Sick Liberty

Sick Liberty was started by Dmitry Dobrin (guitar/vocals) and Dmitriy Baronov (drums), who at the time (2001) barely knew how to play their instruments and were still in their teens. It soon became a recognized and well respected band as it gained momentum in the punk scene in Brooklyn, primarily at a concert club called L'amour. After only a few gigs there, Sick Liberty was seen opening up for legendary mainstream bands such as The Dead Kennedys, The Exploited and Biohazard. During that Sick Liberty era, the band went through many different bassists, but settled on Denis Ryan, a high school friend of Dobrin's. After playing a few more gigs, however, Dmitriy Baronov has told the other two members that he feels this band is becoming too serious and that he wouldn't want to hold them back, being the reason for his resignation.

Igor Glazer then took over on drums and the new line-up started writing new material ("Anchor Woman", "Circumstances to Follow", "Storyteller" as well as a couple of jams in that same direction of sound). The bands sound has definitely changed a lot from it's punk/hardcore nature and was now described as "more mature" by fellow musician friends. This new line-up played a couple of gigs, but a series of dive-bar shows, lack of management and regret of Baronov's leaving has set the band in a bit of despair and Denis Ryan soon followed suit. Dobrin, however, acquired an entirely new line-up consisting of Dan Martinez (bass) and Mark Zipkin (drums).

During this (third, at this point) Sick Liberty era, Dobrin's lyrical writing contained a lot of sarcastic overtone in songs such as "How's My Image" and "No Body-guarding". The band's sound became so diverse between new and old songs that it became very hard to classify. Being that Sick Liberty themselves were (and still are) very anti-scene, they preferred to be labeled "Grunge", as that was the only scene they could identify with if it was absolutely necessary to describe themselves. Dmitry Dobrin, the only original member, was still determined to keep Sick Liberty going. But in order to move forward, it seems one more line-up change was absolutely necessary.

Dobrin decided to take his music in a new direction. As if the music was not hybrid enough, he insisted to see it progress further and possibly (though partially) into an electronic domain. Josh Benham came in as the permanent drummer and shared this vision. After trying out a few bassists, the duo settled on Jon Blank who is heavily influenced by The New Deal, STS9, Lotus and other live-playing bands with a jammy electronic sound. The new finalized line-up played their first gig at a local Irish pub in New Brunswick called Tumulty's on March 7th, 2009.

Sick Liberty is currently working on new material and booking gigs!