Akado

The Akado (赤道[ɑk'ɑːdɔ], the red way; the bloody/bloodstained way) is a Russian rock band founded in 2002 which describes its stylistics as the intelligent visual rock. The sound of the band consists of many musical styles as industrial, gothic metal and dark ambient.
Special attention is paid to the exterior of the members of the group:
Our main idea is to be interesting to people not only by our music but by our exterior as well. This is what visual rock is.

— The creator and frontman of the band, Nikita “Shein” Shatenew.
History
Early years (2001–2003)
Nikita "Shein" Shatenew founded a rock band in a township Sovetsky in 2001 when he was still at school, Blokada, consisting of four classmates. They were: Nikita "Shein" Shatenew (lead vocals, songwriter, rhythm guitar), Igor "Lackryx" Likarenko (bass, recitative), Alexander Grechushkin (lead guitar) and Grigory "Green" Arkhipov (drums).
In 2002 they recorded and released a demo-album  The Silent Genealogical Self – Expression consisting of 13 tracks. There had been made 500 CD copies and sold in a short time. Soon the band was invited to various events, they gave several open-air and club concerts including the show in Tampere, Finland.
Creation of AKADO (2003-2007)
At the beginning of the year 2003, Shatenew, Likarenko and Arkhipov moved to Saints-Petersburg. It had been decided to change the name of the band. The old name had been chosen by accident and did not answer the conscious and desired ideology of the band. But they didn`t want to change the whole spelling of the word Blokada because the audience had used to it and some letters of this word were part of the logo of the band. So Shatenew singled out from this the brand new name, more pleasant, in his opinion, – AKADO. He attached to this word Japan hieroglyphs «red» (jp. 赤[ɑkɑ], «red color») and «way» (jp. 道['miti]or [dɔ], «way», «road»). Thereby this name denotes the red way and the members of the band gave it the meaning the bloody/bloodstained way. However, in Japanese these two hieroglyphs have another meaning and reading: (jp. 赤道[se'kidɔ), equator. The band gives to each person an opportunity to interpret this word as far as he understands and accepts.
At the first year in the university Nikita Shatenew met Anatoly «Stinger» Rubtsov who was very good at many computer and multimedia disciplines and composed electronic music. Subsequently Nikita made up his mind to make Anatoly the manager of the Akado. Meanwhile Shein invites his fellow-student Nikolay «Chaotic» Zagoruyko to the band on back vocals. So the band got an overdriven vocal (growling).
Shatenew defined the genre of the Akado as the «visual rock» and by his sketches ordered his first suit for concerts. The rest members of the band refused the visual part in their images. Soon the Akado recorded their first demo in the St.-Petersburg studio «DDT» - «animИЗМ». The CD was never released because something went wrong with the computer which kept the material. The same time Shatenew and Rubtsov created an official web-site.
Eventually all the group realized the success of the visual part and agreed to wear suits. At that time guys recorded and uploaded to the web a demo-track called “Ostnofobia”
In 2005, for a short period of time, the band was joined by DJ Katrin with whom they played several concerts. Then their ways parted, but later she made a couple of remixes on the Akado`s songs.
In 2006, the manager of the group Anatoly “Stinger” Rubtsov was invited to make samples and run the electronic part of their music. In the new line-up the band played a series of concerts, including their first show in Moscow.
In the same period, the group, while in St. Petersburg, began to work on a promo EP-album «Kuroi Aida» . Recording took place at the St. Petersburg studio "Egorov". During the recording of the material back-vocalist Chaotic decided to finish playing music and return to his home town Novosibirsk.
Wide fame (2007-2008)
In 2007 the group completed «Kuroi Aida». The mini-album included the tracks «Gilles De La Tourette», «Kuroi Aida», as well as remixes for the last two songs. There also was a remix that combined all three of the songs - «Oxymoron».
The album had been posted on the Internet for free download and was downloaded from the official site about 30 000 times. That year the group moved to Moscow.
Shatenew took the overdriven vocals besides pure on himself, and therefore decided not to play the guitar during live performances. So the group found a new member - guitarist Alexander «Vinter» Lagutin.A part of the overdriven vocals was also entrusted to Rubtsov («STiNGeR»).
To the role of the new manager came Anna Shafranskaya and immediately organized for AKADO several appearances at Moscow clubs.
Then the group shot their first video (on the song «Бо(ль)га») and performed in several cities in the CIS. The band took part in many photo-shoots.There had been many articles about them published in music and underground culture magazines. But in spite of the success,relations between the musicians were becoming more and more tense. Most of the group didn`t share Shein`s future plans and views so, in the result, by the time the band was preparing to record their debut album , Lackryx (bass), Green (drums) and Vinter (lead guitar) simultaneously left the group. There had left only two members in the band: Shein and STiNGeR.

New line-up (2008–2010)
For the five months the band virtually didn`t exist. After that Shein concluded the treaty of the line production with «Diagilev Production»but still had the right to be the art director and the music producer of the band.
In 2008 after the long search new musicians for the band were found: a bassist Artiom Kozlov, who got the nickname “Miomi” in the band and a drummer Vasily “Ghost” Gorshkov. A little later a guitarist Dmitry “Kelly” Yugay was accepted to the new official line-up of the band.
Shatenew chose the best of the old material and the band returned to rehearsals. They rearranged the old songs and started to work on new. At March 23, 2008 in the concert at the Moscow club “B2” the audience saw the new line-up, concert stuff and image of the Akado.
At that time the band concluded the treaty with the recording studio «Uniphonix» and recorded the new EP «Oxymoron № 2» which included the title track “Oxymoron № 2” composed by Miomi and the song “Dirty Easter” . Besides these two tracks, there were several remixes as the remix on «Oxymoron № 2» by the Britain DJ In'r' Voice made in the London Spiral Starship studio and the acoustic version of this song.
Latest events (2010-present)
In May 2010 after the long discussion and by mutual consent Anatoly “Stinger” Rubtsov (technics, keys, backing vocals) left the band. At the beginning of 2011 the band was looking for a new technician.