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Early Saturday, Piknik, one of Russia\u2019s most popular heritage rock bands, published a message to its page on Vkontakte<\/a>, one of the country\u2019s largest social media sites: \u201cWe are deeply shocked by this terrible tragedy and mourn with you.\u201d<\/p>\n The night before, the band was scheduled to play the first of two sold-out concerts, accompanied by a symphony orchestra, at Crocus City Hall in suburban Moscow. But before Piknik took the stage, four gunmen entered the vast venue, opened fire and murdered at least 133 people<\/a>.<\/p>\n The victims appear to have included some of Piknik\u2019s own team. On Saturday evening, another note appeared on the band\u2019s Vkontakte page to say that the woman who ran the band\u2019s merchandise stalls was missing.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not ready to believe the worst,\u201d the message said<\/a>.<\/p>\n The attack at Crocus City Hall has brought renewed attention to Piknik, a band that has provided the soundtrack to the lives of many Russian rock fans for over four decades.<\/p>\n Ilya Kukulin, a cultural historian at Amherst College in Massachusetts, said in an interview that Piknik was one of the Soviet Union\u2019s \u201cmonsters of rock,\u201d with songs inspired by classic Western rock acts including David Bowie and a range of Russian styles.<\/p>\n Since releasing its debut album, 1982\u2019s \u201cSmoke,\u201d Piknik \u2014 led by Edmund Shklyarsky, the band\u2019s singer and guitarist \u2014 has grown in popularity despite its music being often gloomy with gothic lyrics. Kukulin attributed this partly to the group\u2019s inventive stage shows.<\/p>\n After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Kukulin said, the band began performing with exciting light displays, special effects and other innovative touches. At one point in the 1990s, the band\u2019s concerts included a \u201cliving cello\u201d \u2014 a woman with an amplified string stretched across her. Shklyarsky would play a solo on the string.<\/p>\n This month, the band debuted a new song online \u2014 \u201cNothing, Fear Nothing<\/a>\u201d \u2014 with a video that showed the band performing live before huge screens featuring ever-changing animations.<\/p>\n Unlike some of their peers, Piknik was \u201cnever a political band,\u201d Kukulin said, although that did not stop it from becoming entwined in politics. In the 1980s, Soviet authorities banned the group \u2014 along with many others \u2014 from using recording studios, while Soviet newspapers complained of the group\u2019s lyrics, including a song called \u201cOpium Smoke\u201d that authorities saw as encouraging drug use.<\/p>\n In recent years, some of Russia\u2019s most prominent rock stars have left their country, fed up with President Vladimir V. Putin\u2019s curbs on freedom of expression, including regular crackdowns on concerts. Piknik had benefited from that exodus, Kukulin said, because the band had fewer competitors on Russia\u2019s heritage rock circuit.<\/p>\n Unlike some musicians, Shklyarsky had not acted as a booster for Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine, Kukulin said. Still, Ukrainian authorities have long banned Piknik from performing in the country because the group has played concerts in occupied Crimea. In a 2016 interview<\/a>, Shklyarsky said he was not concerned about the ban.<\/p>\n \u201cPolitics comes and goes, but life remains,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Kukulin said that among Piknik\u2019s songs was \u201cTo the Memory of Innocent Victims<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a track that could be interpreted as being about those who were politically oppressed under communism. Now, Kukulin said, many fans were hearing the song in a new way, as a tribute to those who lost their lives in Friday\u2019s attack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n