The Controversy
This album is maybe the most scandalous one in the Bulgarian music history. Prior the album release, the lyrics of some tracks like "Poslednoto zemno izprazvane na kosmonavta Romanenko" (Cosmonaut Romanenko's Last Jerk-off on Earth), "Arividerci" and "Vurtianalen sex" (Virtuanal Sex) leaked to Bulgarian media and shocked part of the audience with their explicit, though humorous content.
Bulgarian Ministry of Culture, which by law regulates Bulgarian publishing industry, speedily reacted and banned the release of the album on CD and was to file against the band in court for obscenity. Strangely, the ministry did not ban the audio cassette release of the album so it reached the market in that format.
Much to the amazement of both fans and media, the band chose not to fully exploit the marketing opportunities this controversy created and instead kept low profile. They only allowed themselves a few vague remarks on 'censorship', 'freedom of speech' and 'bigotry' during the promo party for the album in a downtown Sofia club. Bulgarian media speculated that the band and their label behaved like that due to inappropriate legal advise, which, if true, could be qualified as a major PR flop for the band.
Reportedly, ministry officials invited the band and representatives of their label to a meeting. No official information on the discussions held at this meeting was ever released to public but the ministry dropped its plans to sue the band.
As expected, the controversy helped the album become Hipodil's first real commercial success though no trustworthy sales figures were ever made available to public, a common practice in Bulgarian music industry even today. In 2003, the album was released on CD with no legal consequences neither for Hipodil nor for their label.
Read more about this topic: Nadurveni Vuglishta
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