Scattered between the sleepy city of Peoria and the metropolis of Chicago, Illinois, MINSK is an enigmatic collection of opposites. That description makes sense given the band’s nominal inspiration “a remote Belarusian city nestled deep amidst the in-betweens of the East and the west, a city that has been burned to the ground on several occasions only to be rebuilt like a phoenix rising from its ashes.”
The band’s trailblazing brand of sludgy, experimental post-metal is at once organic and modern: their songs are stirring sonic journeys channeling the rhythms of the earth and the resonance of the human voice in strange synchrony with the synthetic sounds of machines, amplifiers, and effects. Founded in Peoria in 2002, MINSK has been cultivating sonic exploration and deeply spiritual and emotional outpourings since the band’s inception.
MINSK broke into the scene in early 2005 with their first full length, Out of a Center Which is Neither Dead Nor Alive (At a Loss Recordings). During the recording process of the album, the band's producer Sanford Parker (PELICAN, YOB, RWAKE) joined on bass guitar, solidifying the final lineup and priming the band for their next move. Overwhelming press in the likes of Kerrang, Decibel, and The Village Voice, coupled with the band's ground-shaking live shows generated excitement that carried the band into appearances at SXSW 2006 and Emissions from the Monolith Festival. By mid-year, MINSK had signed with Relapse, and the composition of their sophomore full length was underway.
In late 2006 the band took to Volume Studios in Chicago to hammer out their February 2007 Relapse debut, The Ritual Fires of Abandonment, once again with Parker helming the album’s production. Transcending the crop of heavy music imitators, The Ritual Fires of Abandonment bled MINSK's tribal and spiritual convictions into a heavy atmosphere of psychedelic delirium. The band’s 2009 follow-up, With Echoes in the Movement of Stone, continued the trend of elaborate, drawn-out psychedelic metal landscapes, paired with lyrical ruminations about personal struggle, mental illness, societal and generational guilt, the suicidal urge, and philosophical destruction and re-growth. Both Ritual Fires and With Echoes again witnessed strongly positive critical reception from publications such as Last Rites, Metal Hammer, and Time Out Chicago. MINSK toured relentlessly in support of those releases, sharing stages with stylistic colleagues Boris and Sunn O))) as well as with current & former Relapse artists Brutal Truth, High on Fire, Torche, Pig Destroyer, Rwake, and Baroness.
In 2011, MINSK announced an indefinite hiatus. But two years later, MINSK announced that their hiatus was over – the band would continue on with three new members. The next two years saw the band resume their live performances and begin planning for their fourth full-length. In 2014, the band entered the studio alongside Sanford Parker, now a former member, but still contributing his unique expertise to MINSK’s music. The Crash and The Draw, a 76-minute epic that encompasses all of the MINSK’s past sonic experimentation as well as much more, was released in April 2015 on Relapse to nearly universal acclaim: Decibel, Stereogum, Terrorizer, and MetalSucks all embraced the work as the band’s best yet. The record also landed MINSK a spot on the 2015 Roadburn Festival, which they followed up with an expansive European tour. Like their namesake city, MINSK have proven that they can recreate themselves again and again, the same entity birthing grand new ideas each time they return.
