital.
An old Russian rock band, Piknik, was playing in the monumental concert hall targeted by the shooting that evening, Russian media report. It was officially created in 1981 in Saint Petersburg, which was still called Leningrad, but a first amateur group was launched in 1978 with students from the Polytechnic School of Russia’s second city.
The first album, “La Fumée”, was released in 1982. It was followed by around thirty others. One of the last, called “Trois destins”, covers “folk and pre-war songs” in a rock version. In 2024, one of the songs featured on their site is called “Nothing, don’t be afraid of anything”. It’s symphonic rock, quite classic musically, even a bit outdated, and sung in Russian.
The group broke up several times, but held on. Since 1981, the singer, guitarist and songwriter has been Edmund Shklarsky. He is accompanied by Léonid Kirnos on drums, Marat Korchemny on bass and Stanislas Shklarsky on piano. On their site, the four rockers, thin and wiry, appear with black glasses screwed on their noses, dressed in long black leather coats.
At this stage, the fate of the musicians remains unknown. But at least one of the four could not be reached by the concert director, Yuri Chernyshevsky, cited by the Russian news agency Tass. “We cannot contact one of them, we do not know if he left Crocus,” he explained, without specifying which one it was.
