Я не могу вздохнуть в своей же квартире
Мне суждено быть осуждённым в этом мире
Внушая громко правила в громкоговоритель
они ведут тебя на погибель
A voice through a loudspeaker can make even a private room feel like government property. It gives instructions, announces obligations, and leaves the person listening to wonder how much of their own life they are still permitted to keep. The promises of protection become difficult to believe when those making them have already decided whose lives they can afford to lose.
Turin-based coldwave and post-punk project Obychno Odyn confronts this dynamic on “Погибель” (“Doom”), the opening track of its new album, Адинамия (adynamia or profound exhaustion). Ukrainian musician Vadym Protsenko depicts a government that claims ownership over everything, ready to sacrifice the people in its grasp to safeguard its own dark ambitions.
An echoing snare splash establishes an uneasy beat, its accents suggesting an irregular heartbeat. Above it, a high, desolate guitar melody keeps circling, lending the song a funereal sway. A second, more spectral line curls around the first, drawing the arrangement towards gothic rock without relieving its starkness. Protsenko’s voice spreads through the reverb until one singer seems to contain a procession of monks, each phrase answered by its own retreating echo. It sounds like Trop Tard if they were haunting a monastery, the music finding ample room to reverberate while its singer struggles for air.
The Russian-language lyrics carry that pressure into the home: the right to stand, to smile, even to breathe within one’s own apartment rests in someone else’s hands. Those who seized power with weapons at their sides issue commands as people die and fragile hands are bound. Passers-by keep moving, inured to the same abuses, while the machinery grinds on, day after day. The closing lines cast a glance across centuries of wars, killings, and prison terms, placing vast troubles beside the meager answers of leaders absorbed in their own affairs. For those trapped beneath them, a whole lifetime may pass with no way out.
The video gives that confinement a physical setting. Protsenko faces the camera beside barred windows, at points delivering his words through a megaphone. Elsewhere, guitar and bass are played beneath the harsh yellow light of a streetlamp, surrounded by trees and darkness. Grainy monochrome passages, glimpses of stone figures, and diagonal bands of green interference interrupt the performance. Close-ups bring faces and instruments within reach, but the bars and degraded picture keep obstructing the view. Even outdoors, there is little sense of release.
Watch the video for “Погибель” below:
Protsenko founded Obychno Odyn in Bucharest in 2025, responding to upheaval internationally and in his home country through songs concerned with war, existence, and emotional isolation. His writing in Russian and English draws on French coldwave from the 1980s, particularly Trop Tard and Bunker Strasse. The eight-song debut album Излияние (“Outpouring”) followed in 2026. For live performances, bassist Marcello Aloisio joins Protsenko on vocals and guitar.
Ahead of this release, Post-Punk.com premiered “Уходят люди и часы” (“People and Hours Pass”) and “Мир угасает во тьме” (“The World Fades into Darkness”). The former examined the uncertainty of human connection; the latter gave physical form to exhaustion beneath an increasingly oppressive world. “Погибель” directs that accumulating distress towards the authorities who demand obedience while treating human life as expendable.
Адинамия is out now. Listen to the album below and order here.
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