Music / Radio Tapok

Radio Tapok is the Stage Name of Oleg Abramov (born 15 February 1989), an independent heavy metal artist from Russia.

Abramov got his start singing and playing guitar for the band PopCorn from 2009 to 2016. After leaving the band, he started performing as a one-man heavy metal tribute act, recording Russian-language covers of mainly Western rock and metal songs, and releasing them through streaming services and his YouTube channel. He gained a decent following in Russia but was virtually unknown outside of it...

...That is, until 2019, when Swedish Power Metal band Sabaton discovered some of his covers of their songs and got in touch with him. They helped him make and film a Russian-language version of "The Attack of the Dead Men" as a cross-promotion for their upcoming album The Great War, releasing it the day before the album release. Sabaton later brought him onstage for two shows of their 2020 Russian tour, which was cut short shortly after due to the onset of the COVID-19 Pandemic, and returned the favor with an English-language cover of "Battle for Moscow"—an original track written in the style of Sabaton.

Radio Tapok has continued recording covers since then, but has also started writing many more original songs than before. He announced his first full-length album, Наследие (Naslediye, "Heritage") on 8 February 2022.

Discography:

• Наследие^note Naslediye, "Heritage" (2022)
• Эпоха Империй^note Epokha Imperiy, "Age of Empires" (2023)

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Tropes:

• Ace Pilot: In addition to Oleg covering Sabaton's "Night Witches" in Russian before he started writing full-length albums, "Белая Лилия" ("White Lily") is about Lydia Litvyak, a Muscovite woman who became the first of only two female fighter aces in history^note Depending on the source you read, she's credited with five to twelve solo kills and up to 66 partial kills. (the other being Yekaterina Budanova, also from the Soviet Air Force) before being killed in action in the Battle of Kursk. The song declares her The Dreaded to the Luftwaffe and also alludes to the supernatural aspects of "Night Witches" with lines like "Приоткрывая врата преисподней, в ночь / Собирая души врагов" (roughly "Opening the gates of the underworld into the night / Collecting the souls of enemies").
• Capital Offensive: "Battle for Moscow" (covered by Sabaton in English as "Defence of Moscow") tells the story of the Soviet Union's all-out defense of Moscow against Operation Typhoon — the final German offensive to capture the Soviet capital city.
• The Coup: "Чёрный октябрь" ("Black October") is about the time Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered the Russian Army to fire on the Russian parliament when they tried to impeach him following a power struggle.
• Cool Versus Awesome: "Khalkin-Gol" portrays the eponymous series of battles between the Red Army and Kwantung Army as samurai versus Tank Goodness.
• Crossover:
  • Sabaton guest-stars in the video for "The Attack of the Dead Men", having taken Oleg prisoner for covering their songs in The Teaser in a spoof of Cold War spy thrillers. Joakim also accompanies Oleg in the closing chorus.
    Joakim Brodén: Is this the Russian who's been translating our songs?
    Pär Sundström: Yeah. I have to admit, these Russians are hard to catch.
    Joakim: So, what should we do with him?
    Pär: Well, tomorrow we are releasing a new album. I have an idea.
  • The music video for "Smuta" was produced in collaboration with developers of then-upcoming videogame by the same name. Unsurprisingly, both the song and the game are about the same period in the Russian history, known in English as "Time of Troubles".
• Curb Stomp Cushion: Essentially the theme of "Peter's Guard". It describes the battle of Narva of 1700, when Peter I's army was crushed by Swedish army one third its size due to bad positioning, poor training, and betrayal of a high-ranking foreign officer, and lost most of its officers and armaments. However, two regiments of Peter's "toy army" and one "Western-style" regiment retained the battle order and repulsed all attacks, retreating only after nightfall. They were later designated as "Guards Regiments", and granted the right to wear red stockings, as "they stood knee-deep in blood" in this battle.
• Death by Materialism: In "Yermak" the titular Cossack ataman fails to take off his golden (actually more like glided) chain mail before trying to escape an ambush by swimming across a river, and drowns. Downplayed, as It Was a Gift personally from the Tsar. Overlaps with Death by Irony, since a point is made how good the armor is, said to be impervious to swords.
• Eagleland: Type 2 in "Operation Allied Force", which describes "the eagle's claws squeezing" in a song about the NATO bombardment of Belgrade.
• End of an Age: The refrain of "Tsushima" mournfully describes the Baltic Fleet as "the last fleet of the emperor". Historically, the Russo-Japanese War cost Tsarist Russia almost her entire navy and was a massive blow to the nation's prestige, becoming one of the factors that led to the failed 1905 Russian Revolution, which Lenin would later consider to be essentially "dress rehearsal" for the successful 1917 revolutions.
• Epic Ship-on-Ship Action: The video for "Tsushima" was co-produced with World of Warships and depicts the Last Stand of the Russian Baltic Fleet under Admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky against Admiral Heihachiro Togo of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
• Fun with Subtitles: The YouTube closed captions, when provided, are generally accurate... except during guitar solos. At that point anything goes: the "Night Witches" cover started Saying Sound Effects Out Loud and making fun of Oleg's own performance.
• Homage:
  • In the video for his song "Ripper", patterned after Rammstein, he actually breaks down the creative process as part of the video (which fortunately has Russian captions that YouTube can translate).
  • "Battle for Moscow" is patterned after Sabaton songs, while "Tsushima" leans on Sabaton for the chorus and Manowar for the verses.
  • The verses of "Operation Allied Force" sound way too much like "Inside the Fire" by Disturbed to be a coincidence. "Life for the King" sounds like a Powerwolf song.
• Horny Vikings: While obviously not true in real life, in "Peter's Guard" Carolus Rex is praisingly described as "the last viking", referencing his great ambitions, and the effective end of the Swedish Empire after his death.
• Horrible History Metal: Aside from covers:
  • "Battle for Moscow" is about the Red Army's You Shall Not Pass! against the Axis at the gates of Moscow in 1941.
  • "Tsushima" is about the Battle of Tsushima, which decided the Russo-Japanese War in Japan's favor.
  • The full runtime of Наследие (which includes "Tsushima" and "Battle for Moscow") consists of songs about Russian military history from Tsarist Russia to the Chechen Wars. The follow-up Эпоха Империй focuses on the Tsarist period specifically.
• It Makes Sense in Context: "White Lily" includes a line about the Luftwaffe "smelling" her coming. The historical Lydia Litvyak was a Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak and got the nickname because she liked to wear perfume and put flower bouquets in her Yak-1's cockpit and had Nose Art of a white lily on her plane.
• Last Stand:
  • "Tsushima" describes the phenomenal journey halfway around the world that the Russian Baltic Fleet took to even reach the battlefield in the Far East, even though it was doomed. It came to be known in naval history as "the Voyage of the Damned".
  • "Высота 776" ("Height 776") is about the two-day Battle for Height 776 in May 2000, where a company of Russian VDV were surprised by Chechen separatist fighters and dug in on a hill in the Argun Gorge. Due to a series of snafus, only six of 90 Russian soldiers survived.
• Meaningful Name: "Tapok" is Russian for "slipper", meaning that Oleg's Stage Name is basically Self-Deprecation about the fact he's making metal songs without getting out of his pajamas (because he's a YouTube-based artist).
• Perspective Flip: "Peter's Guard" is essentially a viewpoint reversal of the second half of Sabaton's Carolus Rex album and their single "Livgardet"/"Royal Guard". The latter song directly mentions Karl XII of Sweden's decisive victory at the Battle of Narva, whereas "Peter's Guard" is about that specific battle and the holding action fought by three Russian regiments against the Caroleans and Swedish Life Guard.
• Red Baron: "The White Lily" is about Lydia Litvyak, the highest scoring female fighter ace in history. She is credited with 12 solo and 4 group victories, including two flying aces. She got this nickname for a white flower drawn on her plane. In the song, she in only ever called "The White Lily", and not her name.
• Samurai: Referenced in the chorus of "Khalkin-Gol", which is about that time the Japanese Kwantung Army tried to advance into Mongolia and got their asses handed to them by the Red Army in the first major victory of General Zhukov's career.
• Self-Immolation: "Искупление Огнем" ("Redemption by Fire") is about Russian Starovery who committed mass suicide in this fashion while facing religious persecution.
• Translated Cover Version: Oleg got his start as a solo artist making Russian-language covers of various Western rock and metal songs. He's done everything from Rammstein to Disturbed to Foo Fighters to Twenty One Pilots. His Breakthrough Hitinvoked in the west was Sabaton's "Attack of the Dead Men".
• Wooden Ships and Iron Men: "Petropavlovsk", in which an outnumbered Russian fort that threatened European trade routes in the Far East during the Crimean War came under attack by an Anglo-French flotilla and drove them off.
• Worthy Opponent: The Swedish Empire and personally Carolus Rex are described in flattering terms, such as "The Last Viking" in "Peter's Guard", and "Unbreakable warriors of the brave Carl" in "Gangut". At the end of the latter song, Russians pay respect to their opponents, in lines "The felled foe fought worthily / The fleet shall lower the St. Andrew's flag [Navy ensign]".
• You Shall Not Pass!:
  • "Battle for Moscow" tells the story of the Soviet Union's all-out defense of Moscow against the German Army in 1941.
  • "Petropavlovsk" describes the Tsarist Russian defense of the eponymous fort on the Kamchatka Peninsula during the Crimean War. Outnumbered almost two to one in manpower and four to one in cannon, the Russians beat off a heavy Anglo-French attack.

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