Photos by Julia Arielle Photography

Fight Like Friends
Two Ukrainian Musicians Could Seriously Take the Music Industry by Not Taking it Seriously At All

By David Tanner

A couple of hilarious Ukrainians that are sure to bludgeon your skull with electro-rock from the grave, Fight Like Animals’ Steve (Rostislav Vaynshtok) and Vlad (Volodymyr Rychko) are bloopers-reel fun from the onset.     

It’s hard not to cheese out after taking in their video tracks on the Myspace of days yore (that place that became Facebook). But musically, at least, it’s what musicians all tried to do back in the day: take an electro track that pops and write bitchin riffs that keep them coming back for more. The tracks in these kid’s souls are the head nodding purity of youth.   

Unfortunately, the guys are teases. They recently took down their old tracks and the bloopers reel. Seriously. 

But at an in-store Hot Topic gig last week at Aventura Mall, the two merry-makers had the place packed. Surrounded by faux-Goth gear, Fight Like Animals’ die-hard fans gaped on as Rychko ran the beat through a PSP. During a mid-track guitar trade, Rychko grabbed the Epiphone to lay into the rhythm track as Vaynshtok began to strangle dulcet tones from the PSP. It was suddenly easy to remember what it’s like to sweat it up in a crowd at a local show.

A nervous glance to the side reveals William Alton, head of Grannie Annie records, a label he slapped together for these two virtuosos. Alton leans over with a smile and says he just met Rychko for the first time that night. Forgivable. Perhaps due to the fresh emotional energy that Grannie Annie and Fight like Animals exude, like a new scent forced upon you while trying to sneak through the main isle at Macy’s, then your girl tells you later how nice you smell…for once. 

Vaynshtok and Rychko finish early, but fans from Facebook are still filtering in, so the two guitar grapplers run through an improv of “Purple Haze,” then play their set again. 

More of the Granny Annie mob showed up, too.

Brett Flaherty is the latest to sign on. He’s producing the duos debut E.P., “Cave Dwellers.” Like many in the crowd, Flaherty couldn’t help but be awe-struck by the pair’s youthful exuberance. Flaherty’s wife and business partner, Misty Black, may have summed up that awe best. “We’d make millions if we could just find a way to manufacture and mainline these guys’ energy,” Black said.

With a name like Fight Like Animals, inspired by a killer painting of two dudes fighting in animal masks, the marketing plan seems to be writing itself, even spawning the photo shoots. And the duos good-natured rivalry, born of years of hanging together, makes watching them even more compelling and endearing.

At their Myspace page (myspace.com/fightlikeanimals) Steve and Vlad are plastered to the walls. Their latest video, just posted a few days ago, is one of their original tracks called “Two Words.” And all the video tracks are instrumentals, with nice and gritty guitars layered on top of a grooving electro beat bleeding through the PSP, and Vaynshtok and Rychko trading up on rhythm and lead throughout. The best part is, the audio is recorded directly through the camera’s mic, and it sounds great.

It’s a brave new world of promotion, really — the guys are able to shmooze with their audience (and the ladies) then seamlessly launch right into the jam.

Whether they realize it or not, sacrificing the old school method of overloading Myspace with mp3s, in favor of posting videos as the only source of original material could be genius. It lets the listener morph into a viewer, capable of identifying with a couple of buddies on a more personal level that.

“We prefer to think of people who like our music as friends we can play for, the idea of having ‘fans’ just doesn’t sit well with us,” Vaynshtok said. 

Both Vaynshtok and Rychko were born in the Ukraine.  Vaynshtok moved to the U.S. as a toddler, and talking to him reveals he’s been thoroughly Americanized. His banter is full of that “let-me-show-you-something” kind of self-confidence that has helped move Fight Like Animals out of their living room and into the wider world of the music business, setting the stage for his own bands success and even managing a friend’s hip hop group called Soul Riders. (myspace.com/soulridershiphop.) A self-taught musician, Vaynshtok is indispensable in formulating the Fight Like Animals sound

Rychko is the true student of the two, giving Vaynshtok room to handle the ins and outs of the local scene, while he focuses on composition and winking at the band’s growing grapevine of groupies. Also raised in the Ukraine, Rychko studyed voice and guitar since age 7, when he told his supportive father that he was in love with the six-string — his dad rushed out and bought him his first acoustic. Rychko continued his studies in the Ukraine until age 10, when he moved to the States. The guys soon evolved to play off one another’s music, and wit, deftly.

Influenced by new groups like RATATAT (to whom Fight Like Animals pay homage to with an original track of the same name), Ra Ra Riot, Japandi and others, the Fight Like Animals sound is energetic heavy rock riffs, timed brilliantly to complement the freshness of the ever-evolving beats — it’s not your typical four-beat bass drum dance music that wide-eyed inebriated club kids clamor for. But don’t get it twisted, this music gets you moving, few at the Hot Topic in-store could help but start nodding heads. Perhaps mainlining these guys isn’t the future, or maybe they already flipped a bitch on us and they’re going airborne inoculation on the asses of the masses.

Find out more about Fight Like Animals at myspace.com/fightlikeanimals and grannieannierecords.com.

comments@theleadmiamibeach.com